German South West Africa Research Articles

Airpower in the Union of South Africa's First World War campaign in German South West Africa

CITATION: Garcia, A. 2017. Airpower in the Union of South Africa's First World War campaign in German South West Africa. Historia, 62(2):1-26, doi:10.17159/2309-8392/2017/v62n2a1.

Sex and Control: Venereal Disease, Colonial Physicians, and Indigenous Agency in German Colonialism, 1884–1914 by Daniel J. Walther

Reviewed by: Sex and Control: Venereal Disease, Colonial Physicians, and Indigenous Agency in German Colonialism, 1884–1914 by Daniel J. Walther Martin Kalb Sex and Control: Venereal Disease, Colonial Physicians, and Indigenous Agency in German Colonialism, 1884–1914. By Daniel J. Walther. New York: Berghahn, 2015. Pp. x + 135. Cloth $80.00. ISBN 978-1782385912. The title, focus, and overall objectives of Daniel J. Walther's monograph are intriguing. According to the author, he "takes a biopolitical and comparative approach" (2) when discussing venereal disease, colonial physicians, and indigenous agency in Germany's overseas colonies in Africa, the Pacific, and China from 1884 to 1914. Walther uses "the lens of discourses surrounding health" (2) throughout his analysis, as he aims to expose the disciplinary measures and mechanisms of social control put forward by health professionals. Walther begins by shedding new light onto complex interactions between male sexuality, prostitution, and venereal disease. He discusses a recorded rise in prostitution and venereal disease in the late nineteenth century based on numerous statistics [End Page 428] from that era. The author acknowledges "contemporary criticisms of the statistics" (13) early on in his study and rightfully mentions the need to contextualize such data as moral statistics. In fact, a rise in prostitution and venereal diseases, imagined or real, ultimately became a way to highlight the moral decline of German society overall, a dynamic also apparent in other historical contexts. Walther then explores "male colonial sexuality" (24) in more detail, indicating how "white males often turned to indigenous women for sexual gratification" (25). He concludes that the arrival of Germans in the colonies meant the growth of prostitution, which led to the spread of venereal diseases and ultimately resulted in a call for more medical intervention and stricter disciplinary measures. The author then explores "Venereal Disease in the Colonial Context" (51) of the German empire, including the threat of such illnesses for German colonial authorities more directly. For instance, "venereal diseases reduced the fighting capacity of regular and colonial (both indigenous and German) military forces" (53) during rebellions against German colonial authorities in East and Southwest Africa. As a result, colonial doctors began "assessing the threat statistically" (58), a step that helped collect, label, categorize, and ultimately control indigenous populations "both medically (as 'diseased' individuals) and racially (primarily as either 'European' or 'colored,' and hence as a group)" (73). This important point highlights the intricate nature of mechanisms of social control within colonialism. Walther lastly discusses ways German colonial authorities fought against venereal diseases in the colonies. He contends that German colonial medical staff had a similar training and background, which created a surprisingly coherent medical discourse detectable throughout the German empire. Walther goes on to analyze attempts to implement preventive measures before providing more details on "a disciplinary approach that necessitated more physically invasive and simultaneously punitive practices" (94). It included regular medical examinations of prostitutes and the regulation of bordellos; yet it also, in a way, applied to certain treatment methods. An assessment of these measures follows, as does a discussion of "perceived ongoing challenges" (121). Local colonial authorities addressed the latter with healthcare measures, like setting up a syphilis camp in German East Africa (123). A short conclusion makes broader claims, including that "in the metropole and in the colonies, physicians were agents of modernity" (132); Walther also compares these dynamics to British colonialism, for example, noting that "colonial physicians helped buttress and justify German rule oversea" (135), thus ultimately agreeing with Philippa Levine's assessment for parts of the British empire (Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 2003). This study raises intriguing questions about sex and social control within the colonial context, but it would benefit from the inclusion of more everyday voices. The author nicely utilizes theoretical frameworks and makes some excellent connections and comparisons; he also hints at the benefits or advantages of illegality [End Page 429] (Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1977) for colonialism more broadly. At the same time, he falls short when focusing on the everyday person or when trying to directly question the work of those who concentrate "on male elites within society" (6). Historical records from German Southwest Africa are filled with autobiographical works, journals, oral...

