Alabama In Africa (ebook)

Argumento de Alabama In Africa (ebook)

"Alabama in Africa, with its focus on the particular moment of the synthesis of 'three of the most powerful forces in the Atlantic world--German social science, African cash cropping, and the racial political economy of the New South' is a paradigmatic case study in the transnational dimensions of U.S. American, German, and African histories. The book fully succeeds in exposing, in the words of the author's own conclusion, the implications and power of 'transnational networks of capital, social science, racial ideologies, and empire.'"--Udo J. Hebel, American Studies Journal

"Zimmerman's meticulously researched book displays the best this scholarship has to offer. . . . Andrew Zimmerman has achieved a remarkable feat that advocates of transnational and comparative history might only dream of. The deep archival research leaves no stone unturned and the argument is exceedingly persuasive. The multi-layered complexity and nearly impenetrable nature of the narrative may simply reflect the price one pays for a successful transnational history."--Natalie J. Ring, H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews

"As someone who coincidentally taught a course on African-American history for the first time during the fall of 2012 while reading Alabama in Africa, I found Zimmerman's reassessment of the contributions to U.S. relations with Africa at the turn of the twentieth century by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois to be helpful and enlightening."--Andy DeRoche, H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews

"Alabama in Africa is a remarkably rich work of transnational scholarship, one that will make lasting contributions to German, African, African American, and southern history. Thanks to this groundbreaking book, historians will see the profound and widespread impact of the New South's 'freedoms' in entirely new ways."--Mark R. Finlay, Journal of Southern History

"Zimmerman has made a valuable contribution to the fields of transnational and imperial history. Drawing together multiple and disparate narrative strands, he deftly weaves a compelling story about the importance of the migration of ideas about race, labor, and education. Of equal importance, Zimmerman provides a useful roadmap for historians seeking to broaden the horizons of the past."--Sarah Steinbock-Pratt, H-Net Reviews

"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

"Alabama in Africa is a remarkable book. Zimmerman shows how local and regional history is inevitably linked to global history, and he reminds us that we cannot begin to understand one without the other. There is far more to this book than can be discussed in the allowed space. All fields of scholarship will benefit from reading this wonderful book."--Nan E. Woodruff, Diplomatic History

"[A]n impressively conceptualized and rigorously researched work that has the potential to be a paradigm shifter for historians of race, work, power, and ideas."--Alison Clark Efford, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

"Zimmerman's important new book brings a fresh perspective to the historiography of cotton and colonialism, upending much of it in innovative and compelling ways. He writes with the perspective of a European intellectual and political historian, but is firmly grounded in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century U.S. history."--Benjamin Lawrance, H-Net Review-West-Africa

"This book . . . is incontestably a major contribution. It demonstrates decisively the value of the vanguard trend that is the internationalizing of the African-American experience."--Gerald Horne, Journal of American History

"Zimmerman vividly and powerfully tells this whole triangulated story, a superb example of the new transnational history."--Choice

"The chapters begin with useful introductory paragraphs and end with concise concluding thoughts that allow the reader to pause and reflect on the rich evidence and sophisticated analysis that Zimmerman offers. Alabama in Africa is also thoroughly and beautifully illustrated with useful maps and wonderfully detailed photographs. These are particularly helpful in a work of this kind that moves from continent to continent and in which many readers might encounter somewhat unfamiliar regions and story lines. Recommended for scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates, Alabama in Africa is a sterling example of transnational history at its finest."--Robert T. Vinson, Labor

"Andrew Zimmerman has recovered an important but overlooked aspect of colonial history, and he tells his story with much verve. He succeeds most admirably in his broader aim of illuminating larger historical processes with seemingly minor events and bridging historiographical traditions."--Erik Grimmer-Solem, Enterprise and Society

"Zimmerman analyzes an exhaustive amount of archival, published primary, and secondary sources to shape his narrative. This excellent transnational history will be of interest to scholars of the Atlantic World, the United States, Germany, and Africa."--Jeannette Eileen Jones, American Historical Review

"This is in many ways a brilliant book. It is pathbreaking in its tracing of the intellectual roots, economics, and politics of transnational links that transformed the global South. Particularly significant is the fact that Zimmerman reveals how Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Tuskegee scientists and colonists played active roles in this tricontinental undertaking."--Douglas Henry Daniels, Journal of World History

"Alabama in Africa is a truly remarkable achievement, one of the most powerful and illuminating works to emerge so far in the effort to recast historical thinking beyond national scales. . . . Elegantly wrought, subtly argued and carefully researched, it is a model of global history writing that provides one of the most convincing histories available of the forging of racialized power in the modern world."--Paul A. Kramer, H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews

"More than an exemplary study of colonial globalization, Alabama in Africa holds out the proposition to understand blacks neither as its objects, nor as its opponents, but also its agents."--Elisabeth Engel, Books&ideas.net

"Alabama in Africa is an uncommonly ambitious and broadly conceived work. It is a compelling fusion of micro and transnational history. . . . With enviable erudition in disparate historiographies and exceptional clarity of exposition, Zimmerman reveals connections, traces influences, and assigns consequences amidst the swirling events on three continents during a period of furious transformation. His accomplishments as a prose craftsmen and researcher are impressive, and, I hope, will inspire subsequent scholars to attempt similar works."--W. Fitzhugh Brundage, H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews

"Andrew Zimmerman's Alabama in Africa is an ambitious and outstanding book. The author has thought deeply about a large subject, explains his ideas forcefully, and bases his thesis in staggering research. His efforts have resulted in a valuable contribution to the history of three continents linked, as the author has shown, more closely than many historians have realized. . . . Scholars interested in the symbiotic relationship between the southern United States, Germany, and West Africa during the Progressive era will find Zimmerman's study of great worth, one that answers as well as provokes new questions concerning the international impact of the American South."--James S. Humphreys, Canadian Journal of History0List 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 Notse? 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