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Britain, Germany and
Colonial Violence in
South-West Africa, 1884–1919
The Herero and Nama Genocide
Mads Bomholt Nielsen

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
Series Editors
Richard Drayton
Department of History
King’s College London
London, UK
Saul Dubow
Magdalene College
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a well-
established collection of over 100 volumes focussing on empires in world
history and on the societies and cultures that emerged from, and chal-
lenged, colonial rule. The collection includes transnational, comparative
and connective studies, as well as works addressing the ways in which par-
ticular regions or nations interact with global forces. In its formative years,
the series focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth, but there is
now no imperial system, period of human history or part of the world that
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Britain, Germany and

Colonial Violence in
South-West Africa,
1884–1919
The Herero and Nama Genocide
Ministry of Higher Education and Science
Copenhagen, Denmark
ISSN 2635-1633 ISSN 2635-1641 (electronic)

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
ISBN 978-3-030-94560-2 ISBN 978-3-030-94561-9 (eBook)
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Map of German South West Africa
Picture 1 Map of South West Africa with tribal lands and German Presence,
1890, National Archives of Namibia, Blue Book Draft, ADM 255
Acknowledgements
This book is the culmination of a long journey. When I moved to London

in 2012 to do an MA at King’s College London, I was able to expand on
my interest in British and German colonial history with the support of
Richard Drayton and Francisco Bethencourt—who would both eventually
supervise my PhD dissertation. I owe them both my gratitude for seeing
potential in me and for expertly helping to turn my rather incoherent ideas
into something sensible. My PhD dissertation was eventually examined by
Chris Clark and Saul Dubow who also gave me wonderful advice on where
to improve (and perhaps most importantly, revise) the dissertation. After
my PhD, I moved back to the University of Copenhagen as a Postdoc,
where I was lucky enough to be mentored by Stuart Ward. I wish to thank
Stuart for always taking the time to give me advice and pushing me when
I needed it.
Being funded by the Carlsberg Foundation for another project, which
overlaps with the preparation of this book, I was able to visit archives
around the world and conduct research—of which much has gone into
this book. Of all the funding bodies that are providing vital financial sup-
port for early career scholars, the Carlsberg Foundation has proven to be
an incredibly generous and understanding support. I owe them my grati-
tude. Several people have also helped in the preparation of the book. The
team at Palgrave: Lucy Kidwell and Raghupathy Kalyanaraman have both
shown great patience and understanding in what it is, writing a book dur-
ing a pandemic and working from home. The anonymous reviewers also
deserve credit for their in-depth and constructive feedback, which helped
shape the book and clarify its purpose and scope.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
On a personal level, this book could not have been completed without
the support of friends and family. My parents who always supported and
believed in me were crucial in helping me through my years as a PhD stu-
dent in London. Among my close friends, Ali Adjorlu, Christian Weber
and Henry James Evans have proven to be the most loyal and understand-
ing friends. I must especially commend their ability to take work com-
pletely off my mind and for lending an attentive ear for whenever I vented
my frustrations. Parts of the book were written in the company of my
friend and colleague, Thomas Storgaard, during our ‘writing sessions’
which provided the most productive, focused and stringently organized
work environment one could imagine. I must also express my gratitude to
my friend, Daniel Steinbach. Daniel provided feedback and comments on
early drafts and gave me advice on how to improve the book in terms of
content, style and, above all, structure. Discussing the writing process
(and the affairs of the world) with Daniel while strolling through parks or
sitting at a café have lifted the quality of the book immensely and made the
writing itself more enjoyable.
Finally, there are two people I must thank above everyone else: my son
August and my wife Anna. The patience and unyielding support they have
given in the process of completing this book cannot be understated. I am
grateful for every minute of wonderful distraction they both have given
me. Had they not, writing this book would have been immensely more
difficult. This book is therefore dedicated to them both—not so much for
its ominous topic, but for the effort that has been put into writing it.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Colonial Violence in Southern Africa at the Turn of the

Twentieth Century 15
3 Imperial Cooperation and Anglo-German Diplomacy 43
4 Concerns and Non-Cooperation 71
5 Case 609: African Refugees in British Territory 93
6 Knowledge and Reactions121
7 Atrocity Narratives and the End of German Colonialism,

1918–19153
8 Conclusion193
Cited Works203
Index225
ix
Abbreviations
A.B.I.R Anglo-Belgian-India Rubber

APS Aborigines’ Protection Society
BAB Bundesarchiv (Lichterfelde, Germany)
CAB Cabinet Papers
CMP Cape Mounted Police
CO Colonial Office
FO Foreign Office
GSWA German South West Africa
NAN National Archives of Namibia (Windhoek)
PMC Permanent Mandates Commission
NASA National Archives of South Africa (Pretoria)
SCC Special Criminals Court
SWA South West Africa
TNA The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom)
WNLA Witwatersrand Native Labour Agency
WO War Office
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Speaking in the House of Lords on 3 July 1919—less than a week after

Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles—Lord Curzon, Leader of the
House of Lords, proclaimed the treaty to be ‘the end of a tragic chapter in
the history of the world’. Germany’s defeat was not only the downfall of a
nation, but of the ‘Prussian character, which is incompatible with good
government and the ordered progress of the world’. One of the stains of
this Prussian character on the world was the German colonial empire,
which had ‘a record of force and fraud and ruthless disregard for the inter-
est of the native people’. Indeed, ‘German rule’, Curzon asserted, ‘was
characterised by almost undeviating harshness, and in some cases revolting
cruelty. Under this system, vast areas of territory were depopulated. Some
tribes, like the wretched Herero’s in South-West Africa, were literally
exterminated.’ The ‘absolutely overwhelming’ evidence of German bru-
tality and violence, he declared, meant that the ‘13-14,000,000 dark-
skinned men’ in the German colonies, ‘could not be abandoned’.1
Colonial violence was at the crux of the British and dominion campaign
to end German colonialism during the Paris peace conference after World
War I. Equipped with reports and evidence of German colonial misrule
and ‘wishes of natives’ to be under British rule, the British and dominion
governments successfully portrayed the confiscation of Germany’s colo-
nies as an act of humanitarian interventionism.2 The most influential and
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Bomholt Nielsen, Britain, Germany and Colonial Violence in
South-West Africa, 1884–1919, Cambridge Imperial and Post-
Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94561-9_1
2 M. BOMHOLT NIELSEN
renowned piece of evidence presented on German colonial violence was

