“Press the thumb onto the eye”: Moral Effect, Extreme Violence, and the Transimperial Notions of British, German, and Dutch Colonial Warfare, ca. 1890–1914

Abstract Historiography on the extreme violence of fin de siècle colonial wars has often remained nationally fragmented or actively invested in theories of national exceptionality. Focusing on the British, German and Dutch empires, this article seeks to understand the extreme violence as a transimperial phenomenon and asks how we can conceptualise and give empirical substance to this transimperial dimension. First, I give some indication of the degree of transimperial connectivity in the field of colonial warfare, highlighting how intensive mutual imperial observation and the individual mobili... Mehr ...