Germans and the South Atlantic: Political, Economic, and Military Aspects in Historical Perspective, 1507-1915

ABSTRACT: Early sixteenth-century German geographers and mercenaries were well aware of the European economic and military expansion on both sides of the South Atlantic. The first part of this article traces the German knowledge production about this region based on maps and published eyewitness accounts. German visitors, whether for military, economic, or research purposes, were early on most attracted to the South American shores; southern Africa and the coast of Angola proved to be less hospitable. The following parts of this article outline the German attempts to settle permanently in the areas bordering the South Atlantic and to gain economic and political influence, culminating in the founding of the colony “German South West Africa” in 1884–1885. The final part shows how political aspirations and illusions of Germans in the region and the government in Berlin came to nothing with the outbreak of the First World War and the surrender of German colonial troops in July 1915. KEYWORDS: German history, South Atlantic, colonialism

Transcending Gender Roles, Crossing Racial and Political Boundaries: Agnes Hill’s Fight for her Inheritance in German Southwest Africa

ABSTRACTAgnes Hill, the unmarried daughter of a British landowner and farmer and his mixed-race wife, was living a ‘white’ farmer’s life in the colony German South West Africa. In 1908, she was suddenly classified as ‘native’, due to the enforcement of radical racial legislation in the German colony degrading the offspring of mixed-race people as ‘bastards’. The new classification would have had dire consequences for the whole family, especially in respect to their landownership. However, Agnes fought for her family, with the support of solicitors and – as a daughter of a British father coming from the Cape Colony – with the help of the British consul residing in the German colony. She finally succeeded in securing the estate for the family, even if she was an unmarried woman in a predominantly patriarchal settler society. Using mainly material from the court cases, the article traces Agnes Hill’s fight for the Hill inheritance, thereby investigating various crucial issues of colonial societies. It points at the changing boundaries between ‘white’ and ‘non-white’ and the ambiguity of racial classifications. The article argues that women such as Agnes Hill could play a significant role in colonial settler societies and were able to transcend gender-role boundaries.

Linguistic Borderlands Exploring the Role of Language in Uwe Timm’sMorenga

This essay explores the link between language and power through the definition of political and personal borders exemplified in Uwe Timm’s novel Morenga, which depicts the Nama rebellion in German Southwest Africa. I investigate how the ideologies and atmosphere of this time are depicted with regard to the historical role of language in the German Colonial period, both in the submission and subjugation of the African language and dominance of the German language, and its role in the suppression of the native Nama and Herero people. I also explore the ways in which language is repeatedly part of a failed learning process in the novel, demonstrated by the inability to achieve inter-cultural understanding and its result in the creation of “new” pidgin languages. Furthermore, I investigate the use of bureaucratic language to convey an authoritative presence, as it is used in historical and pseudo-historical documents and focalization through various figures and media throughout the novel. (LY)

Building Imperial Frontiers. Business, Science and Karakul Sheep Farming in (German) South-West Africa (1903–1939)

Building Imperial Frontiers. Business, Science and Karakul Sheep Farming in (German) South-West Africa (1903–1939) This article examines the development of Karakul farming at the colonial frontier of South-West Africa. It covers both the development of Karakul farming as a project for improving the economic conditions of the colonies, and its consolidation after the First World War. The paper is divided into two main parts. The first part focuses in particular on the network between agricultural scientists, who advocated genetic science, and German fur entrepreneurs, who searched for new suppliers of resources. This network ultimately led to the creation of Karakul farming in German South-West Africa. The article demonstrates that German business and scientists were much more active in colonial projects and German empire-building than existing business histories have shown. Secondly, after the loss of empire, the German fur business and colonial office continued to invest in Namibian Karakul farming, stimulating its recovery and boom in the 1930s. However, the article also argues that the consolidation phase went along with the decline of the (commercial) model of Karakul farming introduced before the war.

A critical analysis of the impact of water on the South African campaign in German South West Africa, 1914-1915

CITATION: Kleynhans, E. 2016. A critical analysis of the impact of water on the South African campaign in German South West Africa, 1914-1915. Historia, 61(1):29-53, doi:10.17159/2309-8392/2016/v61n2a2.

