Between Colonial Violence and Socialist Worldview: The Conversions of Ernst Daumig

In 1900, Ernst Däumig (1866–1922) wrote to Karl Kautsky of his ‘bitter experiences’ of violence in the French Foreign Legion and then in the Prussian military that had led to his recent ‘conversion’ to the socialist worldview. This article takes up Däumig's letters, articles and travelogues, and a drama, to explore how he recast his experiences of colonial and military violence twice, first as a writer for a German soldiers’ journal and then as an aspiring socialist journalist. As well as a burden that pushed him to critique his past, Däumig's military and colonial experiences are shown to have been his starting capital in the world of journalism and politics. The article gives particular attention to the process of conversion, through which Däumig forged a new life narrative out of the moral tales offered by the adopted worldview and the events of his own past. In addition to providing a case study of worldview conversion, this article demonstrates how biographical research can challenge assumptions about the impact of colonial violence on German metropolitan culture. At the same time, this biographical analysis sheds light on the early career of one of the key figures in the German Revolution of 1918 to 1921. As co-chairman of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), Däumig led the USPD into union with the Communist Party in 1920.

Politics, Patriotism and Women in Ireland, Britain and Colonial America, c.1700-c.1780

The use of the consumer boycott as a political tool is commonly associated with pre-revolutionary colonial America and has been identified by historians as an important means through which American women were politicized. This article argues that from the late seventeenth century, Irish political discourse advocated the non-consumption of imported goods and support for home manufactures by women in ways that were strikingly similar to those used later in North America. In Ireland and, subsequently in the American colonies, the virtuous woman consumer was given an active public role by political and social commentators. Rather than being a “brilliantly original American invention,” as T. H. Breen has argued, the political exploitation of a consumer boycott and the promotion of local industry were among what Bernard Bailyn has described as the “set of ideas, already in scattered ways familiar” to the revolutionary leaders through the Irish experience. The article also argues that a shared colonial environment gave Irish and American women a public patriotic role in the period, c. 1700–1780 that they did not have in the home countries of England and Scotland.

Imperial Migrations. Colonial Communities and Diaspora in the Portuguese World

This volume explores the role and history of migration and diaspora within the Portuguese empire, investigating what role colonial communities and diaspora have had in shaping the Portuguese empire and its heritage. The book consists of twelve case studies which look at topics such as Portuguese migration to Africa, the Ismaili and the Swiss presence in Mozambique, the Goanese in East Africa, the Chinese in Brazil, and the history of the African presence in Portugal.

Mapping a Colonial Borderland: Objectifying the Geo-Body of India's Northeast

India’s Northeast frontier is at the margins of three study areas: South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. This paper attempts a history of “mapping” in its broader sense as a cultural universal over a relatively long period. It is not a history of cartography, but focuses on the interface between cartography and cosmography, which were, in turn, shaped by imperial power and geographical knowledge. This approach offers a high-altitude view of this Asian borderland as the imperial frontier of both the Mughals and the British, and the national fringe of Republican India. The authors argue that imperial geographical discourses invested the colonial Northeast (British Assam) with a new kind of territorial identity. Surveyors and mapmakers objectified the “geo-body” of this borderland in a spatial fix and visualized it as a Northeast-on-the-map. Cartographic territoriality naturalized traditional frontiers into colonial borderlands, which, in turn, forged national boundaries.