Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T16:48:12.643Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Their debts follow them into the afterlife”: German Settlers, Ethnographic Knowledge, and the Forging of Coffee Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Guatemala

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2020

Julie Gibbings
Julie Gibbings*
Affiliation:
History, Classics, and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
*
Julie.Gibbings@ed.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

German coffee planters in nineteenth-century Alta Verapaz, Guatemala were also ethnographers, archaeologists, and geographers who published their works in Germany, the United States, and Guatemala. Their published works, as well as coffee plantation records, government correspondence, judicial records and other archival materials reveal how German coffee planters-cum-ethnographers drew upon ethnographic knowledge and representations to forge a reliable labor force. Like ethnographers in Britain's colonies, German settlers in Alta Verapaz understood the potential symmetry between ethnography and the governance of indigenous peoples. Their ethnographic knowledges also push us to reconsider distinctions drawn between German cosmopolitan ethnographic traditions and British functionalist ones and demonstrate how ethnographic knowledge and cultural difference could be deployed to forge new kinds of racial capitalism. In Guatemala, the intimate relationship between the rise of capitalism and ethnography shaped the anti-communism of mid-twentieth-century anthropology in the region.

Keywords

history of ethnographyGerman diasporacapitalismcoffeecolonyQ'eqchi'sAlta VerapazGuatemala
Type
Expedient Ethnography
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , April 2020 , pp. 389 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alemán Bolaños, Gustavo. 1946. Vida agrícola de Guatemala: Los grandes fincas, las buenas fincas, 2a parte. Guatemala: Editorial Hispania.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 1973. Anthropology & the Colonial Encounter. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Asturias, Miguel Ángel. 1923. Sociología guatemalteca: El problema social del indio. PhD diss, Universidad de Nacional de Guatemala.Google Scholar
Berth, Christiane. 2014. Biographien und Netzwerke im Kaffeehandel zwischen Deutschland und Zentralamerika, 1920–1959. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press.Google Scholar
Buschmann, Rainer F. 2009. Anthropology's Global Histories: The Ethnographic Frontier in German New Guinea, 1870–1935. Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press.Google Scholar
Casaús Arzú, Marta Elena. 2005. La Generación del 20 en Guatemala y sus imaginarios de nación (1920–1940). In Casaús Arzú, Marta Elena and Giráldez, Teresa García, eds., Las redes intelectuales Centroamericanas: Un siglo de imaginarios nacionales (1820–1920). Guatemala: F&G Editores.Google Scholar
Casaús Arzú, Marta Elena. 2009. El binomio degeneración-gegeneración en las corrientes positivistas y racialistas de principios del siglo XX: de la eugenesia al exterminio del indio en la generación de 1920 en Guatemala. Mesoamérica 30, 51: 1–27.Google Scholar
Censo de la Republica de Guatemala: Segunda Parte. 1924. Guatemala: Tipografía Nacional.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2001. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chibber, Vivek. 2013. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. London: Verso Books.Google Scholar
Conrad, Sebastian. 2013. Rethinking German Colonialism in a Global Age. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 41, 4: 543–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1896. We waren die Tolkteken? Sonder-Abdruck aus der Bastian-Festrscrift. Berlin: n.p., 415–18.Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1906. Exracto del libro antiguo que conserva la cofradia de Carcha. Internationaler Amerikanisten-Kongress. Verivehnte Tagung, Stuttgart, 1904. Stuttgart: n.p., 399–402.Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1908. Der Kaffeebaum: Praktische Erfahrungen über seine Behandlung im nördlichen Guatemala. Berlin: Verlag Hermann Paetel.Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1926. El Tzultacá y el Mam, los dioses prominentes de la religion Maya. Anales de la Sociedad de Geografía e Historia 2, 4: 378–86.Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1928a. Religión y Arte de los Mayas. Anales de la Sociedad de Geografía e Historia 5, 1: 66–85.Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1928b. Religión y Arte de los Mayas (Continuación). Anales de la Sociedad de Geografía e Historía 5, 2: 184–203.Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1929. Religión y Arte de los Mayas (Conclusión). Anales de la Sociedad de Geografía e Historía 5, 4: 443–44.Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1932. A Kekchí Will of 1583. Maya Society Quarterly 1, 2: 65–68.Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1933. Kunst und Religion der Mayavölker. Vol. 3. Berlin: n.p. (vols. 1 and 2 were published in 1926 and 1931, respectively, in Hamburg).Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1936. La Arqueología de la Alta Verapaz y los Problemas de los Estudios Mayas. Academia Sociedad de Geografia e Historia de Guatemala 13: 183–91.Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1940. Las plantas medicinales del Departmento de Alta Verapaz Guatemala: Tipografia Nacional.Google Scholar
Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 2002. “Cartas de E. P. Dieseldorff a su madre, 1888–1890.” Dated 4 Feb. 1889. Regina Wagner, trans. Anales de la Academia de Geographía e Historia de Guatemala 77: 101.Google Scholar
Floyd Casey, David. 1979. Indigenismo: The Guatemalan Experience. PhD diss., University of Kansas.Google Scholar
Gibbings, Julie A. 2012. Another Race More Worthy of the Present: History, Race, and Nation in Alta Verapaz Guatemala, c. 1860s–1940s. PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison.Google Scholar
Gibbings, Julie A. 2016a. Mestizaje in the Age of Fascism: German and Q'eqchi’-Maya Interracial Unions in Alta Verapaz Guatemala. German History 34, 2: 214–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbings, Julie A. 2016b. ‘The Shadow of Slavery’: Historical Time, Labor, and Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Hispanic American Historical Review 96, 1: 73–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbings, Julie A. n.d. Our Time Is Now: Race and Modernity in Postcolonial Guatemala. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (in press, for July 2020).Google Scholar
Gluck, Carol. 2011. The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now. American Historical Review 116, 3676–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
González-Izás, Matilde. 2014. Modernización capitalista, racismo y violencia: Guatemala (1750–1930). Mexico: Colegio de Mexico.Google Scholar
González Ponciano, Jorge Ramón. 2020. The ‘Indigenous Problem,’ Cold War U.S. Anthropology and Revolutionary Nationalism: New Approaches to Racial Thinking and Indigeneity in Guatemala. In Gibbings, Julie and Vrana, Heather, eds., Out from the Shadow: Revisiting the Revolution from Post-Peace Guatemala. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Grandin, Greg. 2011. The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom and Stepputat, Finn, eds. 2005. Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Charles Houston and Sadler, Louis R.. 2003. The Archaeologist Was a Spy: Sylvanus G. Morley and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Holub, Robert C. 1998. Nietzsche's Colonialist Imagination: Nueva Germania, Good Europeanism, and Great Politics. In Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, Lennox, Sara, and Zantop, Susanne, eds., The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, Lynn. 1992. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kahn, Hilary E. 2010. Seeing and Being Seen: The Q'eqchi’ Maya of Livingston, Guatemala, and Beyond. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
King, Arden. 1974. Coban and the Verapaz: History and Cultural Process in Northern Guatemala. New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute.Google Scholar
Kistler, Ashley. 2010. Discovering Aj Pop B'atz’: Collaborative Ethnography and the Exploration of Q'eqchi’ Personhood. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 15, 2: 411–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuper, Adam. 1975. Anthropologists and Anthropology: The British School, 1922–1972. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Manz, Stefan. 2014. Constructing a German Diaspora: The ‘Greater German Empire,’1871–1914. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marchand, Suzanne L. 2010. German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McCreery, David. 1994. Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Michaud, Jean. 2007. ‘Incidental’ Ethnographers: French Catholic Missions on the Tonkin-Yunnan Frontier, 1880–1930. London: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mumford, Jeremy Ravi. 2012. Vertical Empire: The General Resettlement of Indians in the Colonial Andes. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Náñez Falcón, Guillermo. 1970. Erwin Paul Dieseldorff, German Entrepreneur in the Alta Verapaz of Guatemala, 1889–1937. PhD diss., Department of History, Tulane University.Google Scholar
Naranch, Bradley D. 2002. Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche: Emigration, Colonial Fantasy, and German National Identity. In Ames, Eric, Klotz, Marcia, and Wildenthal, Lora, eds., Germany's Colonial Pasts. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Pels, Peter and Salemink, Oscar. 1994. Introduction: Five Theses on Ethnography as Colonial Practice. History and Anthropology 8, 1–4: 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pels, Peter and Salemink, Oscar. 1999. Introduction: Locating the Colonial Subjects of Anthropology. In Pels, P. and Salemink, O., eds., Colonial Subjects: Essays on the Practical History of Anthropology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penny, H. Glenn. 2002. Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Penny, H. Glenn. 2006. Elusive Authenticity: The Quest for the Authentic Indian in German Public Culture. Comparative Studies in Society and History 48, 4: 789–819.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penny, H. Glenn. 2017. From Migrant Knowledge to Fugitive Knowledge? Geschichte und Gesellschaft 43, 3: 381–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penny, H. Glenn and Bunzl, Matti, eds. 2003. Worldly Provincialism: German Anthropology in the Age of Empire. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penny, H. Glenn and Rinke, Stefan 2015. Germans Abroad: Respatializing Historical Narrative. Geschichte & Gesellschaft 41: 173–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ricardo, Terga. 1991. Almas gemelas: un estudio de la inserción Alemana en las Verapaces y la consecuente relación entre los Alemanes y los K'ekchies. Coban: Imprenta y Tipografia “El Norte.”Google Scholar
