Sex and Control ― Venereal Disease, Colonial Physicians, and Indigenous Agency in German Colonialism 1884-1914

In responding to the perceived threat posed by venereal diseases in Germany's colonies, doctors took a biopolitical approach that employed medical and bourgeois discourses of modernization, health, productivity, and morality. Their goal was to change the behavior of targeted groups, or at least to isolate infected individuals from the healthy population. However, the Africans, Pacific Islanders, and Asians they administered to were not passive recipients of these strategies. Rather, their behavior strongly influenced the efficacy and nature of these public health measures. While an apparent degree of compliance was achieved, over time physicians increasingly relied on disciplinary measures beyond what was possible in Germany in order to enforce their policies. Ultimately, through their discourses and actions they contributed to the justification for and the maintenance of German colonialism.

Daniel J. Walther is the Gerald R. Kleinfeld Distinguished Professor of German History at Wartburg College, where he teaches modern European and world history. He is the author of Creating Germans Abroad: Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia (Ohio UP, 2002) and several articles on the German experience in Namibia and on German colonialism. He has been a Fulbright Fellow, a Max Kade Fellow, a DAAD Faculty Researcher, and a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.