Jenseits von Soliman: Afrikanische Migration und Communitybuilding in Österreich—Eine Geschichte by Walter Sauer (review)

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• Jenseits von Soliman: Afrikanische Migration und Communitybuilding in Österreich—Eine Geschichte by Walter Sauer
• Tim Corbett

Walter Sauer, Jenseits von Soliman: Afrikanische Migration und Communitybuilding in Österreich—Eine Geschichte. Mit einem Beitrag von Vanessa Spanbauer. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2022. 272 pp.

June 4, 2020, was a watershed moment in recent Austrian history, as an estimated fifty thousand Viennese citizens of all backgrounds took to the streets to demonstrate against racism under the banner of the "Black Lives Matter" movement. Walter Sauer's new monograph, Jenseits von Soliman, is thus a timely contribution. Commissioned by the Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Wien, it offers a comprehensive overview of the history of people of African descent in the territory of present-day Austria, thereby making a substantial contribution to increasing the visibility of black histories in Austria and integrating them into mainstream historiography.

Sauer's work is remarkable for both its thoroughness and its brevity. While the author manages to cover the topic in remarkable detail in only two hundred pages of analysis, the fifty-page bibliography attests to the profound depth of his research on the topic in both its theoretical and empirical dimensions—notably, this is not his first venture into the field, as Sauer already made a name for himself as a pioneer in the study of Austrian colonialism and black Austrian history beginning in the 1990s. His findings will presumably strike most readers as nothing short of astounding, beginning with the fact that the first people of African descent to make their way to the present-day territory of Austria did so already in the era of classical antiquity. They moreover did not come as slaves, servants, or otherwise "racially" subjugated individuals but as elite soldiers of the Roman Empire, tasked, ironically, with defending the imperial borderlands against invaders who in modern terms would be classified as "white."

Indeed, Sauer's account of black history in Austria proceeds from the [End Page 133] insightful premise—echoing the views of black scholars in Europe and Africa—that present-day discourses on global black histories are problematically dominated by African American narratives, which do not necessarily or readily translate to other contexts. This premise is distinctly borne out in the analysis of black histories in Austria from antiquity to the present day that follow. This point is especially pertinent for US readers in Austrian studies, who are thereby exhorted to reappraise their assumptions about the appertaining debates and to receive this in many respects Austria-specific history with fresh eyes.

The work is divided into seven chronologically arranged chapters plus a theoretical introduction. Sauer begins by emphasizing the constructed nature and mutability of conceptions of "races" and "racisms" in modern European history, leading to the critical conclusion that racism is not an intractable evil but an utterly modern, inculcated prejudice that can therefore be deconstructed and unlearned. By reference to Adorno and Horkheimer, Sauer reflects on the inherent paradox, familiar already from debates about the Holocaust, that the general historical development in modern Europe toward democratization, enfranchisement, and the elaboration of human rights went hand in hand with the birth of biological racism and, consequently, with unprecedented projects of collective violence and oppression such as slavery, colonialism, and genocide. This paradox presents a challenge in the present day concerning how to redress historically conditioned asymmetries and ensure that all people share in the benefits originally promised by the Enlightenment projects of liberty and enfranchisement.

One of the most important takeaways from this dense and impressive piece of scholarship is that mobility between Europe and Africa (as well as the Middle East) used to be reciprocal, with group-based conflicts (where they did occur) deriving rather from dynastic loyalties or religious doctrine than any physical characteristic like skin color (which has itself never been an objectively definable characteristic, as Sauer also shows).

This only changed gradually in the context of early modern European expansionism overseas, in which Austria readily participated, with "races" and "racisms," it bears repeating, being of remarkably recent provenance when viewed against the longue durée of European (and global) history. The gradual construction of "racialized" classifications of human beings in modernity explains why, for example...