The focal point of the book's cover image is Kaiser Wilhelm II as he appears to be greeting a group of Ethiopians—likely part of an ethnographic show—in the Hagenbeck Zoo of Hamburg. Given this photo, and the title of the book, one might expect a narrative on how the Kaiser was the center of German colonial policy and imperial narratives, but both indicators bely the far more interesting project Matthew P. Fitzpatrick has developed: a global history of monarchy through the lens of German imperial encounters. Fitzpatrick makes use of media, memoirs, and archival sources from the German Federal Archives in Berlin, the Basel Mission Archives, and the Political Archives of the German Foreign Office to challenge the existing literature on the role of the Kaiser in colonial decision-making, adapt and modify anthropological and historical theories on monarchical purpose and display, and expand on discussions of the history of orientalism and indigenous agency. Fitzpatrick demonstrates the limitations of Wilhelm II's personal power in policymaking and also demonstrates the forms and boundaries of royal cosmopolitanism in the interactions between the German Kaiser and monarchs, emperors, sultans, and paramount chiefs in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
Fitzpatrick divides the book into two parts: “Monarchy in the Metropole” and “Monarchy beyond the Metropole.” This, however, is an organizational schema that is not strictly logical, as the two categories blur in most chapters. Each well-crafted case study examines the violence of empire, examples of agency for non-European monarchs both within and without German imperial rule, the strains on the institution of monarchy in Germany, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, as well as the very real limits on the Kaiser's authority in governance of the colonial empire.
In part one, “Monarchy in the Metropole,” the six fascinating chapters center Wilhelm II a bit more, as Fitzpatrick mounts a very successful challenge to the old John Röhl thesis. Fitzpatrick effectively demonstrates that, although Wilhelm II did have a role to play in colonial endeavors, it was largely in a ceremonial, constitutional, limited capacity. Wilhelm II may have sought to influence policy, but ultimately the German Colonial Office, the Foreign Office, and/or the chancellor held the reins and often had to work around Wilhelm II when his ceremonial and public diplomatic roles resulted in gaffes that might have disrupted official state aims. In this section, chapters 4, 5, and 6 are essential reading and the strongest examples of Fitzpatrick's work.
Chapter 4 demonstrates how the Kaiser was, at times, a liability to German colonial prestige, with the Foreign Office and the chancellor embarrassed by the Kaiser's demands that Prince Chun of Imperial China kowtow before Wilhelm II as part of the set-piece diplomacy following the Boxer Rebellion. Fitzpatrick uses this incident—the media coverage of the events, and the Kaiser being forced by government officials to back down as the Chinese delegation refused and created a humiliating fiasco for both the German monarchy and the state—to demonstrate the significance of royal symbolism, while also indicating how few demands the Kaiser could make on his own government and others in terms of performative diplomacy with a foreign delegation.
The fifth chapter is the one most likely to generate debate, as it challenges the idea that the genocide in German South West Africa can be called “the Kaiser's Holocaust.” Fitzpatrick acknowledges that the Kaiser was sympathetic to Lothar von Trotha and his brutal tactics, and that Wilhelm II played a constitutional role in empowering Trotha as the field commander against the advice of several military and government officials. Fitzpatrick, however, counters Jeremy Sarkin's centralized genocide claim by noting that “while the genocide was a direct consequence of the actions of a royally empowered highest-ranking German officer in the colony” (159–160), for which the German state still bears complete responsibility, it was not, as Sarkin claimed, the result of a direct royal order. Wilhelm II's limited constitutional role did not afford him that level of oversight and, after appointing Trotha and seeing the political fallout and backlash in Germany caused by Trotha's actions, the Kaiser showed little interest in expanding his own involvement. Readers should read chapter 9 immediately before chapter 5, as the two are tightly intertwined parts of a larger narrative about monarchy, power, agency, and genocide in Southwest Africa, with chapter 9 supplying the experiences of figures like Samuel Maherero.
Chapter 6 is an exploration of the interactions between the Moroccan sultan, German officials, and the Kaiser in the First Moroccan Crisis, showing the limits of monarchical internationalism and Wilhelm II's authority to dictate policy, while also showing the constraints and acumen of the Moroccan sultan in navigating European geopolitics alongside domestic in-fighting over foreign interference. The balancing act played by Sultan Abdelaziz, as outlined by Fitzpatrick, is far more interesting than the Kaiser's role in this drama and shows how well Fitzpatrick has crafted a global history of monarchy portrayed through encounters with German imperial ventures and schemes.
In part two, “Monarchy beyond the Metropole,” which comprises the last seven chapters, but for which chapters 1, 4, and 6 of part one would be equally well-suited, Fitzpatrick expands on works by Eva Giloi, Johannes Paulmann, David Graeber, Marshall Sahlins, and Frank Lopez Müller about royal cosmopolitanism. He also differs from and adds to David Cannadine's scholarship on orientalism by looking at the response of royal power in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific to German incursions not as a clash of cultures, but as a “willed and calculated product of power in concrete material situations” (16) that allowed for agency alongside restrictions to their own power. Here, Fitzpatrick demonstrates that many non-European royal figures, from Sultan Fumo Bakari in Witu (chapter 8) and King Najoya of Bamum (chapter 10), to those looking for paramount chief status like Tupua Tamasese Lealofi of Samoa (chapter 12), to the murdered King Rudolf Duala Manga Bell of Cameroon (chapter 13), expected some degree of royal reciprocity and recognition for their positions through interactions, both physical and epistolary, with the Kaiser. Chapters 11 and 12 stand out in this section.
Chapter 11 highlights the roles of diplomacy and gifts in attempts at royal cosmopolitanism through the example of King Kabua of the Marshall Islands and the presenting of his physical throne—the symbol of his authority—to Kaiser Wilhelm II for the German monarch's birthday in 1909. Far from viewing this episode as Kabua being entirely subservient to German power, Fitzpatrick displays through a series of letters, telegrams, and government documents how the gifting of the original throne rather than a replica was part of a larger system of partial royal reciprocity that Kabua attempted time and again to use as leverage—with varying degrees of success—in his dealings with German imperial authorities and with rivals to his claims in the Marshall Islands, while reinforcing his own notion of his importance as a power-broker for Germans in the region.
Chapter 12 examines the role of Wilhelm Solf and how he systematically dismantled Samoan power structures by inserting the Kaiser into the islands’ understanding of paramount hierarchy dynamics as well as the attempted royal internationalism in the response of Tupua Tamasese Lealofi in appealing to the Kaiser to restore his ability to take the office of paramount chief. So firmly did Tupua Tamasese Lealofi believe in a sense of reciprocity that he tried again and again—unsuccessfully—to make use of a supposed personal connection with Wilhelm II—including during a visit to Berlin—and other colonial officials to not only gain favor over his rivals in the region, but also to reassert the authority of paramount chiefdom once it had been stripped from the German colonial system in Samoa entirely. Regardless of the outcome, the actions of the Samoan leader demonstrate—as Fitzpatrick argues throughout the book—the ways in which monarchs and leaders in colonial settings had agency in trying to get the German imperial system to work in their favor or in trying to push against it.
Matthew Fitzpatrick has written an approachable monograph on the forms and boundaries of royal cosmopolitanism in the imperial interactions between the German Kaiser and royal figures from around the world that will serve as grounding for another wave of research on German imperialism. Hopefully this text will lead to others developing and expanding on these themes to explore the relationship between monarchy and agency in the context of other empires as well as inter-imperial and postimperial situations beyond the lens of the German Empire, which serves as such a useful springboard for this study.
