The stakes of empire: Colonial fantasies, civilizing agendas, and biopolitics in the Prussian-Polish provinces (1840-1914)

The dissertation, "The Stakes of Empire: Colonial Fantasies, Civilizing Agendas, and Biopolitics in the Prussian-Polish Provinces (1840--1914)," is a comparative and transnational analysis of the discourses and practices that the German empire used to map out, describe, and regulate Polish-speaking citizens in Imperial Germany. It studies the cultural and biological definitions of Polish subjects not only through the scientific works of Germans and Poles in Central Europe, but also through their experiences with colonial projects in German Africa. Inspired by the works of postcolonial and imperial studies on subjectivity, I study multiple levels of subject positioning, nested imperial and colonial relations, and constructions of national/colonial cartographies using sources that range from medical texts and state documents to travel literature. I argue that many ideological elements informing power relations and cultural practices in distant colonies also applied to the Prussian-Polish provinces, especially when considering the politics of the state regulating populations and epidemic diseases in the borderlands. Poles were often portrayed in the German empire as internal others who shared characteristics with the colonized and required similar strategies of control.;In addition to providing a historical context for the health conditions of the Prussian-Polish provinces, the dissertation analyzes the complicated process by which these territories became stigmatized as disease-stricken places. I show this transformation by studying debates about cholera and typhus epidemics in the region. The project also examines the different Polish scientific organizations that were founded not only as a "self-help" strategy used to confront diseases, but also as a method to counter the Germanizing projects and the leading medical discourses about the region. The close analysis of Polish writings from this period demonstrates that Polish-speaking citizens under the German empire were not passive receptors of state policies and discourses, but they were actively challenging these conceptions by calling into question imperial civilizing agendas and developing at the same time their own civilizing and colonial fantasies. By studying these medical and political debates, the dissertation uncovers novel ways to connect medicine, scientific expeditions, and colonial agendas.