The traces of European colonialism remain evident and palpable: Street names, artefacts, human remains that have been introduced to Europe for research purposes or as trophies, monuments, as well as traces in language, knowledge, and memory. Museums and archives are full of artefacts, we are not just talking about individual pieces but about a multitude of things; think, for example, of the famous Benin bronzes or the still uncatalogued masses of artefacts that are stored in various ethnographic museums in Germany.
History of colonialism - a shared space for research
An introduction by Bettina Brockmeyer, Rebekka Habermas and Ulrike Lindner
As different as the colonial history of the various (West)European nations was, including those that were officially colonial powers and those that, like Switzerland, were more economically or scientifically involved in colonial ventures, colonialism is a central part of the European as well as the African, Oceanic, American and Asian heritage. Civil society, academic and governmental initiatives in Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas, and in Europe are increasingly drawing attention to this fact. The debate about this heritage has gained new momentum through many grassroots and other activities over the last years, in former colonies such as Canada or South Africa, but also in Europe, where the report by Benedicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr, published in 2018, on the handling of colonial objects in France, attracted broad attention.[1] It points to questions of reparation and restitution, i.e. the return of the objects to their countries of origin, an act that has multiple political and moral dimensions.
What is clear, however, is that this connected colonial past (even 100 years after the end of German colonial rule and almost 60 years after the end of the Algerian war) is – of course and justly so – remembered in very different ways in the Global South and North respectively. It is remembered very differently also by colonial apologets or by people who are generally not interested in colonial history as compared to ardent postcolonial critics, groups from former colonies, who expect their looted objects to be returned, or members of the Herero and Nama who have been now fighting for reparations for decades – just to mention a few different groups. These differences lead to serious confrontations, since structural inequalities and epistemic colonial violence still shape relations between societies today. As we could observe in the debate on reparations for the victims of the Herero and Nama genocide in Namibia, even terminology is highly contested.[2] Furthermore, there are of course the ongoing social and economic inequalities between the Global North and South and the ongoing dominance of Western academia, as criticized by postcolonial thinkers for decades.[3]
If one deals with the history of colonialism, one always has to be aware that European colonialism was intrinsically tied to racism and that this has caused long lasting effects. Racial and Social Darwinian theories were widespread in the German Second Empire and in other European countries at the end of the 19th century.[4] Racial categories were used in colonial policy; and colonial developments reinforced racial stereotypes in European countries. European scholars developed racial classifications, using human remains, particularly skulls, from various colonies to prove their theories.[5] After the Herero-and-Nama war, with ten thousands of victims on the battlefields and in the concentration camps, thousands of skulls were brought to Germany – many of them can still be found in collections, which is which is an ongoing disgrace for Germany today.[6]
Colonial racism implied a biological and hierarchical thinking of difference with an unquestioned claim to White superiority. Racism informed colonial relations and is still informing many postcolonial relations. The “Black Live Matters” movement clearly raised awareness how deeply rooted racism is in our everyday life and in many levels of our society. We, as White European historians should be especially aware of this when we aim to initiate a new discussion on the history of colonialism.
Despite these confrontations and problems, however, the current debates might also open up a unique opportunity: to take a fresh look at the colonial past together with researchers from the Global South and North on an equal footing. This opportunity should be seized, as it is the prerequisite for addressing conflicts that have arisen from decades of colonial aphasia,[7] as it has been the case in many European countries and especially so in Germany.
The aim of the conference was, therefore, to bring together research, the arts and civil society – namely from the former colonies and from Germany – in order to question the past, present and future of colonial memory. One aim of the conference was to help substantiate and set in motion co-operative research.
A problematic title: Shared history
The idea that inspired the shared-history-conference was the appeal signed by many scholars published in the weekly journal Die Zeit in November 2018.[8] The appeal called for paying more attention to the unique opportunity to explore the colonial past together now, in midst of the discussion on restitution and reparation. We asked for a central institution, a foundation, that would bring together the enormous knowledge that has already been gathered, would connect and integrate research, museum work and politics in Germany and, in perspective, in Europe as well, and would set new accents and launch initiatives.
