Abstract

The dowsing debate in Imperial Germany and its role in the solution to the ‘water question’ in German Southwest Africa is a window on the three principal themes of this article: environmental challenges, imperial fantasies and the fluidity of epistemologies. First, the water question, as contemporaries termed it, was a significant concern in German Southwest Africa, and discussions of divination illustrate its centrality in the development of Germany’s first and only settler colony. Secondly, the main protagonist, district administrator and dowser Rafael Perfecto von Uslar, and his role in the search for water sources in German Southwest Africa capture the limits of German colonial control. Von Uslar stepped into a vacuum created by German ethnocentrism and its dismissive colonial gaze. Finally, the resurgence of divination, a folk tradition many believed existed only outside the sciences, blurred the line between objective scientific knowledge and superstition within the German Empire—all the while silencing local African expertise.

中文翻译：

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疑问辩论：德国西南非洲的水，科学与殖民主义*

摘要

德意志帝国的预言辩论及其在解决德国西南非洲“水问题”中的作用是探讨本文三个主要主题的窗口：环境挑战，帝国幻想和认识论的流动性。首先，当代人所说的水问题是德国西南非洲的一个重大问题，而占卜问题的讨论说明了其在德国第一个也是唯一的定居者殖民地发展中的核心地位。其次，主要人物，地区行政长官和投稿人拉斐尔·普雷菲托·冯·乌斯拉尔（Rafael Perfecto von Uslar），以及他在德国西南非洲寻找水源的作用，抓住了德国殖民控制的局限。冯·乌斯拉尔（Von Uslar）陷入了由德国种族中心主义及其不屑一顾的殖民凝视所造成的真空。最后，占卜的复兴，