The Use of Camps in Colonial Warfare

This article provides a comparative historical overview of the use of camps in colonial warfare. It investigates two phases in the evolution of camps: the first generation of camps that emerged around 1900 in Cuba, the Philippines, South Africa and German Southwest Africa and post-Second World War camps in the wars of decolonisation in Malaya, Kenya and Algeria. It posits that the history of camps in colonial warfare is characterised by an evolution from camps as institutions aimed at the punishment of those who supported an insurgency or rebellion towards a function that focused on the ‘rehabilitation’ of the inmates, even though this often involved torture. However, the article also outlines differences between camps in the comparative perspective and argues that the political circumstances of conflicts in the colonies, most importantly the existence of settlers and the potential for economic exploitation, played a role regarding the concrete functions and roles of camps.

The Concept of Climate Improvement: Colonialism and Environment in German South West Africa

Abstract The desiccation theories formulated in the eighteenth century pointed out the connection between deforestation, rainfall reduction and climate change. After the 'Scramble for Africa' the conservation philosophy of the European colonial powers was based on anti-desiccation forest policy. This article seeks to consider how the concepts of 'desiccationism' were taken into account by the German colonists in forest and land management of their new colony: South West Africa. The conservation policy carried out by the German colonial administration was very controversial because they were interested only in areas suitable for European settlement. The early twentieth century idea of improving the climate of South West Africa by greening the Central Highland and the Namib Desert was an excellent indication of a firm belief in science. The other side of the coin was that no environmental responsibility was taken for the African reserves.

Duty to Empire? South Africa's Invasion of German South West Africa, 1914-1918

Before war broke out in August 1914, the Union of South Africa had determined to include the German colony of South West Africa in the Union fold if ever an opportunity arose. So, when Britain went to war on 4 August 1914, the British War Cabinet request that South Africa put the German wireless stations in the South West African territory out of action was likely to be met with favourable response. It was, but not by all as this paper will set out.In 1914, South Africa as a country was only four years old and was still trying to heal the wounds caused by the Anglo-Boer or South African War of 1899-1902. The Union Defence Force (UDF) was even younger, having been approved in 1912. Where the Union had already had a number of years to develop, the UDF was in effect starting from zero.

Setting the agenda for evidence-based research on ending mass atrocities

The question of how mass atrocities end has been dominated by a normative approach regarding how they ought to end. Arguing that an evidence-based approach to terminate mass atrocities might offer profound insights into theories of mass atrocities as well as policies designed to prevent or end their occurrence, this article outlines the key questions and approaches needed for an evidence-based study of atrocity endings. It draws on theories of genocide, political violence and civil war termination, and presents initial insights from case studies, including the killing of civilians in colonial German Southwest Africa, the Soviet Union, the Nigerian civil war, the Guatemalan civil war, the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Os pangermanistas na África: inclusão e exclusão dos nativos nos planos expansionistas do império, 1896-1914

Entre os diversos paradigmas de desigualdade e de exclusão encontra-se o racismo, uma das formas mais insidiosas de discriminação. Para compreendê-lo, muitos se dedicam ao estudo das ideias, adotando frequentemente uma linha evolutiva que vai desde o racialismo até a biologia aplicada. Este artigo assume outra direção. Concentra-se no estudo das experiências vividas entre colonizadores e colonizados - bem como seus outros - com o objetivo de compreender os sentimentos entretecidos no momento mesmo desse confronto. Nesta pesquisa, valendo-me especificamente da atuação dos pangermanistas na África, em especial, no território da Namíbia, outrora conhecido como África Alemã do Sudoeste (SWA), pretendo estabelecer conexões entre o ódio racial e os movimentos imperialistas que defenderam a exclusão dos nativos de seus próprios territórios.

Moritz Bonn, Southern Africa and the Critique of Colonialism

ABSTRACTIn 1906/7 Moritz Bonn (1873–1965) set out to test Hobson's theory of Imperialism in southern Africa. His extensive analyses, published in the leading social science journal of the era and in pamphlet form, constitute the first systematic analyses of southern African societies. Bonn's experiences in the region also led him to become the first scholar to argue for the necessity and inevitability of decolonization; he also anticipated the rise of fascism. While Bonn was well known and well connected during the inter-war period, he is today virtually forgotten even among specialists. This paper offers an intellectual biography in order to understand how Bonn's first-hand experience of colonialism, in Ireland, South Africa and German Southwest Africa led to important insights. A fresh consideration of this important liberal political economist of colonialism and empire challenges the established genealogy of ideas and approaches to world system theory and to empire, and especially the recent tendency to view German liberals as imperialist boosters.