So far, the project has led to several conferences by different groups of people in various places, all revolving around questions of a shared history. In summer 2019, we had the “Museum collections in motion”-conference in Cologne, supported by the Global South Studies Centre and the Federal Foreign Office.[9] In 2021, we will have a conference in Erlangen on restitution and concepts of law and property, financed by the Thyssen foundation. There are other research projects already running for some time e.g. with researchers in Hanover, Munich and Göttingen together with scholars from Oceania and Africa, or projects that are in the making, for example at the Universities of Cologne and Bremen together with the University of Western Cape and several museums in the Global South and North. We are happy that quite a lot of these people were panellists or delegates at the conference.
The shared-history conference is another important step in this ongoing dialogue. We planned the shared-history-conference because we are convinced that in order to better shape our future together we also need a new look at our entangled colonial and postcolonial history. What we need is a political, cultural and academic exchange about the colonial past between the Global South – especially of course with countries that were former colonies – and European colonizing countries.
We want to stress that this exchange should continue. The conference is not considered to be the final point, but rather a means to create a major project with a wider impact on academic research and the public.
What do we mean with shared history? In historical research various terms have been used to describe the attempt to bring together non-European and European history, or the history of the Global South and North. “Entangled history” for example is understood as a bridging concept between historical comparison and transfer studies, taking up many aspects from postcolonial studies which attempt to integrate European and non-European history within a single analytical framework. Cultural anthropologist Shalini Randeria is maybe best known for the introduction and scholarly use of this method.[10] The historian Sanjay Subramahan coined the term “connected history”, to as well move away from simple comparisons and more importantly to demonstrate that in the early modern period, before European imperial hegemony, Europe and Asia were both participants in an emerging world that was not dominated by European states.[11]
We take up these challenges of “entangled” and “connected” history, and here we chose the term “shared” history as we wanted to stress the fact that this is more than a scholarly endeavour and has a lot of practical implications. Of course this does not imply that we want to gloss over colonial violence and colonial wars in any way, quite the contrary, it is important to stress that a shared history can always imply a divided memory.[12] “Shared history” should rather underline the notion of a shared experience when researching together in the future, the character of an ongoing project of sharing knowledge and undermining the epistemic dominance of the colonial legacy. Other shared history projects try to make history useful in educational settings and intercultural contexts, this should be the aim of this shared history project as well.[13]
However, the fulminant talk by Yvonne Owuor made us, the organizers, uncomfortable with the title “shared history”. This was very much what Yvonne Owuor wanted, and rightly so. It made us think hard about our aims, about the terms and words we use when we deal with colonialism or to quote the Kenyan writer “horror” and we thought it gave the whole conference a very good frame for reflection. It is clear, we think, that we have to revise the name of the project when we will continue with the projects in various forms.
We should find a title that is able to more appropriately address the strong connections as well as the divided memory, that cannot be bridged as it entails the horrors of colonialism. Maybe we will end up with “Colonialism as connected and divided history”. We learned in the third panel that the concept of a “shared space” for research does work and this is also what we therefore chose to take as a headline for this introductory paper.
We think that a conference is a shared space in the sense that it offers a good forum to address the problems and issues of colonialism by researchers of the Global South and North in an intense debate. This is still a quite rare event, but absolutely necessary to reach a new multi-perspective approach towards the history and legacies of colonialism. It is also important that we have an exchange between different disciplines, civil society initiatives and the arts, an exchange that is much needed when tackling these topics.
Introduction to the program of the conference
Much has happened in research on colonial history in recent decades, and colonialism has also become much more prominent in public debates, thanks primarily to civil society initiatives all over the world and therewith also in Germany such as Freiburg postcolonial, Berlin postcolonial, and Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland, to name just a few. Yet much remains to be done, and this conference wants to make a further contribution. It is not only important to anchor colonial history more firmly in schools, universities, and in the general public by moving out of the ivory tower, but above all, it is of great importance to understand the significance of how it is conveyed: which events should be communicated, which actors named. Accordingly, it is important to be clear about the perspective. First of all this means: No more talking about, but talking with.
Of course and again, a conference like this can only be one element of an ongoing dialogue. Colonial history should not allow itself to be appropriated for everyday-political debate. We need a broader dialogue; an open and controversial dialogue about what connects so many regions of the world and what separates them, and how they have been entangled for many centuries in some cases, and how we deal with the material and immaterial witnesses of this interdependence in such a way that past injustice can also be described as such.
