The Practical Imperialist: Letters from a Danish Planter 1888 - 1906

The book provides a rare opportunity to follow the daily life on and around plantations and towns in the first years of the German colonial presence in East Africa, as seen through the eyes of a Danish master farmer working for the German East Africa Company. There are few memoirs and personal letters from these years. moreover they are primarily by explorers, colonial officers, missionaries or the occasional settler. Lautherborn's letters provide one of the very few entry points into the daily business of colonial expansion and consolidation in the early years of German East Africa as seen through the eyes of a practical man trying to do a job in a complex and changing world.