the 1918 Foreign Office Blue Book, entitled Report on the Natives of
South-West Africa and their Treatment by Germany. Compiled after the
South African invasion of German South West Africa (GSWA) in 1915,
the report—conventionally referred to as ‘the Blue Book’—provided a
detailed account of German atrocities against the Herero and Nama, espe-
cially during the rebellions of 1903–8.3 German counter-insurgency dur-
ing these rebellions notably involved the use of concentration camps and
orders for the outright extermination of Africans. Approximately eighty
per cent of the Herero population and fifty per cent of the Nama popula-
tion perished in what is generally agreed to be the first genocide of the
twentieth century. This violence, the Blue Book concluded, should ‘con-
vince the most confirmed sceptic of the unsuitability of the Germans to
control natives, and show him what can be expected if the unfortunate
natives are ever again handed back to their former regime’.4
The Blue Book indicated that Britain was unaware of the violence in
GSWA before the 1915 invasion.5 Indeed, if Britain had been aware of the
violence at the time it occurred, any association, involvement or failure to
protest would significantly undermine attempts to confiscate German col-
onies on the grounds of violence and misrule. Yet, before 1914, Britain
and South African authorities were not just aware of the violence in GSWA,
but had cooperated with the Germans on a number of occasions. Moreover,
the extensive colonial borders and the trans-nationality of colonial regions,
where Africans, traders and information, for example, crossed the borders
relatively freely, meant that knowledge of the atrocities was widespread.
Above all, the placing of British military attachés with German forces in
GSWA from February 1905 meant that the British government was in
possession of detailed reports on the violence while it actually occurred.6
The fact that no official protest against German colonial violence and mis-
rule was launched until 1918 is indicative of the intricate links between
colonial violence on the one hand and politics and diplomacy on the other.
Indeed, the different international, imperial and diplomatic contexts of
1903–8 and 1918–19 respectively, were determining factors in how colo-
nial violence was presented to suit specific aims and interests. Thus, the
post-war denunciation of German colonialism intentionally obscured the
underlying and deeper level of interaction that existed during the Herero
and Nama rebellions.
This book concerns what can ostensibly be called ‘the British factor’ in
German colonial violence in GSWA. Through the eyes of British and Cape
1 INTRODUCTION 3
statesmen, officials and colonial officers, it examines British and South

African (Cape Colony until 1910 and hereafter the Union of South Africa)
perspectives on, and involvement in, German colonial violence in GSWA
until the end of German colonialism in 1919. The book thus revolves
around two basic questions: How did a neighbouring colonial power react
to and perceive colonial violence and atrocities such as those committed
by Germany against the Herero and Nama? Further, what factors deter-
mined the different reactions, views and policies taken by the neighbour-
ing colonial power? In considering colonial violence in a trans-imperial
light, which accounts for both metropolitan and colonial contexts (whereas
trans-colonialism concerns the latter), this book attempts to show that
histories of colonial violence cannot be contained within nationally demar-
cated colonial borders. Instead, it occurred in a context in which other
colonial powers were involved either directly or indirectly. This occurred
on several levels that transcended the immediate space where colonial vio-
lence was perpetrated as the atrocities in GSWA were, for instance, per-
ceived and responded to by Britain in the context of European, imperial
and colonial considerations.
The intention of this book is to connect the developing scholarship on
colonial violence to broader historical themes of political, diplomatic and
imperial histories. A recurring problem with the scholarship on colonial
violence is arguably that it remains compartmentalised in nationally
deduced colonial empires. This book thus sets out to challenge this com-
partmentalisation of the colonial world, telling the story of German colo-
nial violence through the eyes of its colonial neighbour. Surprisingly few
studies of colonial violence move beyond the confines of German, French
or even British colonial histories. Instead, comparisons are widespread—in
particular, colonial violence is deemed ‘softer’ in British colonial history
than that perpetrated as part of Belgian or indeed German colonialism,
serving, as Kim Wagner has noted, to perpetuate narratives of British
exceptionalism as a particularly benign colonial power. However, brutal
and racialised colonial violence was as much a feature of British imperial-
ism as it was of German colonialism.7 Such casual comparisons or juxtapo-
sitions, though, are intended for inward elucidation: to either distinguish
a specific colonial type or make histories of colonial violence normative in
a nationally compartmentalised colonial historiography. Indeed, like impe-
rial history as a whole, it is characteristic of colonial violence as a sub-
theme that the links between empires have not been as thoroughly examined
as those within empires.8
Despite criticism of the pervasive notion of Britain as a more benign

and ‘soft’ colonial power than others, the image still prevails in the ‘empire
debate’ and historically, with British statesmen and the public generally
conceiving of Britain as the most enlightened colonial power.9 This self-
identification derives from the humanitarianism that emerged out of the
abolitionist movement in the late eighteenth century. Humanitarian dis-
course remained a central ideology of empire in Britain, sustaining both its
moral and legal basis.10 After the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and
slavery in 1833, humanitarianism remained a key ideology and it was con-
stantly re-invented by influential lobby groups such as the Aborigines’
Protection Society or the Congo Reform Association which publicly pro-
tested against colonial mistreatment and violence.11 For the British gov-
ernment, humanitarian discourses were widespread within Whitehall and
anti-slavery remained a ‘blessed word’ in the Colonial Office because of its
central position as a view of British government officials, politicians and
the general public and because, by the mid-nineteenth century, it had,
according to Andrew Porter, become a ‘vital component of Britain’s
national and imperial identity’.12 Within this humanitarian discourse was
an inherent revisionist agenda towards the institution of empire, in which
moral standards, often reduced to notions of development, civilisation and
anti-slavery, were embedded as justifications for colonial rule. In other
words, seemingly benign views became a driving force for imperial
expansion.
Such moral expectancy, however, did not align with the oppressive
nature of colonial rule. At the crux of the moral underpinnings of imperi-
alism was a contradiction between the humanitarian expectancy of empire
and its violent reality.13 Furthermore, pervasive humanitarian notions also
put colonial rule ‘on trial’ and facilitated criticism of mistreatment and
violence.14 As Alice Conklin has shown in the context of French West
Africa, the civilising ideals colonial states were expected to uphold, did not
align with the widespread practices of coercion and forced labour in the
colonies. To overcome this clear contradiction, each situation could be
amended and explained. Thus, while coercion was seemingly morally inex-
cusable, forced labour was claimed to ‘improve’ colonial subjects, prevent-
ing natural racial ‘degeneration’.15 Humanitarianism was therefore not
necessarily the opposite of biological racial determinism. Rather, racial
attitudes were embedded in the discourse of ‘civilising’ and ‘protection’.
Crucially, humanitarianism remained a key context in which colonial vio-
lence was construed and reacted to. It was a widespread moral norm
1 INTRODUCTION 5
associated with the purpose and justification of empire; meaning, that

when Germany so overtly violated the humanitarian expectancy in colo-
nial rule, this discourse formed a central backdrop in which reports, state-
ments and information on violence were read.
While the image of more benign British colonisers remains, German
colonialism has long been correctly associated with excessive violence and
brutality, not only in GSWA but also in other colonies such as German
East Africa, where the character and cruelty of Carl Peters—‘the German
Rhodes’—and his Deutsch Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft (German East Africa
Company) epitomised colonial oppression and violence.16 Peters and his
followers have been described as cultivating ‘a cult of violence’ in which
Africans were degraded—treated like animals and used as forced labourers,
with blatant racial ideology directing the establishment of German colo-
nial rule.17 Furthermore, German military forces also brutally suppressed
two major colonial wars—the Wahehe rebellion (1891–8) and Maji Maji
rebellion (1905–7). In the latter, the main German aim was to punish the
rebels and prevent future rebellions, leading to excessive use of violence
and corporal punishment.18 The suppression of the Herero and Nama
rebellions in GSWA, however, is arguably the most noteworthy example of
German colonial violence. The German government acknowledged it as a
genocide on 28 May 2021 after years of pressure from scholars and activ-
ists and negotiations with the Namibian government. GSWA, therefore,
remains the most prominent example because of the widespread belief that
the genocide against the Herero and Nama constituted a precursor or
‘testing ground’ for the Holocaust. The use of concentration camps, med-
ical experiments on prisoners and the overt racism characterising this
genocide presents a clear imagery of parallels and comparisons to the
Holocaust and has led to a rekindled ‘colonial Sonderweg’, with the roots
of Nazism supposedly found in Namibia.19 Such view is of course deriving
Hannah Arendt’s and Aimé Césaire’s respective stipulation that colonial
methods of oppression ‘boomeranged’ and instigated total war and totali-
tarianism in Europe.20 This has had significant consequences on the histo-
riographical context in which German colonial violence in GSWA is
currently understood. The towering shadow of the Holocaust functions as
an end-point, whereby history is perceived retrospectively and contained
within German national history.21 Not only is such a perspective reductive,
it also points to German historical exceptionalism in terms of violence and
genocide, applying both to German national and colonial history.22 This
stands in contrast to the intensive entanglements and connections of
colonial spheres—drawing connections with the Holocaust, whether

intentionally or unintentionally, mainly serves to obscure the colonial con-
text. Consequently, as Reinhart Kössler noted, if GSWA remains transfixed
in a trajectory leading up to the Holocaust, ‘the overall question of colo-
nialism is easily lost sight of’.23
It is tempting to approach German colonial violence in GSWA from a
British perspective for a number of reasons: there is a strong empirical
basis for such an approach as extensive numbers of sources relating to
German colonial violence can be found in British and South African
archives. Geographically, the colonial borders between GSWA and the
Cape and Bechuanaland Protectorate were zones of interaction between
the colonial powers and African groups. The constant puncturing of the
colonial borders meant that violence and rebellion in one colony affected
stability and everyday lives in the other. While colonial violence in GSWA
occurred in a local regional trans-colonial context, it also appeared on
broader, international and trans-imperial levels. Diplomatically, GSWA
was a central part of the colonial rivalry between Britain and Germany,
which was more intense in Southern Africa than anywhere else except
Europe. Furthermore, as has already been alluded to, German colonial
violence was central to British diplomatic interests in 1918. On an imperial
level, the stance towards Germany’s suppression of the Herero and Nama
rebellions was constantly negotiated by the British and Cape governments,
with consideration given to their respective interests and viewpoints.
Where the British government was driven by diplomatic considerations,
the Cape was concerned about its security. Politically, Britain’s insistence
on its moral superiority, as reiterated in the Blue Book in 1918, may well
have been significant in shaping the notion of Britain as a ‘soft colonial
power’, as lamented by Wagner and others. Indeed, at the time, colonial
violence had a notable metropolitan aspect in relation to how public and
international opinion reacted, as was apparent during the Congo crisis of
1903–8, when public demands for intervention against King Leopold II’s
atrocious Red Rubber regime in the Congo were imperative for the trans-
fer of administration to the Belgian state in 1908. Colonial violence and
the reactions of the British government to it were therefore profoundly
political.
The notion of German colonialism as exceptionally cruel and violent
was in part the result of Britain’s denunciation after World War I. Andreas
Eckl meticulously set out the correlation between the arguments of the
Blue Book and Horst Drechsler’s influential Let Us Die Fighting (1966).24
1 INTRODUCTION 7
In other words, the origin of German colonialism as exceptionally brutal

was most likely the Blue Book of 1918, which, despite its relatively accu-
rate description of German colonial violence, represented propaganda
with outright imperial and diplomatic intentions.25 At the crux of the
notion of German colonial exceptionalism, therefore, lies a profound
British factor, which changed according to shifting contexts in Europe and
Africa and at different times—even when the violence in question
had ended.
Trans-colonialism in Anglo-German Southern Africa

Understanding the colonial world in context of nationally defined empires
resonates with the foundations of history as a modern discipline, intended
to delineate the nation states of nineteenth-century Europe. L.H Gann
and Peter Duignan described their series on ‘the rulers of Africa’ as ‘paral-
lel studies’ and had each volume neatly divided into, among others,
‘British’, ‘German’ and ‘Belgian’ colonial histories thus perpetuating
national borders in the colonial world.26 Such demarcation has obscured
transnational and trans-imperial patterns in history and led to compart-
mentalisation first between nations and then empires.27 In Southern Africa,
the local trans-colonial entanglements across the Cape and GSWA borders
have been difficult to examine because of the pervasive national historiog-
raphies of South Africa and Namibia.28 In the case of the British imperial
system, John Darwin has shown that this cannot be seen as a historical
polity in itself because of its fragmentation by local sub-imperial agents
acting in accordance with their own, locally based, interests and because of
the external influences that profoundly shaped British imperial power
overseas.29 The notion of trans-colonialism therefore reiterates an under-
standing of the colonial world as one linked across borders and spheres
and in which Europe was not some external or indeed exceptional history
promoting a dichotomy of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’.30
Recently, new scholarship has emerged dedicated to examining the
interactions and entanglements of colonial histories.31 This complicates
prevailing understandings of European colonial empires in Africa and else-
where as disconnected extensions of the nation-state—an idea often form-
ing the unintended perspective in several volumes, particularly those with
comparative approaches.32 Instead of seeing German colonial violence in
GSWA as part of German national history, where there is often a tendency
to consider it as a precursor to the Holocaust, this book emphasises the
trans-colonial and international context. At the same time, however, it

remains important not to inflate colonial connections and inter-imperial
histories. Indeed, while it is necessary to challenge rigid and nationally
defined compartmentalisations, we should not completely abandon the
notion of separate spheres of influence in the colonial world. Although
notions of cooperation and shared experiences are useful to determine the
interactions between colonial powers, these risk obscuring elements of
estrangement, rivalry and provocation.
With the advent of global history, it has been established that imperial
power and decision-making were not the prerogative of the imperial gov-
ernment in London, but a cumulative response spanning imperial and
trans-imperial networks.33 Global history’s focus on connections, as Simon
Potter and Jonathan Saha have asserted, ‘can assist us in overcoming the
long-standing but often misleading tendency to examine the British
Empire as a singular, hermetically-sealed world system’.34 The same is true
of the German colonial empire, in which the colonial Sonderweg has func-
tioned as a form of compartmentalisation because it rests on the premise
of the Holocaust as a profoundly German national history.35 Although
there is a tendency within global history to emphasise subalterns and his-
tory from below, this should not remove the necessity to understand polit-
ical history—mainly belonging to the imperial and colonial elites—from
such perspectives. Indeed, European international history—particularly
relating to Anglo-German relations—has been shaped and informed by
colonial affairs in the context of trans-imperial interactions. While the
global turn in the history of the British Empire has been successful in
breaking a London-centred view and acknowledging external influences,
much less attention has been paid to the connections between colonial
empires than those within.36
In the colonial world, Anglo-German entanglements were profound.
Even before Germany formally acquired colonial possessions, the British
Empire hosted German emigrants and groups espousing visions of a
German colonial community.37 Settlers, missionaries and indigenous
groups, while formally affiliated with a specified colony controlled by a
European nation, roamed relatively freely across the colonial landscape
with little regard for colonial borders. Thus, colonial borders were not
rigid demarcations of colonial or national sovereignty but should be con-
sidered sites of interactions and also sites of fragility where colonial rule
was at its weakest and contested by cross-border movements, in which
1 INTRODUCTION 9
colonial powers in turn attempted to exert control by means of violence.38