The first panel discusses the impact of colonialism both on overseas colonies and their local contexts as well as on the European states and organisations Thus, it also reflects that colonial involvement was never the endeavour of a single colonial power, but should be seen in a trans-imperial context.
The second panel focusses on the manifold and powerful legacies of colonialism. Just to name a few of these legacies: stolen cultural assets, artefacts, and human remains, colonial traces of knowledge and language, as well as, every-day racism. We can also find these legacies in monuments and street names, collective memory and political relations. Thus, the panel critically questions collections, museum concepts, knowledge and politics.
The third panel explores how the history of colonial violence, economies and knowledge production can be reappraised without the creation of new hierarchies. We discuss what we need to develop, write, and communicate for a shared history. We also ask rather critically about the possibilities and limits of such a history, and pay particular attention to controversial aspects within different concepts of a shared history.
The final and fourth panel of the conference asks how a shared or common future could possibly be shaped. It asks which role models exist and which ideas and previous realisations help to build sustainable projects, institutions and spaces for reflection about conflicting ideas. This last panel focuses on existing and planned events, alliances and network ideas.
Closing remarks and acknowledgements
We held four panels and are very grateful for the input of all the panellists who joined us. We heard about the legacies of colonialism in language, in the structures of decolonized societies, and about the unintended consequences of colonial infrastructure. We addressed the topic of migration in Europe as a consequence of colonialism and decolonization. We engaged deeply with the topics of global White supremacy and coloniality thus widening up the topic of the conference beyond the notion of colonialism. We talked about material culture and institutions as legacies of colonial violence, that have to be tackled and maybe even to be destroyed. A recurring topic was the re-addressing of earlier scholarship, for example the re-reading of colonial resistance scholarship through the lens of sovereignty, and the need of re-assessing collections and changing their core elements.
We probably all agree that we have to flip the script and do commemoration from a different perspective. We learned that we need new spaces for locating and re-arranging memory. For doing so, we have to be quite radical. We have to think through histories of injustice for being able to create spaces of solidarity that might offer a new conversation about the history of colonialism. For scholars in the North that means that they have to find new relationships and openness and – first of all - they have to listen.
We would like to thank our panellists from Africa, Oceania, America and Europe who took part in a digital format, which is of course far less rewarding than a personal encounter. Furthermore, we would like to thank the Federal Foreign Office and the Gerda Henkel Foundation for supporting and funding the conference and helping us with all kinds of problems. We especially would like to thank Minister of State Michelle Müntefering, Anna Bartels, Nicole Gonsior, Wolfgang Wagner and Cäcilia Präckel from the Federal Foreign Office, as well as Sybille Wüstemann and Sue-Ellen Wang from the Gerda Henkel foundation. We are extremely grateful for their cooperation and support. ORCA and IFBBW supported us technically.
We need more political, cultural and academic exchanges, that trigger and enable debates about colonial history in order to come to a better mutual understanding We need to create a diverse and heterogeneous space of memory, the arts, and research, which deepens existing cooperation and opens up new forms of cooperation. But as a start we need many more places for vivid debates – this conference wanted to be one of these hopefully many more places to come.
Nachweise
Programme of the conference
7 October: Public Conference Opening and Keynote, First Panel
2:00 pm (UTC+2) | LIVESTREAM | ENGLISH
Opening Remarks
PD Dr. Bettina Brockmeyer, Prof. Dr. Rebekka Habermas, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lindner
Introduction
Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office Michelle Müntefering
Keynote Lecture
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Writer, Nairobi, Kenya: Derelict Shards: The Roamings of Colonial Phantoms
Chair: Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lindner, Historian, Cologne, Germany
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3 pm (UTC+2): COFFEE BREAK conference introduction
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3:45 pm (UTC+2) | via ZOOM | ENGLISH
PD Dr. Bettina Brockmeyer, Prof. Dr. Rebekka Habermas, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lindner
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1st Panel: Shared History: Colonialism
4:00 – 5:30 pm (UTC+2) | via ZOOM | ENGLISH
The panel analyses the impact of colonialism both on overseas colonies and on Europe. It focuses on local contexts, states and organisations, highlighting the agency of people and economic, political and social dynamics. Furthermore, it should reflect that colonial involvement takes place in a trans-imperial context.
