There has been a recent boom of scholarship on German colonialism. Indeed, the deep and far-reaching effects that this brief interlude has had on Germany’s national development and its important international reverberations are increasingly recognized as deserving of inquiry. With her book, Sara Pugach enriches this burgeoning field by tracing the history of Afrikanistik, or the “German discourse on African languages and cultures.” Starting with the field’s early nineteenth-century origins in the German missionary field, Pugach then moves over to discuss its gradual institutionalization as an academic discipline, during and after Germany’s short-lived colonial period (1881–1918), to finally shed light on Afrikanistik’s postcolonial legacies, particularly in relation to South African segregationist scholarship and policymaking, before and during Apartheid.

Africa in Translation maps the trajectory of Afrikanistik, arguing that although it did not have a strong impact on Germany’s brief colonial adventure and its concrete supporting policies, the German “translation” of African knowledge (of which languages were paramount) did nevertheless have crucial epistemological and practical implications. With the emergence of Afrikanistik, Pugach argues, language became the basis for making sense of Africa’s complex ethnic landscape, thus providing colonizers (among others) with a means to draw boundaries between groups that might earlier not have existed. By initiating and perpetuating a discourse that linked language, culture, and sometimes race, German Protestant missionaries, as colonial agents and knowledge producers, made it possible for Africa to be parceled out into distinct, easily definable categories that could then be hierarchically organized. Pugach’s meticulous archival research thus reinscribes the generally understated importance of the missionaries into the history of German colonialism.

Structurally, the book is organized around the chronological discussion of important moments and figures in the history of Afrikanistik. Chapter 1 examines the history of nineteenth-century German missionaries who initiated the transcription of African languages, while chapter 2 explores how the unification of Germany (1871) and its acquisition of an African empire (1893–1894) pushed Afrikanistik into more institutionalized directions. Chapters 3 through 5 revolve around Carl Meinhof (1857–1944), a linguist whose ideas on language and ethnicity not only dominated his field, but also eventually came to determine how African groups were classified. In chapter 6, Pugach offers a powerful contrast to Meinhof’s unparalleled influence on Afrikanistik by focusing on the role that African teaching assistants had on the development of the field, thus contributing to the historical reappraisal of these obliterated figures. Chapter 7 examines Afrikanistik’s postcolonial life, mainly in Germany and South Africa.

As is to be expected from a book published as part of a German studies series (Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany), Pugach’s book is firmly grounded in and in constant dialogue with German historical developments and discourses. However, the relatively prominent use of Germanisms, many of which are not defined or contextualized (or are presented in a manner that is unfortunately not synchronized with their first appearance in the book), and the absence of visual aids (e.g., maps, charts) make the book less palatable to a non-Germanist audience. Nevertheless, Pugach’s focus on the lesser-known effects of German colonialism on the production of knowledge about Africa does provide invaluable insights to postcolonial studies scholars. For instance, the book extends the work that scholars such as Gauri Viswanathan,Footnote ¹ Bernard Cohn,Footnote ² Thomas Trautmann,Footnote ³ and Arvind-Pal S. MandairFootnote ⁴ have accomplished on the more researched context of (post)colonial India. Pugach’s examination of the epistemological implications of Afrikanistik for both Germany and Africa also offers a renewed standpoint from which to appreciate such seminal works as Valentin Yves Mudimbe’s The Invention of Africa (1988), Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), and so on. One limitation of this book certainly derives from a title that foregrounds “translation” more prominently than its content actually does. The concept of “translation” is, for the most part, lightly deployed in the book and it seems to acquire overall little productive relevance—a notable exception being chapter 6. Pugach’s notion of “translation” functions as an under-theorized trope to connote the (no-less-significant) process of collection, codification, and transposition of African knowledge into useful and readily legible information to German missionaries, scholars, and colonial administrators. Overall, despite a seemingly ill-chosen title, the book remains a must for anyone interested in the history of German colonialism and in the genealogy of (colonial) discourses on Africa.