Honourable Soldier-Bureaucrats: Formations of Violent Identities in the Colonial Police Force of German Southwest Africa, 1905–18

Policing in German Southwest Africa (1905–18) fell to a small force of German and African men called the Landespolizei. Charged with representing the colonial state and with claiming the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force, the policemen struggled to assert authority towards both the settler and the colonised population. The identities that emerged out of this uneasy position are the object of inquiry of this article.I argue that honour played a significant role in the way colonial rule was executed in the everyday. The policemen of the Landespolizei were modern men of guns and paper. Their honour was the product of the correct coordination of violence and bureaucracy. White, black and mixed-race policemen aspired to respectable social standing, although racial hierarchy was preserved within this collective identity. Moreover, depending on the situation, policemen accentuated either their military or their civil duty, either their heroic or their paternalistic masculinity in order to be perceived as honourable. Above all, to the men of the police force, being policemen meant being authorised by the state and simultaneously being authors of the state. And the reciprocal reinforcement of individual and state honour made possible a highly adaptable state formation that seemed plausible to the actors of the colonial environment. The German colonial state was adaptable to various situations exactly because honour's reliance on external affirmation required improvised renegotiation in the everyday. This dynamic produced an effective and powerful colonial state with deeply transformative and devastating effects on the local society.

Farmers to the Frontier: Settler Colonialism in the Eastern Prussian Provinces and German Southwest Africa

This article focuses on settler colonial practices and discourses within the German Empire. Between 1886 and 1914 German government officials funded and implemented settlement programmes in two quite distinct regions of the empire: the eastern provinces of Posen and West Prussia and the colony German Southwest Africa. So far those programmes have not been analysed together, most likely due to the largely separate disciplinary traditions of East European and colonial history. Striving for a more inclusive approach towards German imperial history this article demonstrates that the settlement schemes in both places were characterised by similar struggles over concepts of space and population. It argues moreover that völkisch ideas of Lebensraum became increasingly influential within those struggles because they bridged the gap between conflicting conservative and liberal concepts of socio-spatial organisation.

The battle of Sandfontein, 26 September 1914: South African military reform and the German South-West Africa campaign, 1914–1915

The German South-West Africa campaign and the battle at Sandfontein, which marked the first foreign deployment of the Union Defence Forces (UDF), as well as its first active participation in a war, are now largely forgotten. Yet this belies the importance of the campaign and of the first-battle experience at Sandfontein, for in many ways this was significantly unlike subsequent military operations of the German South-West Africa campaign and the wider South African participation in the First World War. This article uses the campaign as a lens through which to analyse the nature and organization of the UDF in 1914 and to assess the difficulties the South African staffs faced. South African military thinking, in terms of how it shaped Sandfontein and was in turn affected by that first-battle experience, is also investigated.

Shades of Empire: Police Photography in German South-West Africa

This article looks at a photographic album produced by the German police in colonial Namibia just before World War I. Late 19th- and early 20th-century police photography has often been interpreted as a form of visual production that epitomized power and regimes of surveillance imposed by the state apparatuses on the poor, the criminal and the Other. On the other hand police and prison institutions became favored sites where photography could be put at the service of the emergent sciences of the human body—physiognomy, anthropometry and anthropology. While the conjuncture of institutionalized colonial state power and the production of scientific knowledge remain important for this Namibian case study, the article explores a slightly different set of questions. Echoing recent scholarship on visuality and materiality the photographic album is treated as an archival object and visual narrative that was at the same time constituted by and constitutive of material and discursive practices within early 20th-century police and prison institutions in the German colony. By shifting attention away from image content and visual codification alone toward the question of visual practice the article traces the ways in which the photo album, with its ambivalent, unstable and uncontained narrative, became historically active and meaningful. Therein the photographs were less informed by an abstract theory of anthropological and racial classification but rather entrenched with historically contingent processes of colonial state constitution, socioeconomic and racial stratification, and the institutional integration of photography as a medium and a technology into colonial policing. The photo album provides a textured sense of how fragmented and contested these processes remained throughout the German colonial period, but also how photography could offer a means of transcending the limits and frailties brought by the realities on the ground.