Rossignon, Julio. 1861. Porvenir de la Verapaz en la república de Guatemala. Memoria dedicada al Consulado de Comercio de Guatemala. Guatemala: Imprenta de Luna.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. 2014. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Sapper, David E. 1926. Costumbres y creencias religiosas de los indios Queckchi. Academia Sociedad de Geografia e Historia de Guatemala 2, 2: 189.Google Scholar
Sapper, David E. 1952. Unpublished memoir. Mar. (Copy provided by Regina Wagner.)Google Scholar
Sapper, Karl. 1891. Die Sozilae Setllung der Indianer in der Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Petermans Mitteilungen 37: 44–66.Google Scholar
Sapper, Karl. 1895. Verapaz in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Contribution to the Historical Geography and Ethnography of Northeastern Guatemala. Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, University of California.Google Scholar
Sapper, Karl. 1897. Das Nördliche Mittel-Amerika: Reisen und Studien aus den Jahren 1888–1895. Braunschweig: Druck und Verlag.Google Scholar
Sapper, Karl. 1901. Die Alta Verapaz (Guatemala): Eine Landeskundliche Skizze Mit Fünf Originalkarten. Mittheilungen Der Geographischen Gesellschaft in Hamburg 61: 78–224.Google Scholar
Sapper, Karl. 1928. La Población Autóctona de América Central. Anales de la Sociedad de Geografia e Historia 4, 4: 334–43.Google Scholar
Sapper, Karl. 1936. Fray Bartolomé de las Casas und die Verapaz (Nordost-Guatemala). Baessler-Archiv: 107.Google Scholar
Sapper, Karl. 1941. Der Wirtschaftsgeist und die Arbeitsleistungen tropischer Kolonialvölker. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag.Google Scholar
Sapper, Karl. 2000. Religious Customs and Beliefs of the Q'eqchi’ Indians. In Beaudry-Corbett, Maryilyn and Hardy, E. T., eds., Early Scholars’ Visits to Central America: Reports by Karl Sapper, Walter Kehmann, and Franz Termer. Guman, Theodore E., trans. Costen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Occasional Paper 18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Woodruff D. 1991. Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, 1840–1920. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Woodruff D. 2005. Colonialism and the Culture of Respectability. In Ames, Eric, Klotz, Marcia, and Wildenthal, Lora, eds., Germany's Colonial Pasts. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, George. 2007. The Devil's Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinmetz, George. 2017. Sociology and Colonialism in the British and French Empires, 1945–1965. Journal of Modern History 89, 3: 601–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stocking, George W. 1984. Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Stocking, George W. 1991a. Maclay, Kubary, Malinowski: Archetypes from the Dreamtime of Anthropology. In Stocking, George, ed., Colonial Situations: Essays on the Contextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Stocking, George W., ed. 1991b. Colonial Situations: Essays on the Contextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Stocking, George W, ed. 1996. Volksgeist as Method and Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition. Vol. 8. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura. 2002. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura. n.d. Colony. Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon. At: http://www.politicalconcepts.org/issue1/colony/ (last accessed 25 Dec.2019).Google Scholar
Sullivan, Paul R. 1991. Unfinished Conversations: Mayas and Foreigners between Two Wars. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Termer, Franz. 1957. Etnologia y ethnografia en Guatemala. Schaeffer, Ernesto and Mendoza, Alicia, trans. Guatemala: Ministerio de Educación Pública.Google Scholar
Vermeulen, Han F. 2015. Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Gleich, Albert. 1968. Germany and Latin America, Memorandum RM-5523-RC. Santa Monica: Rand Corporation.Google Scholar
Wagner, Regina. 2001. Historia del café de Guatemala. Bogotá: Villegas Editores.Google Scholar
Wolf, Eric R. and Jorgensen, Joseph G.. 1970. Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand. New York Review of Books 15, 9 (19 Nov.): https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1970/11/19/a-special-supplement-anthropology-on-the-warpath-i/ (last accessed 10 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Zantop, Susanne. 1997. Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar