After German Unification in 1871, Bismarck maintained his earlier position. Here also the German settlement would be implemented, and the whole governmental organization was developed to serve German needs while controlling the local ethnically diverse population. [1] "Germany 2: Colonial Empire". These treaties were approved by the German government, which granted complete authority without oversight to the colonial companies, while retaining for itself only ultimate sovereignty and a few unspecified rights to intervene. [5] The territory would be called South West Africa for the next 70 years. [132] In 1925, the Colonial Imperial Society ('Korag') was established as an umbrella organization, from which the Reichskolonialbund emerged in 1933. Washausen, p. 67-114; the West and East Africa firms, Hartmut Pogge Von Strandmann, "Domestic origins of Germany's colonial expansion under Bismarck. As a result of the Zanzibar Treaty (1890) between Germany and Great Britain, German South West Africa acquired the Caprivi Strip (named after the German chancellor Graf Leo von Caprivi), a tract of land 280 miles (450 km) long in the extreme northeast of the territory; the colony thus gained access to the Zambezi River. [101] In some colonies, native agricultural holdings were encouraged and supported. Please join meon Wednesday, April, Holocaust survivors, children and grandchildren of survivors express their concerns about the ominous current events. In May 1889, Bismarck offered to sell the German possessions in Africa to the Italian Prime Minister, Francesco Crispi who countered with an offer to sell Italy's colonies to Germany.[61]. [154] Alongside this, over time, further special provisions of colonial law were established. In May 1880, Bismarck asked the banker Adolph von Hansemann to produce a report on German colonial goals in the Pacific and the possibility of enforcing them. [130] The charge that Germany had failed to "civilize" the peoples under its control was seen as particularly outrageous - this had played a central role in German colonialism's self-legitimation. After defeating the Herero force at Waterberg, Trotha announced that any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun or cattle would be executed. Herero cattle-herders caught in the action were killed on the spot; women and children were driven into the desert to die of starvation; he even ordered their waterholes to be poisoned. The German government therefore dispatched a naval expeditionary force and subsequently reinforcement Schutztruppe. In 1895, concessions were acquired from Qing China in Hankau and Tientsin (modern Wuhan and Tianjin). As a new generation of German historians began to examine the history of German colonialism in South West Africa (today Namibia), the genocide of the Herero people emerged out of oblivion. Viewed from the prism of eugenics, the fittest (Aryan race) survived while black people were born to be mastered by the fittest. Dear Supporter of Freedom, Autonomy and the Right to Voluntary Informed Consent! In November 1882, the Bremen-based tobacco merchant Adolf Lderitz contacted the Foreign Office and requested protection for a trade station south of Walvis Bay on the southwest African coast. [26] Von Werner also acquired a harbor on the islands of Makada and Mioko in the Duke of York Islands in December 1878, which would become a component part of the future protectorate of German New Guinea in 1884. Gemeaux (de), Christine,(dir., prsentation et conclusion): "Empires et colonies. [175] Those experiments included sterilization, injection of smallpox, typhus as well as tuberculosis. German soldiers shot Herero, hanged them, drove them into the desert and sealed off watering holes to stop survivors from returning. The idea took hold that they should not be returned to Germany after the war. Including mainland Germany, the empire had a total land area of 3,503,352 square kilometers (1,352,652sqmi) and population of 80,125,993 people. ", Horst Grnder: "'Gott will es'. The number of German-speaking Africans increased in four West African German colonies prior to 1914. "Koloniale Spuren im stdtischen Raum. "Reparations for Historical Human Rights Violations: The International and Historical Dimensions of the Alien Torts Claims Act Genocide Case of the Herero of Namibia. In 1889, Bismarck considered withdrawing Germany from colonial policy, wishing to entirely end Germany's activities in East Africa and Samoa, according to eyewitnesses. Why is Germany now saying, when it comes to the Nama and Herero we are not willing to talk to a dozen different groups? The first to go was Togoland to the British and to the French, then the Cameroons to the allied forces. [180] It gave an impetus to German assertiveness as a world economic and military power, aimed at competing with France and the British Empire for world power. German South West Africa, German Deutsch-Sdwestafrika, a former German colony (18841919) that is now the nation of Namibia, in southwestern Africa. [127] The victors retained the German overseas possessions and did so with the belief that Australian, Belgian, British, French, Japanese, New Zealand, Portuguese and South African rule was superior to Germany's. 149151, in Samoa "German authorities implemented policies to draw [locals] into the stream of economic life", the colonial government enforced that native cultivable land could not be sold; Miller, p. 20, in German East Africa "new land laws sharply curtailed expropriation of tribal acreage" and "African cultivators were encouraged to grow cash crops, with technical aid from agronomists, guaranteed prices and government assistance in marketing the produce. Photo: Jim Naughten. In a scorched earth strategy, they destroyed villages, prevented economic activity, and withheld any protection against wild animals. On Friday, Germany formally described the killings as a genocide, agreed to issue an apology and committed to providing $1.35 billion toward reconstruction and development projects. Claiming much of the remaining uncolonized areas of Africa, Germany built the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and French. The Kaisers race engineers used callipers and craniometry charts to measure the severed heads of Nama tribesmen; their ears and feet were considered apish telltale atavisms. In particular, they were shut out of the court system. 6 Are Namibians friendly? Significantly, Hausemann was a founding member of the New Guinea Consortium for the acquisition of colonies in New Guinea and the Pacific in 1882. Auflage Windhoek 2012. Weltkrieg in Deutsch-Sdwestafrika 1914/15", Band 1, 2. Therefore, the highest authority in colonial administration, the Colonial Department (Kolonialabteilung) was separated from the Foreign Office and, in May 1907, it became its own ministry, the Imperial Colonial Office (Reichskolonialamt). [57], Although temperate zone cultivation flourished, the demise and often failure of tropical low-land enterprises contributed to changing Bismarck's view. Over a century ago, German colonial troops committed a genocide against Namibia's ethnic Herero and Nama people. To fight it in Germany doctors used biopolitics to educate and regulate the bodies of likely victims. German colonial regime (1884-1915) When imperial Germany claimed Namibia as a "Protectorate", it introduced a sophisticated system of record-keeping. Australia in effective control, formally together with United Kingdom and New Zealand, General J. C. Smuts is often identified as the inventor of the idea of "mandates" [Louis (1967), p. 7], The standard work on this 'Colonial Guilt Myth' was, Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst. Historicus Africanus: "Der 1. In December 1883, Bismarck let Hamburg known that an Imperial commissioner would be sent to West Africa to secure the safety of German trade and to conclude a treaty with "independent Negro states". So the question of comparisons remained unaddressed until the 1990s. However, individual west German politicians proposed undertaking late or postcolonial enterprises, especially the management of trusts in Tanganyika or Togo. Following the Juye Incident of 1 November 1897, in which two German missionaries from the Society of the Divine Word were murdered, Kaiser Wilhelm dispatched the German East Asia Squadron to occupy Jiaozhou Bay and its chief port, Qingdao on the southern coast of the Shandong peninsula. In 1890 the British government apportioned the Caprivi Strip to the Germans. [126], President Wilson saw the League of Nations as "'residuary trustee' for the [German] colonies" captured and occupied by "rapacious conquerors". Also in 1925, Johannes Bell, who had been Colonial Minister in the Scheidemann cabinet, founded the "Interparty Colonial Union", which included members of the whole political spectrum, from the Nazi party to the SPD. "German Colonialism and the Age of Global Empires.". This desire to avoid antagonising the United States also led him to reject a Dutch offer to establish a naval base on the Dutch island of Curaao. In 1915, during World War I, troops from South Africa invaded and occupied the territory. Over the following years, the Imperial Chancellor and other officials empowered by him were also given the authority to regulate the administration, jurisdiction, policing, etc. Such exploratory missions required security measures that could be solved with small private, armed contingents recruited mainly in the Sudan and usually led by adventurous former military personnel of lower rank. The pictures were then sent as pornographic postcards to Germany (Daily Express, Jan. 2014). Hundreds of skulls of victims were sent to Germany for examination. However, the claim was dropped as part of a concession to Britain in May 1885,[62] along with a claim to Pondoland. Colonial German physicians and administrators tried to make a case for increasing the native population, in order to also increase their numbers of laborers. Dominik J. Schaller: "'Ich glaube, dass die Nation als solche vernichtet werden muss': Kolonialkrieg und Vlkermord in 'Deutsch-Sdwestafrika' 19041907". Perraudin, Michael, and Jrgen Zimmerer, eds. Finally a secret request from the Chamber of Commerce to Bismarck for the establishment of a colony in West Africa was submitted to Bismarck on 6 July 1883, stating that "through such acquisitions, German trade in Trans-Atlantic lands could only be given a firmer position and a surer support, while without political protection trade cannot now thrive and progress. "[32], Following 1884, Germany invaded several territories in Africa: German East Africa (including present-day Burundi, Rwanda, and the mainland part of Tanzania); German South West Africa (present-day Namibia), German Cameroon (including parts of present-day Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad and Nigeria); and Togoland (present-day Togo and parts of Ghana). Even today, many German tourists visit Namibia, especially Swakopmund, a city on Namibias Atlantic coast, where the restaurant menus serve German food and beer, and where well-preserved colonial-era buildings line streets named after German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. As of today, no country outside Europe uses the German language as an official language, although in Namibia, German is a recognized national language and there are numerous German placenames and architectural structures in the country. Notwithstanding the protests, the official German General Staff publication,Der Kampf,referred to Trothas campaign of extermination of the Herero nation as a brilliant accomplishment. South West Africa Peoples Organization, or Swapo, 1948 United Nations Convention on Genocide. "Kamerun Boundary: Die nigerische Grenze von Kamerun zwischen Yola und dem Cross-fluss.". 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