The boma and the peripatetic ruler. Mapping colonial in German East Africa, 1889-1903

In 1885 German Emperor issued a Protection letter on territories in Eastern Africa,
based on treaties with local chiefs made by the young German adventurer Carl Peters one
year before. In the following years this rather virtual territory grew steadily either
by new treaties made with other chiefs or by treaties with other European colonial
powers. For some years this territory was only existent on the maps of German colonial
enthusiasts and politicians in Berlin. In 1889, the year when the German state begun
to took over the control of affairs in Eastern Africa, Germans claimed an area of
nearly two Million qm2 belonging to their colony. But for many years, Germans lacked the
sufficient resources to settle an effective control over this huge territory.

In the interior colonial rule was established through military expeditions and by
building up the so-called boma, military and administrative outposts. When German DCOs
described the political influence of the boma, they often used the image of circles of
control and influence around the boma. According to their reports the influence of
colonial rule was the highest nearby the boma, while this influence diminished with
greater distance from the boma. Therefore, in large parts of the colony colonial rule
was maintained through expeditions. Colonial rule was in most parts of the colony, what
I would call a peripatetic rule.

In my paper I will deal with the consequences of such a peripatetic rule. This will be
done both for the perception (and even imagination) of the colonial territory and for
the everyday praxis of colonial rule. In colonial discourse the lacking presence of the
ruler was blurred by portraying the boma as a pars pro toto of the colonial world. The
boma was seen as a promise for a coming colonial penetration of African societies. But
in many places it remained a promise and the invention of the colonial territory was a
play with Potemkin villages. Maps of the colony, in which the boma were inscribed as
main places, created a virtual colonial territory.

Colonial expeditions were not only military undertakings, but also explorations of an
unknown territory. To arrive on a certain place and to gain some knowledge of it was in
many cases equivalent with establishing colonial rule. But the presence of the
peripatetic ruler was ephemer. In everyday colonial praxis Germans tried to redouble
their presence by impressive performances of their military power and even by
spectacular stagings of their arriving on the scene. It was this moment, when colonial rule emerged as a choreographized space. To impress Africans was one the
most used and often commented strategies to establish colonial rule. Their spectacular appearance was seen as the magic moment in which the Africans became
the subjects of their rule.