When Germany annexed colonies in Africa and the Pacific beginning in the 1880s, many German women were enthusiastic. At the same time, however, they found themselves excluded from what they saw as a great nationalistic endeavor. In confrontation and sometimes cooperation with men, these women launched nationalist and colonialist campaigns for increased settlement and new state policies. Wildenthal analyzes Colonial Office archives as well as mission society records, periodicals, women’s memoirs, and fiction to show how these women created niches for themselves in the colonies. While pressing for career opportunities, these women also campaigned against interracial marriage and circulated images of African and Pacific women as sexually promiscuous and inferior. The German colonial imaginary persisted even after the German colonial empire was no longer a reality, and these women’s colonial movement continued into the Nazi era.
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