As we shall see, the colonial borderlands were key to interactions between
German, Cape and British actors but also for Africans in resisting German
colonial rule because many escaped to British or Cape territory either as
refugees or to prevent their pursuit by German troops.
Several historians have characterised Anglo-German colonial relations
and interactions in Southern Africa as defined by a ‘racial solidarity.’
Cooperation between the colonial powers in holding down Africans
amounted to what Drechsler called a ‘sharing of the white man’s bur-
den’.39 More recently, and arguably more persuasively, Ulrike Lindner
claimed that, in Africa, Britain and Germany were involved in a ‘shared
colonial project’. Although this project also amounted to ‘the white man’s
burden [being] equally shared among the colonial powers’, Lindner cor-
rectly reiterates the centrality of estrangement and rivalry in inter-imperial
relations and indicates that these are not opposed to cooperation. Indeed,
as she correctly observes, a complicated Spannungsfeld (‘zone of tension’)
existed between cooperation and rivalry, meaning that the terms were not
mutually exclusive but rather co-existed.40 British and German colonialism
in Southern Africa was therefore intrinsically linked and common ground
existed in wishing to ensure the maintenance of colonial rule over Africans.
It is the intention that this book will complement (rather than disprove)
the work done by Lindner and others on the shared histories of British and
German colonialism. This book adds to understandings of the notion of
imperial cooperation, focusing on the complexities and difficulties placed
on a neighbouring colonial power in the context of a colonial ‘small war’.
In focusing on a Cape and British perspective, it becomes clear that impe-
rial cooperation, deriving from sharing of the white man’s burden, is
essentially an oversimplification of the deeply ambiguous and multi-faceted
history of colonial and imperial entanglements in Europe and
Southern Africa.
Indeed, there are few indications in British and South African-based
sources of any detailed or sympathetic policy towards the German sup-
pression of the Herero and Nama rebellions deriving from racist convic-
tions. That is not to say that there were no underlying racial prejudices
informing British or South African actors—merely that racial solidarity
alone did not necessarily mean intensive cooperation. Instead, the notion
of sharing the white man’s burden arguably derives from German sources
as the Germans in GSWA continuously sought to win British and Cape
support in the borderlands and hand over refugees. The British and Cape
authorities were essentially forced into a difficult situation requiring care-
ful management in accordance with their own interests. These rarely
amounted to notions of racial solidarity and were by their nature sporadic
and haphazard as there was never any established policy or directive on
how to react to German colonial violence in GSWA. The only consistency
in their involvement was a desire to ‘walk on eggshells’ and not to provoke
Boers, Germans or Africans. Perhaps most importantly, in addition to
imperial cooperation, non-cooperation—the active decision not to sup-
port the Germans—definitively shaped British involvement in German
colonial violence in GSWA.
Understanding the interactions and entanglements between the colo-
nial powers in the colonies themselves rather than from a metropolitan
perspective in London or Berlin is useful to fully comprehend the com-
plexities inherent in such relations. Indeed, although the period before
1914 was characterised by increasing Anglo-German antagonism, rela-
tions in the colonial ‘periphery’ were different, as Britain and Germany
collaborated on a number of cases. Britain’s involvement in GSWA and
collaboration with the German Schutztruppe (protection force) may there-
fore be indicative of a shared colonial project that occurred separately to
the deteriorating diplomatic relations in Europe. However, this is too
absolute and inconsistent with the ambiguous way in which British actors
in London and South Africa acted during the rebellion and genocide in
GSWA. Tilman Dedering, for instance, has shown how different interests
and agendas of metropolitan and colonial actors shaped Britain’s involve-
ment in GSWA, forced upon them by African cross-border mobility in
particular.41 As such, while notions of racial solidarity were indeed influen-
tial in motivating cooperation between colonial powers, they tend to flat-
ten the imperial, diplomatic and political contexts and reduce colonial rule
to a predominantly if not exclusively racial endeavour. Any involvement or
expression of views on the part of Britain and the Cape did not therefore
emanate from a racially motivated shared project but from British and
Cape interests and security. This led to an ambiguous and multi-faceted
British involvement in German colonial violence, whereby cooperation
co-existed with non-cooperation and stringent handling of information in
accordance with shifting diplomatic contexts.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
Notes
1. Hansard Millbank, cc155–164, ‘The Treaty of Peace’, Earl Curzon of
Kedleston, House of Lords, 3 July 1919.
2. For humanitarian intervention see Klose, Fabian (ed.), The Emergence of
Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practices from the Nineteenth
Century to the Present (Cambridge, 2016).
3. Herero—or OvaHerero—refers to a broader ethnic and cultural Bantu-
speaking group splintered into different political and tribal affiliations. At
the turn of the twentieth century, they primarily resided around Windhoek
and were mainly pastoralists. The Nama mainly resides in the southern
parts of Namibia and in the Northern Cape and speak Khoekhoe. Like the
Herero, they were also divided into different tribal groups and affiliations
according to politics, location and culture among other factors.
4. Administrators Office, Windhuk, Report on the Natives of South-West
Africa and Their Treatment by Germany (London, 1918), p. 11.
5. Administrators Office, Report on the Natives, p. 5.
6. See Chap. 6.
7. K. A. Wagner, ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial
Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’, History Workshop Journal,
vol. 85 (2018), p. 231.
8. S. Potter and J. Saha, ‘Global History, Imperial History and Connected
Histories of Empire’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 16,
1 (2015).
9. See for instance N. Ferguson, Empire. How Britain Made the Modern
World (London, 2004), pp. 295–96.
10. A. Lester and F. Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian
Governance – Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century British
Empire (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 3–5. See also M. Mann, ‘“Torchbearer
Upon the Path of Progress”: Britain’s Ideology of Moral and Material
Progress in India. An Introductory Essay’ in H. Fischer-Tiné and M. Mann
(eds.), Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India
(London, 2004), pp. 2–4.
11. A. Porter, ‘Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery and Humanitarianism’ in Porter
(ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century
(Oxford, 1999), pp. 216–17. See also Lester and Dussart, Colonization
and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance, p. 2. For a detailed account
of the APS and its influence upon British colonial policy as a whole, see
J. Heartfield, The Aborigines’ Protection Society, Humanitarian Imperialism
in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, South Africa, and the Congo,
1836–1909 (London, 2011).
12. Porter, ‘Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery and Humanitarianism’, p. 198. See also

S. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century – The Evolution of a Global
Problem (Walnut Creek CA, 2003) and E. Cleall, ‘“In Defiance of the
Highest Principle of Justice, Principles of Righteousness”: The Indenturing
of the Bechuana Rebels and the Ideals of Empire, 1897–1900’, The Journal
of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 40, 4 (2012), p. 605.
13. Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarian
Intervention (Ithaca NY, 2011), pp. 11–12.
14. M. Wiener, An Empire on Trial: Race, Murder, and Justice under British
Rule, 1870–1935 (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 4–5. For the Congo crisis in
connection to GSWA, see Chap. 5.
15. A. Conklin, ‘Colonialism and Human Rights, A Contradiction in Terms?
The Case of France and West Africa, 1895–1914’, American Historical
Review, vol. 103 (1998), pp. 437–8. See also A. Conklin, A Mission to
Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa,
1895–1930 (Stanford, 1997) for a French case in which a consensus on the
civilising mission legitimised imperialism.
16. C. Kpao Saré, ‘Abuses of German Colonial History: The Character of Carl
Peters as Weapon for völkisch and National Socialist Discourses:
Anglophobia, Anti-Semitism and Aryanism’ in M. Perraudin and
J. Zimmerer (eds.) German Colonialism and National Identity (New
York, 2010).
17. A. Perras, Carl Peters and German Imperialism, 1856–1918: A Political
Biography (Oxford, 2004), p. 118.
18. For colonial violence in German East Africa, see especially S. Kuss, German
Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence (Cambridge MA,
2017), Chapter 3, here p. 72.
19. See among others B. Madley, ‘From Africa to Auschwitz: How German
South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed
by the Nazis in Eastern Europe’, European History Quarterly, vol. 35, 3
(2005); J. Zimmerer, Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz? Beitrage zum
Verhältnis von Kolonialismus und Holocaust (Münster, 2011) and J. Sarkin,
Germany’s Genocide of the Herero. Kaiser Wilhelm II, His General, His
Settlers, His Soldiers (Cape Town, 2010).
20. H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951) and
A. Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, [org. 1955] Translated by Joan
Pinkham, (London, 1972). See also D. Stone, ‘Defending the Plural:
Hannah Arendt and Genocide Studies’, New Formations, vol. 71, 1 (2011).
21. M. Bomholt Nielsen, ‘Selective Memory: British Perceptions of the
Herero-Nama Genocide, 1904–1908 and 1918’, Journal of Southern
African Studies, vol. 43, 2 (2017).
1 INTRODUCTION 13
22. U. Lindner, ‘German Colonialism and the British neighbour in Africa

