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.

List of Illustrations viiPreface 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