Analysis Of The Article 'Coddling' Africans Abroad By Christian Stuart Davis

In his article, entitled “‘Coddling’ Africans Abroad,” Christian Stuart Davis discusses the different attitudes concerning the education of African children in Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Davis argues that those in the metropole of Germany came to different conclusions about the importance and meaning of race as it pertained to their evaluations of young Cameroonian boys due to the fact that their engagements with them differed from those of the German colonial officials back in Africa. In order to support his thesis, Davis discusses the interactions that Cameroonian boys had with their host families and communities in Germany, as well as the role of Colonial Director Paul Kaiser and his potential motives …show more content…
As the governor of Cameroon, Zimmerer believed that, once the “educated” Africans returned to Cameroon, they weren’t aware of the racial hierarchy in the colony and that their newfound beliefs that they were on the same level as the Germans resulted in the disruption of the established racial hierarchy. Zimmerer suggested that the European-educated blacks would have be “re-negroized” once they returned to the colony, in order to maintain the colonial inequality and superiority of Germans over Africans. Dernburg, like Zimmerer, “rejected outright both the desirability and possibility of equitable treatment for black Africans…based…in part on a belief in the intrinsic inequality of the races.” Based on these attitudes, the conclusion can be drawn that colonial officials, especially Zimmerer who was present in the colony, perceived the return of European-educated Africans to Africa as a threat that would result in the disruption of the colonial racial hierarchy. This was due to the belief that the Africans were “coddled” in Europe, resulting in their inability and reluctance to readapt to life in the