before 1914’ in V. Langbehn and M. Salama (eds.), German Colonialism-
Race, the Holocaust and Postwar Germany (New York, 2011), p. 255. See
also B. Kundrus, ‘From the Herero to the Holocaust? Some Remarks on
the Current Debate’, Africa Spectrum, vol. 40, 2 (2005).
23. R. Kössler, ‘Genocide in Namibia, the Holocaust and the Issue of
Colonialism’, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 38, 2 (2012),
p. 237. See also Kuss, German Colonial Wars pp. 2–4 and M. Fitzpatrick,
‘The Pre-History of the Holocaust? The Sonderweg and Historikerstreit
Debates and the Abject Colonial Past’, Central European History, vol. 41,
3 (2008).
24. A. Eckl, ‘The Herero Genocide of 1904: Source-critical and Methodological
Considerations’, Journal of Namibian Studies, vol. 3 (2014), pp. 38–41.
25. See Chap. 7.
26. L.G. Gann and P. Duignan, The Rulers of German Africa, 1884–1914
(Stanford, 1977) p. ix-x. See also The Rulers of British Africa, 1884–1914
and The Rulers of Belgian Africa, 1884–1914 (both Stanford, 1979).
27. See here R. Drayton, The Masks of Empire: The World History underneath
Modern Empires and Nations, c. 1500 to the Present (London 2017).
28. M. Legassick, Hidden Histories of Gordonia: Land Dispossession and
Resistance in the Northern Cape, 1800–1990 (Johannesburg, 2016), p. 160.
29. See J. Darwin, The Empire Project – The Rise and Fall of the British World-
System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge, 2009).
30. Several major publications have stressed the global and transnational nature
and context of colonial empires. See for instance, Darwin, Empire Project
and C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (New York,
2004). Also V. Barth and R. Cvetkovski, ‘Encounters of Empire:
Methodological Approaches’ in V. Barth and R. Cvetkovski (eds.), Imperial
Co-operation and Transfer, 1870–1930 (London, 2015), pp. 21–3.
Specifically for the notion of trans-imperialism see, for instance,
J. Cromwell, ‘More than Slaves and Sugar: Recent Historiography of the
Trans-imperial Caribbean and its Sinew Populations’ History Compass, vol.
12, 10 (2014), p. 778.
31. See among others, S. Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial
Germany (Cambridge, 2010); U. Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen:
Deutschland und Grossbritanien als Imperiallmächte in Afrika 1880–1914
(Frankfurt-am-Main, 2011); J. Leonhard and U. von Hirschhausen,
Comparing Empires: Encounters and Transfers in the Nineteenth and Early
Twentieth Century (Göttingen, 2011) and B. Naranch and G. Eley (eds.),
German Colonialism in a Global Age (Durham NC, 2014).
32. See the otherwise excellent Prosser Gifford & Wm. Roger Louis Britain
and Germany in Africa. Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (New Haven
CT, 1967).
33. See notably J. Darwin, ‘Imperialism and the Victorians: The Dynamics of
Territorial Expansion’ The English Historical Review, 112 (1997) and
C.A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World,
1780–1830 (London, 1989).
34. Potter and Saha, ‘Global History, Imperial History and Connected
Histories’.
35. Bomholt Nielsen, ‘Selective memory’, pp. 317–9. See also P. Grosse,
‘What Does National Socialism have to do with Colonialism? A Conceptual
Framework’, in E. Ames, M. Klotz and L. Wildenthal (eds.), Germany’s
Colonial Pasts (Lincoln NE, 2005), p. 118. Of course, there also exist
transnational and even global histories of the Holocaust. See for instance
J. Burzlaff, ‘Towards a transnational history of the Holocaust: Social rela-
tions in Eastern Europe’, Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah, vol. 212, 2 (2020).
36. Potter and Saha, ‘Global History, Imperial History and Connected
Histories’. Also F. Cooper and A. Laura Stoler, ‘Between Metropole and
Colony: Rethinking a research agenda’, in Frederick Cooper and Ann
Laura Stoler (eds.) Tensions of Empire: Colonial cultures in a bourgeois
world, (Berkeley, 1997).
37. See S. Zantop, Colonial Fantasies. Conquest, Family, and Nation in
Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham NC, 1997).
38. T. Dedering, ‘War and mobility in the Borderlands of South Western Africa
in the Early Twentieth Century’, The International Journal of African
Historical Studies, vol. 39, 2 (2006), p. 276. More generally on colonial
borderlands as sites of weakness, see for instance, J. Adelman and S. Aron,
‘From Borderlands to Borders. Empires, Nation-States and the Peoples in
Between in North American History’, The American Historical Review,
vol. 104, 3 (1999).
39. H. Drechsler, Let us Die Fighting. The Struggle of the Herero and Nama
against German Imperialism, 1884–1915 (London, 1980), p. 204. Also
M. Fröhlich, Von Konfrontation zur Koexistenz. Die deutsch-englischen
Kolonialbeziehungen in Africa zwischen 1884 und 1914 (Bochum,
1990), p. 266.
40. U. Lindner, ‘Colonialism as a European Project in Africa before 1914?
British and German concepts of Colonial Rule in Sub-Saharan Africa’,
Comparativ, vol. 19, 1 (2009), p. 106.
41. See Dedering, ‘War and mobility in the Borderlands’.
CHAPTER 2
Colonial Violence in Southern Africa

