Lines in the sand: Railways and the archipelago of colonial territorialization in German Southwest Africa, 1897–1914

Abstract

Between 1897 and 1914, colonizers constructed a railway network in German Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia) that enabled colonial territorialization. This article proposes that after genocidal warfare had destroyed indigenous territoriality, colonial microspaces or heterotopias were created on and along railway lines at stations, on trains, and in railway labour relationships. These miniature orders signified civilization, permanence and the reproduction of the colonial order. Colonizers mobilized African labour through violence and coercion to make these spaces profitable and structured microspaces along gendered and racialized lines. Railways as an infrastructure then allowed such orders to spread along the lines as cities, farms and zones of mineral extraction were created. All of these orders, however, could be contested by human and environmental actors who destabilized meaning and control. Together, the colonial heterotopias formed an archipelago of territoriality. Where settler pressure, capital investment and labour regimes aligned, space was divided into manageable pieces to make it productive. In sum, the article offers a model of colonial territorialization through replication along infrastructure. As such, the article contributes to scholarship on boundary spaces and imperial frontiers, suggesting that territoriality was achieved, stabilized and expanded through miniature orders.