Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book illustrates the complexity of Raabe's critique of colonialism in Stopfkuchen by analysing the perspectivism of the narrative, which sets different relationships of power and dominance within the colonizing society against one another. It explores Raabe's sustained interest in Dutch colonialism, which first emerges in his historical novellas Die schwarte Galeere (i860) and Sankt Thomas, continues in his novels Meister Autor and Fabian und Sebastian (1882), and resurfaces in the narrator's German-Boer family in Stopfkuchen. The book places Raabe's representations of America in context by discussing his novels Die Leute aus dem Walde and Alte Nester in a comparative reading with Friedrich Spielhagen's Deutsche Pioniere (1870) and Theodor Fontane's Quitt (1891). It analyses another of Raabe's historical narratives from the Seven Years War, the novella Die Innerste (1876), as an example of how Raabe presents history as a history of resonant violence.