at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
As Frederick Cooper noted in 1994, violence was ‘the most obvious fea-
ture of colonial rule’ but was, at the time, inadequately studied.1 Since
then, colonial violence has become a significant field within colonial his-
tory. Especially in settler colonial studies, colonial violence has become
fundamental in how settler colonialism, and the gradual dispossession of
indigenous lands, caused conflicts, widespread racism and, at times, geno-
cide.2 The centrality of ‘everyday violence’ where settlers and colonial offi-
cers committed excessive violence—floggings, beatings and rape—on
colonised groups in Africa and elsewhere has provided a deeper under-
standing of the malignant nature of colonialism.3 It is crucial, as Philip
Dwyer and Amanda Nettelbeck have observed, to recognise colonial vio-
lence as a contingent that was ‘diffuse, multi-layered and enormously vari-
able’.4 The term colonial violence therefore remains an inclusive term that
encompasses a number of complexities: for instance, while violence was
sometimes committed by a colonial state, violence inflicted on local popu-
lations by white settlers could directly undermine the colonial state’s
authority. As Matthias Häussler has demonstrated, the everyday violence
committed by German settlers on the Herero and Nama in GSWA was
characterised by ‘boundless aggressiveness’, making it more difficult for
the colonial administration to secure stability.5 Thus, colonial violence in
itself cannot be reduced to a dichotomy between coloniser and colonised,
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Bomholt Nielsen, Britain, Germany and Colonial Violence in
South-West Africa, 1884–1919, Cambridge Imperial and
Post-Colonial Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94561-9_2
because, within the former, there were opposing groups, motives and out-
looks. Furthermore, in the pursuit of colonial hegemony—or rather domi-
nance—there were in most cases also a central element of local indigenous
collaboration with the imperial states.6 Finally, the consequences of colo-
nial violence can be traced to a multitude of destinations beyond the per-
petrators and victims involved, affecting not merely on colonial
administration and stability, but, as we shall see, across the colonial border.
This chapter serves a basic but important purpose. By first examining
ostensibly mutual perceptions of British and German colonial rule before
World War I, it provides a basic context. At the time, several stereotypes
informed officials, the media and the public alike, prejudicing opinion of
what German colonialism entailed. Such stereotypes should not be disre-
garded because they functioned as demarcations that positioned British
colonial rule as a contrast. Second, this chapter explains the fundamental
progression and development of colonial violence in GSWA. After an ini-
tial account of the Herero and Nama rebellions, a discussion follows of the
methods and practices of colonial violence used by the Germans in a trans-
colonial context. Indeed, methods such as concentration camps circulated
among the colonial powers and the Germans in particular drew inspiration
from British colonial experiences, including in the South African War
(1899–1902). This chapter should therefore be considered as the founda-
tion for the remainder of the book in that it explains the type, scale and
context of colonial violence in GSWA.
A central facet of colonial violence is the pervasive element of racism.
Franz Fanon observed that dehumanisation of the colonised was a key
premise of colonialism, giving the coloniser ‘the right to kill’.7 Not only in
the context of settler colonialism were racial attitudes crucial determi-
nants: military violence was also profoundly shaped by racial stereotypes.
For instance, strategies and weaponry reflected racial predispositions, per-
haps best exemplified in the use of the expanding Dum-Dum bullet,
which, because of its severity, was believed to make an impression on oth-
erwise inferior races that could not feel or process pain in the same way as
Europeans. More importantly, in military strategies, C.E. Callwell’s man-
ual Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (1896) reiterated the impor-
tance of seeking a large-scale battle with ‘savage peoples’ who only
understood the language of violence.8 Callwell’s manual quickly became a
standard guide to colonial ‘small wars’ both within and outside Britain and
it was translated into French and read and used in Germany. An underly-
ing premise of the manual and colonial military violence was that conflicts
2 COLONIAL VIOLENCE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA AT THE TURN… 17
in the colonial world were inherently different from those in Europe.

Opponents were ‘savage’, ‘disorganised’ and would not refrain from using
‘dishonourable’ tactics.9 The very logic of colonial counter-insurgency was
therefore profoundly shaped by a racial logic, where indigenous groups
were reduced to stereotypes such as ‘fanatics’ or ‘barbarians’.10
Colonial violence, however, did not emerge solely from racial predispo-
sitions; it was also caused by a number of additional factors. Crucially,
colonial powers were constantly searching for authority and hegemony
and only rarely achieved it. As shown by Antoinette Burton, for example,
a key part of colonial history involves consistent ‘troubles’—insurgencies
and rebellions against colonial rule.11 The inherent weakness of colonial
states, emanating from a plurality of factors including geography, lack of
manpower and inadequate ‘tools of empire’, pushed violence and terror as
a modus operandi in order to maintain authority and stability.12 For
instance, the colonial state’s efforts to police GSWA were severely encum-
bered by the sheer size of the colony. GSWA was as large as 835,100
square kilometres—one and a half times the size of Germany, meaning
that enforcing state authority was difficult to say the least.13 Violence was
therefore inflicted upon Africans in order to create the impression of
European control, especially as the colonial administrators had relatively
few other effective means of enforcement available.14 But as observed by
Jeffrey Herbst, despite the use of force and coercion, the colonial power
were frequently unable to enforce colonial dominance ‘always and every-
where’.15 The weakness of colonial states was not unknown to colonisers
as fear also positioned violence at the centre of colonialism. Dominik
Schaller, for instance, has shown that German soldiers in GSWA and East
Africa were constantly afraid of ambushes and alarmed by rumours of
mutilations and slaughters, furthering the formation of a psyche where
they more readily committed atrocities and acts of violence.16 In addition
to racism, a simple dynamic such as fear alongside the inherent structural
weakness of the colonial state in its attempts to achieve hegemony were
therefore underlying causes and driving forces in the formation and escala-
tion of colonial violence. The rebellions and genocide in GSWA between
1903 and 1908 fit many of the identified causes and dynamics of colonial
violence. The gradual encroachment of settler colonialism, pervasive rac-
ism and inherent state weakness in terms of finance, manpower and
authority impeded by geography were some of the most important fac-
tors. As we shall see below, such weakness and fear was shared by colonial
neighbours, as rebellions and fragility in one colony could severely impact

the stability and hegemony of a colonial state in another.
Several immediate causes can be identified for the Herero and later
Nama rebellion. The dispossession of Herero lands, particularly after the
1896–7 Rinderpest (cattle plague) epizootic was a key reason for the
rebellion as the Herero were left in an increasingly desperate situation.
After selling off land and cattle, many sought employment with German
settlers in positions where they were subjected to everyday violence.17
Paired with the overtly racist legal system, the consequences of settler
colonialism can perhaps be described as the fundamental reason for the
rebellion. However, it was also a calculated strike on the part of the Herero
as the rebellion came when Governor Theodor Leutwein was away with
the German forces in the southern parts of GSWA to suppress the
Bondelswarts Nama rebellion that had broken out on 25 October 1903.18
The outbreak of the Herero rebellion forced Leutwein to conclude a hap-
hazard and unstable peace with the Bondelswarts, and many resistance
leaders, such as Jakob Marengo, refused the terms and continued the
rebellion. For the German settlers, the rebellion quickly assumed the char-
acteristics of a race war and many Africans who did not participate in the
rebellion were lynched, hanged or beaten to death. Indicatively, early on it
was deemed necessary that Germany should not only overcome the
Herero, but crush them altogether.19
The Brutal Germans? Mutual Perceptions

and Inspiration
From its very beginning, German colonialism was to a large degree

inspired by the British example. It was a general view in Germany that
Britain’s colonial possessions across the globe represented the source of its
status as a great world power.20 As Erik Grimmer-Solem recently observed,
German ‘world-policy’ (Weltpolitik) was exclusively not the result of a
Prussian-militarist nationalism, as is the conventional view, but had trans-
national origins.21 It was therefore only natural for Germany, as a new-
comer to the colonial stage, to look to Britain as an experienced colonial
power, in order to draw inspiration but also to develop a specific German
colonial style.22 However, the opposite was rarely the case: Britain’s osten-
sible self-identification as a morally superior and experienced colonial
power meant that German colonialism was viewed through a rather
condescending lens that rarely avoided pervasive stereotypes. Indeed, the

