Slaps in the face, kicks, beatings, and other forms of run-of-the-mill violence were a quotidian part of life in German Southwest Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unearthing this culture of normalized violence in a settler colony, Violence as Usual uncovers the workings of a powerful state that was built in an improvised fashion by low-level state representatives.

Marie A. Muschalek's fascinating portrayal of the daily deeds of African and German men enrolled in the colonial police force called the Landespolizei is a historical anthropology of police practice and the normalization of imperial power. Replete with anecdotes of everyday experiences both of the policemen and of colonized people and settlers, Violence as Usual re-examines fundamental questions about the relationship between power and violence. Muschalek gives us a new perspective on violence beyond the solely destructive and the instrumental. She overcomes, too, the notion that modern states operate exclusively according to modes of rationalized functionality. Violence as Usual offers an unusual assessment of the history of rule in settler colonialism and an alternative to dominant narratives of an ostensibly weak colonial state.

Marie A. Muschalek is Lecturer and Researcher in History at the University of Freiburg. She is co-founder of a public history project on German's colonial past, which can be viewed online at kolonialismusimkasten.de.

As a piece of historical research and writing, this book is a jewel. It is both historically rigorous and thoughtfully encompasses the perspectival issues which African history needs to engage in the twenty-first century.

Violence as Usual is packed with illuminating information on the societies of the Herero, the Nama, and the German settlers themselves. Moreover, the book lays the groundwork for future studies.

[T]his is a timely book that offers a fine-grained and theoretically rich analysis of police violence in an imperial setting.

Violence as Usual offers an important contribution to the role of localized violence and the evolution of the colonial state in German Southwest Africa... Marie Muschalek provides a compelling narrative that will hopefully inspire more scholarship on local actors and their role in Germany's global empire.

J.P. Short, author of Magic Lantern Empire:

Marie Muschalek ingeniously exposes the rough grain of colonial everyday life with a spare, concentrated empiricism energized by innovative theoretical reflection. Looking at the diffused power of routine police violence in the post-genocide colony, she recasts thinking on big questions about the colonial state and colonial violence in Namibia and beyond. The compelling method, ambitious archive and strong interpretive sensibility make this a significant contribution.

Matthew P. Fitzpatrick, Flinders University, author of Liberal Imperialism in Germany:

Violence as Usual greatly expands our understanding of colonial relations on the frontier—a well-crafted work of history.