This incisive collection probes the history of colonialism within Europe and posits that Eastern Europe was in fact Germany s true "colonial" empire. Through a series of interdisciplinary essays ranging from 1850 to the European Union of today, this collection explores the idea that Germany s relationship with Poland and Eastern Europe had many similarities to the practice of "overseas" colonialism. As the contributing scholars aptly demonstrate, the history of Germany s relationship with Poland contains all the trappings of the classic colonial encounter, from its structures of power and control, racism and cultural chauvinism, to the implementation of wholesale scientific experimentation in a "lawless" environment.

Autorentext

ROBERT L. NELSON is Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Windsor, UK.

Inhalt
Reinventing Poland as German Colonial Territory in the Nineteenth Century: Gustav Freytag's Soll und Haben as Colonial Novel; K.Kopp The Prussian Settlement Commission and its Activities in the Land Market, 1886-1918; S.M.Eddie The Archive for Inner Colonization, the German East, and World War; R.L.Nelson Putting the East in Order: German Historians and their Attempts to Rationalize German Eastward Expansion during the 1930s and 1940s; E.Mühle The Languages of Occupation: Vocabularies of German Rule in Eastern Europe in the World Wars; V.G.Liulevicius The Conquest of Nature and the Mystique of the Eastern Frontier in Nazi Germany; D.Blackbourn The Threatening Other in the East: Continuities and Discontinuities in Modern German-Polish Relations; O.Schmidtke