German Missionaries, Race, and Othering Entanglements and Comparisons between German Southwest Africa, Indonesia, and Brazil

Recent approaches in global history and postcolonial studies have pointed to global aspects of colonialism and suggested that the history of colonialism should not be described just as a unidirectional history of power, because the reverberations of colonialism within the metropolis were also important. If we reflect further, we might ask not only if the metropolis and the colonies were entangled, but also if different colonial contexts had connections to one another. Pursuing this in the case of missionary activities, Rebekka Habermas recently demanded that scholars connect missionary history and global history so as to examine the global entanglements of the mission. She drew attention to missionary societies’ active on a global scale. It stands to reason that missionary societies, as global actors, pursued similar politics in different regions and, therefore, different regions and contexts were thereby connected. But is it possible to show direct entanglements between individual mission contexts? Can we explain certain practices and discourses in colonial situations better if we look at other regional contexts?In testing these questions, the case of the so-called “emigrant mission” (Auswanderermission), directed at Germans emigrants to Brazil by a sister organisation of the Protestant Rhenish Missionary Society, is instructive. Strangely, Habermas mentioned neither the Americas nor the emigrant mission when she proposed the analysis of global entanglements of the mission, as if there had been no missionary activities in the Americas. But it is exactly this kind of entanglement that seems most interesting, the entanglement between regions with apparently different histories. This paper tries to address this lacuna by asking if the history of the emigrant mission in Brazil can be linked with “normal” missionary contexts of, for example, missions directed at non-Europeans, in order to understand why certain discourses were circulating in Brazil. In this instance, the former German colony of Southwest Africa and the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Nias serve as classical missionary examples, as the Rhenish Missionary Society was very active in these regions. In considering relations between German emigrants in Brazil, the German colony in Africa, and the German mission in a Dutch colony, one must remember that Brazil, although it figured very prominently in German colonial debates of the nineteenth century, was not a formal German colony.

“Heimischwerden Deutscher Art und Sitte” Power, Gender, and Diaspora in the Colonial Contest

In 1909, in a public lecture on German colonial politics, author and colonial activist Clara Brockmann emphasised the crucial role of female emigration to the colonies of the Kaiserreich (German empire). With special reference to German Southwest Africa, she argued:The immigration of the German woman in our colony is much talked about and much is done for it. The aim is quite obvious: the prevention of mixed marriages, which are the mental and economic ruin of the settler, the achievement of a profitable farm business, which cannot be fully developed without the assistance of the housewife, and the establishment of German manners and mores, of German family life, which is created foremost by the presence of the woman.Brockmann was one of many women who were committed to “the colonial cause” during the Kaiserreich. Most of these activists were organised in the Frauenbund der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft (Women's League of the German Colonial Society). Its central aim was to support and organise the emigration of German women to the colonies of the German Empire. This paper takes a closer look at the rhetoric and politics of the Frauenbund, its claims for the decisive role women were to play in the colonial project, its emigration scheme, organised to provide German settlers with racially “appropriate” wives, and its underlying assumption that Germanness itself was under threat in colonial space. The Kaiserreich's female colonial activists have been the object of numerous studies so far. None of these studies, however, reflects on the issue within the larger context of nineteenth-century global white mass migration or white diasporic movements as described, for instance, by Jürgen Osterhammel.

All splendid, but horrible: The Politics of South Africa’s Second “Little Bit” and the War on the Western Front, 1915-1918

South Africa’s decision to enter the First World War was not easy. After a difficult interplay between Whitehall and Tuinhuis, the Botha government agreed to secure limited strategic objectives in neighbouring German South West Africa. An armed insurrection had to be suppressed first. When both these objects were achieved, and following a further British appeal, South African troops moved further afield. This move, representing South Africa’s second ‘little bit’, was a dangerous step for the Botha government. The despatch of troops to France was controversial. Yet, by the end of 1915, South African expeditionary forces were en route to Europe and East Africa. This paper investigates the political crisis in South Africa and the difficult decision to send troops out of Africa, their deployment in an environment entirely foreign to the South African way of war, and the impact of the Western Front on the drawing of ‘lessons’ by post-war Union authorities.