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Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South

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In 1901, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, sent an expedition to the German colony of Togo in West Africa, with the purpose of transforming the region into a cotton economy similar to that of the post-Reconstruction American South. Alabama in Africa explores the politics of labor, sexuality, and race behind this endeavor, and the economic, political, and intellectual links connecting Germany, Africa, and the southern United States. The cross-fertilization of histories and practices led to the emergence of a global South, reproduced social inequities on both sides of the Atlantic, and pushed the American South and the German Empire to the forefront of modern colonialism.

Zimmerman shows how the people of Togo, rather than serving as a blank slate for American and German ideologies, helped shape their region's place in the global South. He looks at the forms of resistance pioneered by African American freedpeople, Polish migrant laborers, African cotton cultivators, and other groups exploited by, but never passive victims of, the growing colonial political economy. Zimmerman reconstructs the social science of the global South formulated by such thinkers as Max Weber and W.E.B. Du Bois, and reveals how their theories continue to define contemporary race, class, and culture.

Tracking the intertwined histories of Europe, Africa, and the Americas at the turn of the century, Alabama in Africa shows how the politics and economics of the segregated American South significantly reshaped other areas of the world.

ISBN-13: 9780691155869

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication Date: 05-27-2012

Pages: 416

Product Dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

Series: America in the World #10

Andrew Zimmerman is professor of history at George Washington University and the author of Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany.

What People are Saying About This

Campbell

This conceptually sophisticated, empirically rich, and genuinely transnational book mines sources on three different continents and exposes a dense network of connections and comparisons. It makes original contributions to German, American, and African history, as well as to the history of the social sciences.
— James T. Campbell, author of "Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa"

Weitz

Zimmerman has written a superb book about the transfer of knowledge from North America to Germany to West Africa. He has written an Atlantic history that connects East Prussia, Togo, and the American South. Zimmerman writes insightfully about economics, social relations, and the origins of sociology. This is a model of the new global history.
— Eric D. Weitz, University of Minnesota

Geoff Eley

Zimmerman's compelling and beautifully executed book is an innovative tracking of the interrelations among free labor, race, and social science, linking Germany, Africa, and the United States. This is a groundbreaking book, one that will have a major impact.
— Geoff Eley, University of Michigan

From the Publisher

"This conceptually sophisticated, empirically rich, and genuinely transnational book mines sources on three different continents and exposes a dense network of connections and comparisons. It makes original contributions to German, American, and African history, as well as to the history of the social sciences."—James T. Campbell, author of Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa

"Zimmerman's compelling and beautifully executed book is an innovative tracking of the interrelations among free labor, race, and social science, linking Germany, Africa, and the United States. This is a groundbreaking book, one that will have a major impact."—Geoff Eley, University of Michigan

"Zimmerman has written a superb book about the transfer of knowledge from North America to Germany to West Africa. He has written an Atlantic history that connects East Prussia, Togo, and the American South. Zimmerman writes insightfully about economics, social relations, and the origins of sociology. This is a model of the new global history."—Eric D. Weitz, University of Minnesota

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Preface ix

INTRODUCTION 1





CHAPTER 1: Cotton, the "Negro Question," and Industrial Education in the New South 20

Cotton and Coercion 23

Growing Cotton in the Old South and the New 32

The "Negro Question" and the New South 38

Hampton Institute: From Colonial Education to Industrial Education 40

Tuskegee Institute: An Ambivalent Challenge to the New South 45

Booker T. Washington's Pan-Africanism and the Turn to Empire 61





CHAPTER 2: Sozialpolitik and the New South in Germany 66

German Social Thought and the American Civil War 67

Emancipation and Free Labor in Germany 70

Germany's New South: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Freedom of Free Labor 73

German Settlers and Polish Migrants: Internal Colonization and the Struggle over Labor, Sexuality, and Race 80

Social Democracy versus Internal Colonization and State Socialism 95

Race and the "Dark Urge for Personal Freedom": Max Weber and W.E.B. Du Bois 100





CHAPTER 3: Alabama in Africa: Tuskegee and the Colonial Decivilizing Mission in Togo 112

Togo between Atlantic Slavery and German Colonial Rule 113

Mission Schools, White-Collar Work, and Political Resistance 123

Ewe Education and German Colonial Rule 128

Cotton, Conquest, and the Southern Turn of Colonial Rule 130

From Colonial Africans to New South "Negroes" 139

Tuskegee Educators and African Households 144

The Transformation of Togolese Cotton 148

Undoing the Exodus: The Colonial Decivilizing Mission at the Notsé Cotton School 153

Missionary Education and Industrial Education in Togo 162

German Internal Colonization and American Sharecropping in Togo 166





CHAPTER 4: From a German Alabama in Africa to a Segregationist International: The League of Nations and the Global South 173

E. D. Morel, Congo Reform, and the German-Tuskegee Colonial Model 176

Booker T. Washington, Congo Reform, and Industrial Education in Africa 179

The Negerfrage in Germany: Colonial Policy, Colonial Social Science, and Colonial Scandals 187

Social Democracy versus the Civilizing Mission 197

The Versailles Treaty and the Segregationist International 198





CHAPTER 5: From Industrial Education for the New South to a Sociology of the Global South 205

Max Weber, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois 207

From "Teaching the Negro to Work" to the "Protestant Ethic" 212

Sociology for the Old South and the New 217

Robert E. Park, from Germany to Africa to Tuskegee and Back Again 219

From the Global South to the Chicago School of Sociology 222

The Great Migration and the Transformation of Sociology 227

CONCLUSION: Prussian Paths of Capitalist Development: The Tuskegee Expedition to Togo between Transnational and Comparative History 237





Notes 251

Bibliography 347

Index 391