Magic, Medicine and Invulnerability in the Boxer Uprising and the Majimaji War: A Comparative Discourse Analysis of German Missionary Writings on Anticolonial Resistance Movements, 1897–1907

When studying the Boxer Uprising in Northern China in 1900 as well as the Majimaji War in German East Africa between 1905 and 1907, some notable similarities between them come to attention. Both have seen involvement by the German Empire, and both conflicts have until today been characterized by the supposed superstitious rites that involved varying degrees of medicinal use and invulnerability rituals by members of those anti-colonial resistance movements. These portrayals, while not necessarily incorrect, uncritically repeat discourses that were historically developed by western actors like missionaries, military personnel or journalists on the ground. I show how the narratives of local missionaries create a distinction between the good Christian colonialist “self” and a superstitious, barbaric resisting “other” to aid violent repression of these movements, as well as support colonial narratives and the “civilizing mission” in general. I compare writings of the German Catholic Steyler Missionary Society in China, mainly its newspaper “Stadt Gottes” and those of the Lutheran Berlin Mission Society in East Africa in the “Berliner Missions-Berichte” to shed a light on how these processes played out discursively and were publicized to a wider readership in the colonial metropole.