Dr Robbie Aitken

I am a Reader in Imperial History with particular interests in Black German History and German imperialism. More specifically my work considers the development of a Black Diaspora in Germany pre-1960. I also work on the historical creation of racial categories in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa.

African Diaspora in Germany/Europe

German and European colonialism

Constructions of race and conceptions of
blackness and whiteness

Modern German and European history

Department of Humanities

Social Sciences and Humanities

Black Germany, 1884-1960

British Trading Firms in colonial Cameroon

History 

BA History, MRes History

Level 4:

• Empires and Encounters

Level 5:

• Race: Difference and Power in the Modern World
• Eastern Europe, 1945-1989
• Germany, 1890-1933 From Reich to Republic

Level 6:

• Citizenship, Race and Violence: Germans and Africans in Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters
• History Dissertation

MRes:

• Research Training Methods

• Humanities Research Centre

Black Germany, 1884-1960

British Trading Firms in colonial Cameroon

Young Scholars Network, Black Diaspora and Germany, University of Münster

Black Germany Exhibition with Destination Arts

A list of publications is available from the institutional repository, SHURA

‘Blacks in Germany’, in Encyclopedia of Blacks in European Civilization, ed. Eric Martone (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, December 2008), pp. 240-43.

‘Wilhelm Munumé und Peter Mukuri Makembe’, with Eve Rosenhaft, in Unbekannte Biographien. Afrikaner im deutschsprachigen Raum vom 18. JH bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Ulrich van der Heyden (Berlin: Kai Homilius, 2008), pp. 157-65.

‘Martin Dibobe’, with Eve Rosenhaft, in Unbekannte Biographien. Afrikaner im deutschsprachigen Raum vom 18. JH bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Ulrich van der Heyden (Berlin: Kai Homilius, 2008), pp. 167-77.

‘“König der Abenteurer”: Joseph Soppo Muange’, with Eve Rosenhaft, in Unbekannte Biographien. Afrikaner im deutschsprachigen Raum vom 18. JH bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Ulrich van der Heyden (Berlin: Kai Homilius, 2008), pp. 179-87.

‘Introduction’, with Eve Rosenhaft, in Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century, eds. Eve Rosenhaft and Robbie Aitken, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 1-16.

‘The Enemy Within, Gradations of Whiteness in German Southwest Africa’, in Basler Afrika Bibliographien Working Papers, 4 (2005), p. 1-12.

‘Politik und Performance. Deutsch-Afrikaner in Berlin der 20er und 30er Jahre’, with Eve Rosenhaft, in “Macht und Anteil an der Weltherrschaft”. Berlin und der deutsche Kolonialismus, eds. Ulrich van der Heyden and Joachim Zeller (Münster: Unrast-Verlag, 2005), pp. 270-76.

Exclusion and Inclusion: Gradations of Whiteness and Socio-Economic Engineering in German Southwest Africa 1884-1914 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007).

‘Looking for Die Besten Boeren: The Normalisation of Afrikaner Settlement in German South West Africa, 1884-1914’, in Journal of Southern African Studies, 33/2 (2007), pp. 343-60.

4 postgraduate students

Robbie's research focuses on the historical creation of racial categories in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa. He is currently completing a large-scale investigation into Germany’s African Diaspora and this project focuses in particular on survival strategies, political and social networks, and identity construction. He is a member of the Humanities Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam.