Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities
Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series
Series Editor: John J. Bukowczyk, Wayne State University
Framing the Polish Home: Postwar Cultural Constructions of Hearth, Nation, and Self, edited by Boena Shallcross
Traitors and True Poles: Narrating a Polish-American Identity, 18801939, by Karen Majewski Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 19451979, by Jonathan Huener
The Exile Mission: The Polish Political Diaspora and Polish Americans, 19391956, by Anna D. Jaroszyska-Kirchmann
The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had and the Choices They Made, by Mary Patrice Erdmans
Testaments: Two Novellas of Emigration and Exile, by Danuta Mostwin
The Clash of Moral Nations: Cultural Politics in Pisudskis Poland, 19261935, by Eva Plach
Holy Week: A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, by Jerzy Andrzejewski
The Law of the Looking Glass: Cinema in Poland, 18961939, by Sheila Skaff
Romes Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 19141939, by Neal Pease
The Origins of Modern Polish Democracy, edited by M. B. B. Biskupski, James S. Pula, and Piotr J. Wrbel
The Borders of Integration: Polish Migrants in Germany and the United States, 18701924, by Brian McCook
Between the Brown and the Red: Nationalism, Catholicism, and Communism in Twentieth-Century PolandThe Politics of Bolesaw Piasecki, by Mikoaj Stanisaw Kunicki
Taking Liberties: Gender, Transgressive Patriotism, and Polish Drama, 17861989, by Halina Filipowicz
The Politics of Morality: The Church, the State, and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland, by Joanna Mishtal
Marta, by Eliza Orzeszkowa, translated by Anna Gsienica Byrcyn and Stephanie Kraft, with an introduction by Grayna J. Kozaczka
Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction, by Grayna J. Kozaczka
Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 18401920, by Lenny A. Urea Valerio
Series Advisory Board
M. B. B. Biskupski, Central Connecticut State University
Robert E. Blobaum, West Virginia University
Anthony Bukoski, University of Wisconsin-Superior
Bogdana Carpenter, University of Michigan
Mary Patrice Erdmans, Case Western University
Thomas S. Gladsky, Central Missouri State University (ret.)
Padraic Kenney, Indiana University
John J. Kulczycki, University of Illinois at Chicago (ret.)
Ewa Morawska, University of Essex
Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University
Brian Porter-Szcs, University of Michigan
James S. Pula, Purdue University Northwest
Daniel Stone, University of Winnipeg
Adam Walaszek, Jagiellonian University
Theodore R. Weeks, Southern Illinois University
Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities
Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 18401920
Lenny A. Urea Valerio
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
ohioswallow.com
2019 by Ohio University Press
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HARDCOVER ISBN: 978-0-8214-2373-8
ELECTRONIC ISBN: 978-0-8214-4663-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.
The Polish and Polish-American Studies Series is made possible by:
The Polish American Historical Association and the Stanley Kulczycki Publication Fund of the Polish American Historical Association, New Britain, Connecticut,
The Stanislaus A. Blejwas Endowed Chair in Polish and Polish American Studies, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, Connecticut,
The Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professorship in Polish/Polish American/Eastern European Studies at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and
The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America.
Support is also provided by the following individuals:
Thomas Duszak (Benefactor)
George Bobinski (Contributor)
Alfred Bialobrzeski (Friend)
William Galush (Friend)
Col. John A. and Pauline A. Garstka (Friend)
Jonathan Huener (Friend)
Grayna Kozaczka (Friend)
Neal Pease (Friend)
Mary Jane Urbanowicz (Friend)
Maria Swiecicka-Ziemianek (Friend)
To my mother, Rosa Amrica Valerio, and to the loving memory of my father, Ennio Francisco Urea
Contents
Illustrations
Series Editors Preface
Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 18401920 by Lenny A. Urea Valerio examines the intricate story of attempts by the fin-de-sicle German state to subjugate and civilize its Polish territories in the east, of the Poles European aspirations that yielded up what one reader called a colonial imagination of their own directed toward Africa, and of the tangible efforts by Polish peasants to launch a vaguely parallel colonizing and civilizing mission in South America. For the Germans, the wild East offered itself up as empty space ripe and ready for absorption into the German Empire. The Germans colonial project entailed, of course, military control and administrative absorption, but also involved medical and public health projects among a subject population considered by the Germans culturally backward and racially inferior. Germans had kindred colonial ambitions in Africa, but, ironically, Polish intellectuals with political aspirations shared in these European colonial fantasies and coveted a similar African object of colonial desire. Meanwhile, rank-and-file Poles pursued a real colonial project of sorts, translating colonial dreams into the reality of a mass peasant migration to the jungles of Brazil where, with other European migrants, they settled in what for European adventurers was an even more unknown and seemingly impenetrable Dark Continent.
Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities is a work which perhaps could have been written only by a scholar like Dr. Urea Valerio, herself Dominican-born but raised in Puerto Rico, whose own anticolonial perspective fortuitously escaped the constraints of lifelong immersion in the intellectual and discursive iron cages of American or European society and academe. It is one of the most legitimately transnational manuscripts since transnational projects and approaches came into vogue. The sweep of Urea Valerios study, its joining together of such disparate and novel objects of study, and its engagement with central problems of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, namely, colonialism and race, mark this work out as a true intellectual tour de force that will contribute to remaking the historiography in several historical subdisciplines.
Publication of the Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series marks a milestone in the maturation of the Polish Studies field and stands as a fitting tribute to the scholars and organizations whose efforts have brought it to fruition. Supported by a series advisory board of accomplished Polonists and Polish-Americanists, the Polish and Polish American Studies Series has been made possible through generous financial assistance from the Polish American Historical Association and that organizations Stanley Kulczycki Publication Fund, the Stanislaus A. Blejwas Endowed Chair in Polish and Polish American Studies at Central Connecticut State University, the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, and the Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professorship in Polish/Polish American/Eastern European Studies at the University of MichiganDearborn, and through institutional support from Wayne State University and Ohio University Press. The series meanwhile has benefited from the warm encouragement of a number of other persons, including Gillian Berchowitz, M. B. B. Biskupski, the late Stanislaus A. Blejwas, Thomas Duszak, Mary Erdmans, Martin Hershock, Rick Huard, Anna Jaroszyska-Kirchmann, Grayna Kozaczka, Anna Mazurkiewicz, Brian McCook, Anna Mller, Thomas Napierkowski, James S. Pula, and the late Thaddeus Radzilowski, and from the able assistance of the staff of Ohio University Press. The series also has received generous assistance from a growing list of series supporters, including benefactor Thomas Duszak, contributor George Bobinski, and additional friends of the series including Alfred Bialobrzeski, William Galush, John A. and Pauline A. Garstka, Jonathan Huener, Grayna Kozaczka, Neal Pease, Maria Swiecicka-Ziemianek, and Mary Jane Urbanowicz. The moral and material support from all of these institutions and individuals is gratefully acknowledged.
