In 1901, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, sent an expedition to the German colony of Togo in West Africa, with the purpose of transforming the region into a cotton economy similar to that of the post-Reconstruction American South. "Alabama in Africa" explores the politics of labor, sexuality, and race behind this endeavor, and the economic, political, and intellectual links connecting Germany, Africa, and the southern United States. The cross-fertilization of histories and practices led to the emergence of a global South, reproduced social inequities on both sides of the Atlantic, and pushed the American South and the German Empire to the forefront of modern colonialism. Zimmerman shows how the people of Togo, rather than serving as a blank slate for American and German ideologies, helped shape their region's place in the global South. He looks at the forms of resistance pioneered by African American freedpeople, Polish migrant laborers, African cotton cultivators, and other groups exploited by, but never passive victims of, the growing colonial political economy.
Zimmerman reconstructs the social science of the global South formulated by such thinkers as Max Weber and W.E.B. Du Bois, and reveals how their theories continue to define contemporary race, class, and culture. Tracking the intertwined histories of Europe, Africa, and the Americas at the turn of the century, "Alabama in Africa" shows how the politics and economics of the segregated American South significantly reshaped other areas of the world.
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"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 "[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 "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 "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 "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 "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 History "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 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 "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 "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 "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
Andrew Zimmerman is professor of history at George Washington University and the author of "Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany".
List 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