common characteristics of German colonialism generally included its
emphasis on bureaucracy and Prussian militarism.
The notion of the brutal Germans is closely linked to the idea of
German colonialism as exceptionally brutal and a distinct German milita-
rist culture determining the actions and brutality of German colonial
forces.23 Nonetheless, Susanne Kuss has asserted that this notion of
German exceptionalism does not take account of the fact that German
colonial forces mainly comprised volunteers, sailors and African recruits
with widely different backgrounds and agendas. Instead of an overarching
culture of Teutonic efficiency and brutality, which the Nazis later adopted,
German colonial military operations were improvised, haphazard and
determined by local conditions.24 Nevertheless, in the age of imperialism,
such stereotypes were not unimportant, representing widespread views
that informed both public and official audiences of a prejudiced definition
of what German colonialism entailed. Crucially, stereotypes also served a
function: by presenting other colonial powers as stereotypical, they reiter-
ated alleged British superiority and highlighted the flaws of the other.
The 1904 special issue (Picture 2.1) of the German satirical magazine
Simplicissimuss encapsulates these stereotypes. At the top, German colo-
nialism was depicted as militarist, orderly and scientific in the marching
giraffes and the capture of the crocodile indicating the taming of the ‘wild’
colonial world. British colonialism, however, was satirised as preaching the
gospel through a civilising mission while pouring alcohol into their colo-
nised subjects in order to squeeze wealth from them.25 Although
Simplicissimuss was a left-wing paper that generally lamented colonialism,
its views on British colonialism in particular were shared by colonial societ-
ies in Germany, where, on one occasion, British colonialism in Southern
Africa was described as characterised by ‘the slavery of taxation and tariffs’
while Germany was merely ‘emphasising order’ in GSWA.26 Indeed,
German observers often deemed British colonialism too soft and lenient,
especially in relation to its ‘native policy’.
From a British perspective, the notion of ‘the brutal German’ was
intrinsic to the Blue Book in 1918 and echoed a widespread notion of
perceptions of Germany and German colonialism.27 In this sense, views of
German colonialism during and after World War I formed part of the
denunciation of the ‘Huns’ and were linked to lamentations over, for
instance, the ‘rape’ of Belgium.28 Before the war, however, British
perceptions of German colonial rule were ostensibly divided into two
Picture 2.1 ‘Colonial Powers’ by Thomas T. Heine, Simplicissimuss, 1904, vol.

6, p. 55
phases: first, through the 1890s, British observers often considered

German colonialism violent, even before the 1904 Herero–Nama rebel-
lions and the publication of the Blue Book in 1918. For instance, explorer
Joseph Thomson wrote a damning assessment of German colonialism in
the Contemporary Review in 1899 concerning Carl Peters in German East
Africa:: ‘The introduction of civilization to the semi-barbarous peoples
who inhabit those parts […] is joyously being celebrated by the thunder
of artillery, the demolition of towns and human bloodshed.’29
In the second phase, in the last few years before the outbreak of war in
1914, German colonial rule was generally seen more positively. Despite
increasingly hostile attitudes between Britain and Germany on a diplo-
matic level, attempts to find common ground for a détente in the colonial
world led to commendations of German colonialism, especially its ‘state-
building capabilities’.30 For instance, in 1912, Berlin-based British jour-
nalist, Louis Hamilton complimented German colonialism for managing
to establish ‘order and peace, improving the conditions of the native and,
in short, setting them on their feet, and giving them a change to continue
along the path of prosperity that is being prepared for them’.31 Although
some continued to highlight the excessive violence associated with German
colonialism, this came to be seen as a sad but expected step in Germany’s
process of becoming a colonial power. In part, this more positive view of
the methods of German colonial rule derived from the positioning of King
Leopold II of Belgium as the archetype of colonial cruelty. To many
humanitarian groups in Britain such as the Aborigines’ Protection Society,
Germany was an ‘enlightened’ colonial power on a par with Britain and
France, and should extend their colonial responsibilities to avoid less
enlightened powers, such as Portugal, governing indigenous peoples.32
In the colonies too, different perspectives of inspiration and differentia-
tion were profound and served to clarify settler identities and demarcate
colonial territory in British and German spheres. This demarcation, how-
ever, was complicated by the presence of a majority African population,
creating overarching notions of settler identities that spanned above
national belonging in the form of British, German and Afrikaner (Boer)
identity.33 This is suggestive of a ‘sharing of the white man’s burden’ in
Southern Africa, where white settlers, regardless of their nationality and
the presence of colonial borders, ostensibly cooperated to subjugate
Africans. While such characterisations of Britain’s involvement in and reac-
tions to the Herero and Nama rebellion are oversimplified, there was nev-
ertheless a profound racial element across the colonial borders in
Anglo-German Southern Africa. For instance, while German colonialism

emulated British colonialism more than the other way around, there are
indications that, to an extent, the nascent stages of apartheid drew inspira-
tion from the German native policy in GSWA.34 Indeed, in 1956, South
African senator Heinrich Vedder proudly proclaimed in parliament that
apartheid was in fact invented by the Germans in GSWA and that South
West Africa was the only place in the world where it had ‘been exercised in
an increasing degree for fifty years’.35 Given that, from 1918, Britain was
busy discrediting German colonialism for its state racism and brutal mis-
treatment of indigenous peoples, the positive views and South African
inspiration drawn from GSWA in the creation of apartheid appear strik-
ingly hypocritical.
The inspiration behind colonial policies, however, was a dominant fea-
ture in Anglo-German relations in Southern Africa before World War
I. Although the Cape Colony and later the Union of South Africa saw
little reason to emulate German methods before the formation of apart-
heid, German colonial methods in GSWA were profoundly shaped by
inspiration from its British neighbour. This was linked to the changing
purpose of GSWA as a colony: despite a minor diamond rush in 1908, the
protracted mineral wealth of GSWA remained undiscovered. The eco-
nomic focus therefore shifted towards farming and cattle herding, which
was in turn linked to the new policy of establishing a German settler col-
ony comparable to the British equivalents in Australasia, Canada and
South Africa, potentially diverting the exodus of German emigrants
departing for America to settle in a German colony instead and further
expand German hegemony.36
In order to further assert the German presence in GSWA in preparation
for the arrival of more settlers, Curt von François occupied the plains of
Windhoek in 1890, establishing the new headquarters of the Schutztruppe,
which would in time, become the capital. A year later, von François was
rewarded with the governorship. He immediately fused civil and military
administration and oversaw a rapid expansion of German authority to the
colonial hinterlands.37 In making use of the war between the Herero and
Nama, von François had the Herero accept a ‘protection treaty’, formalis-
ing the German presence in the area.38 When hostilities between the
Herero and Nama ended in November 1892, von François feared that he
would be met with an organised attempt by either the Herero or the Nama
to expel the Germans from Windhoek. In an attempt to make Nama chief
Hendrik Witbooi submit to a protection treaty, which would finally accept
German colonial authority, von François raided the Nama settlement of

Hornkranz in 1893, killing eighty women and children.39 The ensuing
conflict was received poorly in both Germany and GSWA, where the prin-
cipal business, the South West Africa Company, protested because the raid
severely impeded their business, prompting the replacement of von
François with Theodor Leutwein in 1893.
Leutwein embodied the new aim of turning GSWA into a viable settler
colony, introducing what scholars have since labelled ‘the Leutwein sys-
tem’. He was fixated on the creation of an effective German colonial state
and rapidly expanded the administration to ensure rule of law and to make
economic exploitation of the territory more efficient, attracting more set-
tlers.40 At the same time, Leutwein looked to subjugate the local popula-
tion via treaties by propping up local power holders as collaborators.41 In
his memoirs, published in 1911, Leutwein reiterated the inspiration he
had drawn from the British colonial experience in his state-building proj-
ect. British ‘native policy’, he wrote, was defined by ‘convincing the
natives’ to collaborate with the colonial power and allow them to rule
‘with a nominal presence’.42 Indicatively, the Leutwein system on the one
hand looked to secure the peace and stability of GSWA through treaties
and agreements with the local population and, on the other, sought to
expand the land available for German settlement.
This was a clear contradiction as the growing demand for land for farm-
ing and grazing of cattle by German settlers was at the cost of African
lands. When the Rinderpest epizootic struck East and Southern Africa in
the 1890s, it worsened the already fragile peace in GSWA.43 The Rinderpest
forced Herero herders to sell off their lands and work for German settlers,
who managed the epizootic better. This further strained relations between
Germans and Africans, and, with many Herero working for German set-
tlers, abuses increasingly became a part of everyday life in GSWA. This
pattern of settler colonialism was not unique to GSWA. The intensifying
encroachment, by means of, for example, expanding railway systems and
the dispossession of locals and their lands, was a shared feature of settler
colonialism as a whole. Indeed, similar developments were evident in
other settler colonies such as British Southern Rhodesia in 1896 and Natal
in 1906, where the gradual encroachment of white settlers caused
rebellions.44
While Leutwein’s state-building project was largely inspired by the
British, it also posed a challenge relating to how the colony itself should
be administered. Germany had no experience of settler colonialism
elsewhere and so Leutwein and the German government in Berlin looked

