Traditionally, Germany has been considered a minor player in Pacific history: its presence there was more limited than that of other European nations, and whereas its European rivals established themselves as imperial forces beginning in the early modern era, Germany did not seriously pursue colonialism until the nineteenth century. Yet thanks to recent advances in the field emphasizing transoceanic networks and cultural encounters, it is now possible to develop a more nuanced understanding of the history of Germans in the Pacific. The studies gathered here offer fascinating research into German missionary, commercial, scientific, and imperial activity against the backdrop of the Pacific’s overlapping cultural circuits and complex oceanic transits.
Table of Content
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction: German Histories and Pacific Histories
Ulrike Strasser, Frank Biess, and Hartmut Berghoff
PART I: MISSIONARIES, EXPLORERS, AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER
Chapter 1. German Apothecaries and Botanists in Early Modern Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan
Raquel A. G. Reyes
Chapter 2. A Bohemian Mapmaker in Manila: Travels, Transfers, and Traces between the Pacific Ocean and Germans Lands
Ulrike Strasser
Chapter 3. German Naturalists in the Pacific Around 1800: Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise
Andreas W. Daum
Chapter 4. Georg Wilhelm Steller and Carl Heinrich Merck: German Scientists in Russian Service as Explorers in the North Pacific in the Eighteenth Century
Kristina Küntzel-Witt
Chapter 5. Johann Reinhold Forster and the Ship Resolution as a Space of Knowledge Production
Anne Mariss
Chapter 6. Engineering Empire: German Influence on Chinese Industrialization, 1880–1925
Shellen Wu
PART II: EXPANSION, ENTANGLEMENTS, AND COLONIALISM IN THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY
Chapter 7. Expanding the Frontier(s): The Spreckels Family and the German-American Penetration of the Pacific, 1870–1920
Uwe Spiekermann
Chapter 8. Work and Non-Work in the “Paradise of the South Sea”: Samoa, c A. 1890–1914
Jürgen Schmidt
Chapter 9. German Women in the South Sea Colonies, 1884–1919
Livia Maria Rigotti
Chapter 10. Sacrifice, Heroism, Professionalization and Empowerment: Colonial New Guinea in the Lives of German Religious Women, 1899–1919
Katharina Stornig
Chapter 11. Rape, Indenture, and the Colonial Courts in German New Guinea
Emma Thomas
Chapter 12. The Trans-Pacific ‘Ghadar’ Movement: The Role of the Pacific in the Indo-German Plot to Overthrow the British Empire during World War I
Douglas T. Mc Getchin
Chapter 13. The Vava’u Germans: History and Identity Construction of a Transcultural Community with Tongan and Pomeranian Roots
Reinhard Wendt
Epilogue: German Histories and Pacific Histories: New Directions
Matt Matsuda
Index
About the author
Ulrike Strasser is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of California-San Diego. Her research focuses on early modern Central European history, religious history, gender and sexuality, early modern world history, and history and theory.
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