Prof. Dr. Michelle Moyd, Historian, Bloomington, USA: African Sovereignties and “Counterinsurgency” in German East Africa, 1890-1908
Prof. Dr. Bertram Mapunda, Archaeologist, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Can Colonialism Ever Have a Positive Element? A Reflection on the Three Decades of German Colonial Rule in Tanganyika
Dr. Kokou Azamede, Historian, Lomé, Togo: The impact of German colonialism in West African societies. The case of Togo and Ghana
Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Buettner, Historian, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Remaking Europe Through Migration: Colonial Legacies in Context
Chair: Dr. Larissa Förster, Cultural and Social Anthropologist, Berlin, Germany
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8 October, Second and Third Panel
2nd Panel: Shared History: Post-colonialism
Time: 2:00-3:30 pm (UTC+2) | via ZOOM | ENGLISH
Both in the former colonies as well as in Germany and Europe we are today confronted with the manifold and powerful legacies of colonialism and racism – cultural assets and artifacts, knowledge and human remains, language and linguistic usage, monuments and street names, collective memory and political relations. Thus, it is necessary to critically question collections, museums, knowledge, and politics and to reveal their genealogies and underlying racist conceptions.
Prof. Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, Historian, Washington, USA: Robbery, Representation, Restitution, and Destruction
Prof. Dr. Ciraj Rassool, Historian, African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies, Cape Town, SA: Restitution, decolonisation and the work of undoing race in the museum
Joshua Kwesi Aikins, Research Associate, Development Policy and Postcolonial Studies, Kassel, Germany: Shifting the Perspective of/on Colonial Commemoration: Decolonising Public Space in Germany
Chair: Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lindner, Historian, Cologne, Germany
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3.30 PM (UTC+2): COFFEE BREAK
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3rd Panel: Shared History: Projects
Time: 4:00-5:30 pm (UTC+2) | via ZOOM | ENGLISH
For a long time, Europeans held the sovereignty of interpretation over colonial history in academia as well as in some wider audiences. This panel explores how the history of colonial violence, economies and knowledge production can be reappraised without the creation of new hierarchies. How can we develop, write, and communicate a shared history? What are the possibilities and limits of such a history?
Dr. Manuela Bauche and Christian Kopp, Historians, Berlin, Germany: Bridging Divides? Collaborative Projects, Entangled Injustices and German Memory Politics
Dr. Michael Mel, Artist, Curator, Goroka, Papua New Guinea: Sharing Stories – Shared Space
Uwe Jung, Archival Sciences, Potsdam, Germany: The Archive Guide to German Colonial Past – An opportunity for dehierarchized access to documents
Chair: PD Dr. Stefanie Michels, Historian, Hamburg, Germany
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9 October: Fourth Panel and Public Discussion
4th Panel: Shared Future
Time: 12:00 – 1:15 pm (UTC+2) | via ZOOM | ENGLISH
This panel asks how a common future can be shaped. Which possible role models exist, which ideas and previous realisations help to build sustainable projects, institutions and spaces for reflection? This panel focuses on existing and planned events, alliances and network ideas.
Flower Manase, Curator, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: The future of Africa-Europe ‘collaboration’ on shared history
PD Dr. Bettina Brockmeyer, Historian, Erlangen & Hamburg, Germany: Proposal for a Center for Research on Colonialism and Racism
Prof. Dr. David Simo, German Studies, Yaoundé, Kamerun: Is it possible to imagine collaborative knowledge productions to resist existing asymmetric structures?
Chair: Junior Prof. Dr. Ulrike Schaper, Historian, Berlin, Germany
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Concluding remarks
Time: 1:15 pm (UTC+2) | via ZOOM | ENGLISH
PD Dr. Bettina Brockmeyer, Prof. Dr. Rebekka Habermas, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lindner
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1.30 PM (UTC+2): LUNCH BREAK
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Public Panel Discussion: Dealing with the legacies of colonialism and racism in a shared future
Time: 2:00 pm (UTC+2) | LIVE STREAM | GERMAN (SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH)
Dr. Ibou Diop, Romance Studies, Berlin, Germany
Prof. Dr. Albert Gouaffo, German Studies, Dschang, Cameroon
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lindner, Historian, Cologne, Germany
Jackie Thomae, Writer, Berlin, Germany
Hadija Haruna-Oelker, Independent Journalist and Political Scientist
Chair: René Aguigah, Deutschlandradio Kultur