German Expansionism, War & Violence: From the Seven Years' War to the War in Afghanistan

Catalog description

The course explores the various intersections between domestic politics and sociocultural developments and policies of martial brinksmanship, spatial expansion, and policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The course traces change over time with respect to ideas and practices of ethnic cleansing and genocide from the seven Years' War and the division and absorption of large portions of the former Polish state by Prussia in the late eighteenth century all the way to today, when racist reverse-colonialist notions of "white genocide" are being promoted by terrorist (and only recently uncovered) subsections of the German armed forces. Topics include: Pre-nationalist expansion in the late eighteenth century; the beginnings of German nationalist and racist discourse; imperialist and racialist settlement policies within the German Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century; global racialized policies of space, expansion and genocide in Africa and Asia during the age of imperialism; genocide and mass death during the First World War; Nazi ideology and genocide; genocidal fantasies in post-1945 Germany.