Changing My Mind about King Kabua
I had one of those moments on Friday where I had to radically alter the working premise of one of my chapters in light of new information. This is always both a relief and slightly terrifying, in case there's something big that is missing elsewhere in the book.
It happened in my last book, when I had begun confidently writing that the Germans never expelled any French citizens from Germany because it was too dangerous as a potential casus belli, but then I found a French PhD which led me to some archival files in Metz that showed clearly that French people had been expelled and there were concrete plans to expel hundreds more if the Boulangist crisis (or some other border crisis) escalated.
This time I'm finalising my chapter on Kabua of the Marshall Islands and his relationship with German traders and the German state. I've been looking quite closely at a range of source material, both archival and anthropological and had a feeling that I was pretty close to understanding the period and Kabua's relationship with Germany. I'd wrestled with the dynamics of the domestic power struggle between Kabua and Loiak, and had got a sense of how both had knowingly used outsiders in domestic politics.
Primary in this, I'd thought, was Kabua, whose claims to be the paramount ruler of the Marshall Islands had been decisively refuted militarily by Loiak at least twice. But twice the Germans had become involved and had framed their relationship with the Marshall Islands through treaties between themselves and 'King Kabua'. Crudely summarised (the chapter makes the finer points), both the Germans and Kabua gained from this deal. Kabua became a king courtesy of the Germans, and the Marshall Islands could be claimed by Germany courtesy of Kabua.
The secondary material all records this and tends towards presenting Kabua as coolly making a transactional decision to his own advantage. This is also how I had written the chapter, as a signal example of local agency in the age of European empires. It'S not entirely inaccurate, but it'S hardly the full picture, I now see.
I've always been quite aware that indigenous agency, particularly that of leaders, was framed within broader, global imperial relations, and this is why I was fairly sure that when Kabua made his deals he was not signing over sovereignty, but effectively thought of this as yet another in a series of commercial relationships that had been going on for years.
That was until I finally tracked down some eye-witness testimony of the signing of the 1878 friendship treaty from the captain of the German warship (the Ariadne) who had conducted the negotiations, Bartholomew von Werner. Finding this had taken me a long time and I'd nearly given up. I still can't find the text of the 1878 Friendship Treaty. I suspect it'S omewhere in the archives in Freiburg.
Werner's testimony makes clear that this treaty was not entirely Kabua's competent diplomacy, but rather at least partly a product of military intimidation. The day before signing the treaty, German troops had staged a 'mock' invasion of Jaluit (including rifle and artillery fire that used blanks) that had caused the populace to flee and had left Kabua pale, and unable to speak or eat. After it, the Marshall Islanders' attitude towards the Germans changed from cautious welcome to fear and mistrust. It was under these conditions that the 1878 treaty was signed.
What this means for Kabua's later loyalty to Germany is spelled out in the chapter. But for the purposes of the blog, it is important to note that without Werner's testimony (which comes in the shape of a diary entry written a week or two after the treaty was signed in late 1878), my assessment of Kabua's room to manouevre would have over-estimated his space for agency. He was still a net winner domestically from the new arrangements. But it is difficult to see him as their entirely willing author.
The incident has further consequences as well. For my money, it demonstrates that German colonial endeavours were taking place during the late 1870s, and the usual date of 1884-85 is antedated by this incident 6 years earlier. Early German colonial history needs to be re-written from the perspective of the Pacific, not Africa.
It happened in my last book, when I had begun confidently writing that the Germans never expelled any French citizens from Germany because it was too dangerous as a potential casus belli, but then I found a French PhD which led me to some archival files in Metz that showed clearly that French people had been expelled and there were concrete plans to expel hundreds more if the Boulangist crisis (or some other border crisis) escalated.
This time I'm finalising my chapter on Kabua of the Marshall Islands and his relationship with German traders and the German state. I've been looking quite closely at a range of source material, both archival and anthropological and had a feeling that I was pretty close to understanding the period and Kabua's relationship with Germany. I'd wrestled with the dynamics of the domestic power struggle between Kabua and Loiak, and had got a sense of how both had knowingly used outsiders in domestic politics.
Primary in this, I'd thought, was Kabua, whose claims to be the paramount ruler of the Marshall Islands had been decisively refuted militarily by Loiak at least twice. But twice the Germans had become involved and had framed their relationship with the Marshall Islands through treaties between themselves and 'King Kabua'. Crudely summarised (the chapter makes the finer points), both the Germans and Kabua gained from this deal. Kabua became a king courtesy of the Germans, and the Marshall Islands could be claimed by Germany courtesy of Kabua.
The secondary material all records this and tends towards presenting Kabua as coolly making a transactional decision to his own advantage. This is also how I had written the chapter, as a signal example of local agency in the age of European empires. It'S not entirely inaccurate, but it'S hardly the full picture, I now see.
I've always been quite aware that indigenous agency, particularly that of leaders, was framed within broader, global imperial relations, and this is why I was fairly sure that when Kabua made his deals he was not signing over sovereignty, but effectively thought of this as yet another in a series of commercial relationships that had been going on for years.
That was until I finally tracked down some eye-witness testimony of the signing of the 1878 friendship treaty from the captain of the German warship (the Ariadne) who had conducted the negotiations, Bartholomew von Werner. Finding this had taken me a long time and I'd nearly given up. I still can't find the text of the 1878 Friendship Treaty. I suspect it'S omewhere in the archives in Freiburg.
Werner's testimony makes clear that this treaty was not entirely Kabua's competent diplomacy, but rather at least partly a product of military intimidation. The day before signing the treaty, German troops had staged a 'mock' invasion of Jaluit (including rifle and artillery fire that used blanks) that had caused the populace to flee and had left Kabua pale, and unable to speak or eat. After it, the Marshall Islanders' attitude towards the Germans changed from cautious welcome to fear and mistrust. It was under these conditions that the 1878 treaty was signed.
What this means for Kabua's later loyalty to Germany is spelled out in the chapter. But for the purposes of the blog, it is important to note that without Werner's testimony (which comes in the shape of a diary entry written a week or two after the treaty was signed in late 1878), my assessment of Kabua's room to manouevre would have over-estimated his space for agency. He was still a net winner domestically from the new arrangements. But it is difficult to see him as their entirely willing author.
The incident has further consequences as well. For my money, it demonstrates that German colonial endeavours were taking place during the late 1870s, and the usual date of 1884-85 is antedated by this incident 6 years earlier. Early German colonial history needs to be re-written from the perspective of the Pacific, not Africa.
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