Advertising empire
Subtitle: race and visual culture in imperial Germany
By: David Ciarlo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 419
ISBN-13: 9780674050068
Description: At the end of the nineteenth century, Germany turned toward colonialism, establishing protectorates in Africa, and toward a mass consumer society, mapping the meaning of commodities through advertising. These developments, distinct in the world of political economy, were intertwined in the world of visual culture.

David Ciarlo offers an innovative visual history of each of these transformations. Tracing commercial imagery across different products and media, Ciarlo shows how and why the "African native" had emerged by 1900 to become a familiar figure in the German landscape, selling everything from soap to shirts to coffee. The racialization of black figures, first associated with the American minstrel shows that toured Germany, found ever greater purchase in German advertising up to and after 1905, when Germany waged war against the Herero in Southwest Africa. The new reach of advertising not only expanded the domestic audience for German colonialism, but transformed colonialism's political and cultural meaning as well as, by infusing it with a simplified racial cast.

The visual realm shaped the world view of the colonial rulers, illuminated the importance of commodities and, in the process, drew a path to German modernity. The powerful vision of racial difference at the core of this modernity would have profound consequences for the future. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Exotic panoramas, local color : commercial exhibitions and colonial expositions; title: Embodied lands : allegorical cliches and popular savagery; title: Masters of the modern exotic; title: Packaged exoticism and colonial rule : commercial visuality at the fin de siecle; title: Featuring race : the roots of racialization leading to 1900; title: Racial imperium.