Mixed Race Studies

(Un-)mixing in the Mandate: purity and persistence of ‘German-time’
in New Guinea

Chapter in: Norig Neveu, Philippe Bourmaud and Chantal Verdeil (Eds), Experts et expertise dans les mandats de la Société des Nations: figures, champs et outils, [The Expert in the Mandate], Inalco Presses, 2020

Christine Winter, Associate Professor and Matthew Flinders Fellow in History
Flinders University of South Australia
College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
South Australia, Australia

“Unmixing” is a central term in the debates to bring stability and peace after WWI by ethnically homogenising regions and new nations: “… to unmix tlie (sic) populations of the Near East will tend to secure the true pacification of the Near East…” (Fritzhof Nansen, Lausanne Conference, Quoted by Sadia Abbas, Unmixing, Politicalconcepts, 2012.) So how did the nations with aspirations to ‘rule’ New Guinea deal with what could not be ‘un-mixed’: people of mixed descent, and what did this mean for German-New Guineans?

This chapter is an exploration of Weimar and Nazi German colonialism focusing on the Pacific Mandates. It focuses on leagies of German colonialism after the end of the formal German colonial empire. The crisis of the League of Nations destabilized the legitimacy of Mandate rule in the Pacific during the mid-1930s. Purity and persistence of Germanness became a theme for both the Mandate Administration and the Third Reich. In this chapter I explore the role and function of Germans of ambiguous racial belonging, namely mixed-race German Pacific Islanders, in a wider contest of expert advice and policy development. Racial scientists, German missionaries and ex-colonial officials all had a stake in the future of the Mandated Territories, and its mixed-race German population. Depending on the argument and on their place of residency – Germany or the Pacific – mixed-race German-Pacific Islanders were used as fellow Germans or as ‘natives’ to legitimize German claims.

Read the chapter draft here.

Mixed Race Identities in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands

Routledge
2016-12-20
246 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9781138677708

Edited by:

Farida Fozdar, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
University of Western Australia

Kirsten McGavin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Anthropology)
School of Social Science
University of Queensland

This volume offers a “southern,” Pacific Ocean perspective on the topic of racial hybridity, exploring it through a series of case studies from around the Australo-Pacific region, a region unique as a result of its very particular colonial histories. Focusing on the interaction between “race” and culture, especially in terms of visibility and self-defined identity; and the particular characteristics of political, cultural and social formations in the countries of this region, the book explores the complexity of the lived mixed race experience, the structural forces of particular colonial and post-colonial environments and political regimes, and historical influences on contemporary identities and cultural expressions of mixed-ness.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: “Mixed Race” in the Australo-Pacific Region / Kirsten McGavin and Farida Fozdar
• 1. Descentism in Three Acts / Emma Kowal
• 2. Reimagining Ancestry in Northern Australia’s Gulf Country: The Politics of History, Indigeneity and Race / David Trigger and Richard Martin
• 3. Raising “Mixed Race” Asian/European Migrant Children in Australia / Maki Meyer and Farida Fozdar
• 4. “See This Skin, It Is Black and White Together” / Margot Ford and Ailsa Purdon
• 5. Asian (Con)Fusion: Identity Markers Among Mixed-Asian “Race” Individuals in Perth, Western Australia / Crystal Abidin
• 6. Who Are We?German-Tongan Identity in New Zealand and Australia / Kasia Cook
• 7. Constructing and Interpreting “Mixed Race” and “Mixed Parentage” in Papua New Guinea / Helen Johnson and Kirsten McGavin
• 8. Papua New Guinean-Australian Hybridity: Reflections of an “Insider” / Anita Iko Togolo
• 9. The Transformations of the “Métis Question” in New Caledonia (1853-2009) / Adrian Muckle and Benoit Trepied
• 10. A Categorical Failure: “Mixed Race” in Colonial Papua New Guinea / Michael Goddard
• 11. Searching for a Sound: Music and “Mixed Race” Identity in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea / Michael Webb
• 12. Lingering Legacies of German Colonialism: The “Mixed Race” Diasporas in Oceania / Christine Winter
• 13. “Mixed Race” Identity and West Papuan Political Activism: Two Case Studies / Camellia Webb-Gannon
• 14. “It’s a Bicultural Nation. But the Journey Towards True Biculturalism, It’s Not There Yet”: Exploring Fathers’ Involvement in Bringing Up Their Mixed Race Children in New Zealand / Rosalind Edwards
• 15. When “Mixed Race” Is No Longer “Mixed”: A Case from Aotearoa/New Zealand / Neriko Musha Doerr