The Ambiguous Racial Gaze: Jews and the German Colonization in China

In this article I investigate Jews’ conceptualization of German colonial expansion into China and their attitudes toward the colonized population. The ambivalent postures of Jews toward the Chinese rebels reflects the complexity of Jewish identity formation. While Jews were disturbed by the 1904 massacre of the population in southwest Africa, the dominant tone was one of racial arrogance. A similar sense of racial superiority was evident among German Jews toward the Chinese people. Jews depicted them as anti-cultural people who behave like the “cannibals in Africa.” At the same time, Jews called attention to their own similarities with the Chinese and they supported their cause. As a people under attack by Germans because of their “racial traits,” the Chinese won Jews’ empathy; they were different “Others.” I conclude that Jews’ attitude toward the colonized people brought them to cross the Germanness-Jewishness duality and rendered their identity in the colonial age as more hybrid.