What did geographers do on expeditions in the German colonies? How did they cope with everyday life and research routines there? Who supported them logistically and financially, and how did they develop objective factual claims from observations and measurements? For the first time, geographer and historian Carsten Gräbel presents a critical and multifaceted panorama of geographical colonial research. He demonstrates that the colonies were a topographical space for geographers to traverse, map, and explore according to the rules of geographical science—while also being a future space charged with political emotions and economic expectations.