ABSTRACT
Following the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was compelled to forfeit its colonies to the victorious powers. This sanction aimed at fulfilling ‘Europe’s urgent need of a pacified and a pacific Germany’ by weakening the defeated country militarily, economically and politically (Schnee). However, in an attempt at recovery, Germany, whose scientific contributions were acknowledged in the African colonies before the outbreak of World War I, continued to impact the geopolitical situation through significant scientific explorations, and by influencing intellectually and culturally the Asia-Pacific region. Focusing on accounts of Japan by the German documentarian Clärenore Stinnes (1901–90) and the British palaeobotanist Marie Stopes (1880–1958), this chapter demonstrates how Germany and Great Britain competed against one another to form an alliance with Japan and to gain greater power in Asia. By comparing these authors’ travel writings, the chapter illustrates how the colonial discourses framed Japan and its inhabitants as an exotic or an erotic other. Although both nations were eager to have Japan as an ally, they still regarded it as a curiosity, often expressing nostalgia for the past through the sentimental contemplation of Japanese culture, hence further emphasizing the dichotomy between the West and the East. The chapter also shows how scientific explorations became a new vector of colonization, a means of expanding the European state apparatus across waters.