to the Cape Colony.45 As Jakob Zollmann has noted, German colonial law
would be ‘unthinkable’ without ‘examples and influence’ from other colo-
nial states. As Britain, with its long history of settler colonialism, adminis-
tration and law, had already dealt with several legal-technical problems,
there was no reason for Germany to completely re-invent its colonial laws
and legislation.46 The key issue at stake was that, in settler colonies in gen-
eral, settlers tended to see it as their entitlement to dispossess the local
population of their land, but also to have significant influence on the local
administration. In 1899, Leutwein sought to assuage such views by divid-
ing GSWA into districts with elective councils consisting of German set-
tlers.47 Later, in 1903, director of the Kolonial Abteilung (colonial
department) in the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), Oskar Stuebel,
noted that the German Colonial Society ‘presented specific proposals to
the Reichskansler, which advocates for the introduction of an advisory
board such as the legislative councils in the English colonies but with cer-
tain limitations’.48 In other words, the German Colonial Society put for-
ward a model loosely based on the British self-governing colonies. It was
crucial that the German colonies remained loyal to the Kaiser, but here
too the British settler colonies, many of which obtained Dominion status
in the first decade of the twentieth century, was a case-in-point: despite
their increased autonomy, they remained loyal to the British crown, as
proven in their support in the South African War.49 In late 1904, the
German Colonial Society demanded that a Government Council
(Gouvernmentsrat) be created with members drawn from German settlers
who had lived in GSWA for several years and had ‘proper relations’ with
the local population.50 This was intended to expand on Leutwein’s district
elective council and give more influence and power to settlers, and would
expectedly lead to increased immigration to GSWA.
At the crux of German colonialism, therefore, lay the contrast and
inspiration of Germany’s British neighbour in South Africa. The stereo-
type of the ‘brutal German’ is complicated by the fact that Leutwein and
others looked to British modes of colonial rule as inspiration for methods
to be implemented in GSWA. Indeed, there was arguably a subtle and
inadvertent British factor in the outbreak of the rebellions: the Germans,
especially Leutwein, in looking to British modes of settler colonialism,
emulated processes that inevitably led to rebellions via the gradual subju-
gation and dispossession of indigenous lands.
The Herero and Nama Rebellions, 1903–8

On 12 January 1904, the Herero, under the leadership of Chief Samuel
Maherero, rebelled against the Germans. More than 100 German settlers
were killed as the Herero quickly swept across the central parts of the pro-
tectorate. The District Officer in Okahandja, Gustav Duft, notified the
Auswärtiges Amt in Berlin of ‘a great slaughter of Germans’ by the Herero,
indicating that ‘great force and weapons’ would be necessary to suppress
the rebellion.51 Duft’s request did not fall on deaf ears: news of the rebel-
lion caused great resentment in Germany and it was followed by wide-
spread demands for harsh retribution against the Herero.52 The Herero
rebellion, as Drechsler has noted, marked ‘the beginning of Germany’s
bloodiest and most protracted colonial war’.53 Overt orders of extermina-
tion, concentration camps and slave-like labour conditions were some of
the characteristics that followed. According to the Blue Book, 92,258
Africans perished between 1903 and 1908 because of the German sup-
pression, but such exact estimation remains unsubstantiated although his-
torians agree the death toll to be somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000
victims.54 After the rebellion, the survivors were forced into reserves to live
out a meagre existence in areas that were unprofitable and difficult to cul-
tivate. Forced labour, horrendous work conditions and identity controls
were all part of a new regime in GSWA, where African power to resist was
thwarted and racial segregation and exploitation became a reality.55
The conflict in GSWA can ostensibly be divided into three stages: first,
the Herero offensive where settlers sought refuge in settlements and the
Germans were mostly on the defensive. The second stage saw the arrival
of reinforcements and the German offensive, while the third stage wit-
nessed the escalation of the conflict to a full-blown genocide concurrently
with the Nama rebellion in October 1904. In March 1904, Leutwein
returned to Hereroland from the south after his haphazard peace with the
Bondelswarts. However, he failed to break the Herero forces and, on sev-
eral occasions, had to retreat to avoid being defeated.56 Nevertheless, the
Herero gradually retreated northwards towards the Waterberg plateau.
Although Leutwein demanded ‘nothing short of unconditional surren-
der’, he remained in favour of securing a quick peace deal to prevent an
escalation of the conflict. On 30 May 1904, he issued a proclamation
intended to deplete the Herero numbers and end the rebellion, promising
mercy if they surrendered. Of course, ‘no mercy can be given to those who
murdered white people. But you others who have no such guilt, be wise
and do not place your fate with those guilty. Leave them and save your
lives!’ Military officers, settlers and the public in Germany resented this
attempt, but, for Leutwein, they were ‘blind to the actual conditions’ and
he lamented the ‘fanatics who want to see the Herero destroyed alto-
gether’.57 For Leutwein, annihilating the Herero as a people was detri-
mental to the development of GSWA and instead ‘it would be quite
sufficient if they are politically dead.’58
Leutwein’s failure to end the rebellion quickly and his attempts to
secure a peace deal led to his dismissal in June 1904. Kaiser Wilhelm II
handpicked his replacement, General Lothar von Trotha, despite objec-
tions from Chancellor Bülow and the Kolonial Abteilung (Colonial
department) of the Foreign Office.59 This represented a new course in
suppressing the Herero. As John Cleverly, resident magistrate in the
British enclave of Walvis Bay (sometimes Walfisch Bay), correctly antici-
pated, this move resulted ‘in a general rising of all natives in the coun-
try’.60 Trotha immediately transferred administrative power to himself, in
effect making GSWA a colonial military dictatorship.61 Trotha had experi-
ence from the brutal suppression of the Wahehe rebellion in German East
Africa in 1894 and in 1900 and was Brigade Commander of the East Asian
Expedition Corps during the Boxer Rebellion in China.62 As an ardent
follower of Callwell’s instructions, Trotha sought to force the Herero into
a large-scale battle to give them one decisive blow with a ruthless attack,
because, as he noted, ‘in war against non-humans one cannot conduct war
humanely.’63
The decisive battle came on 11 August near the Waterberg plateau. The
majority of the Herero people, including armed rebels and civilians, had
gathered there. The German forces comprised approximately 2000 ill-
trained troops, many on horseback, and as many as thirty-six artillery
pieces and fourteen machine guns. They surrounded the Herero on all
sides, leaving the south-eastern flank, towards the Omaheke desert,
exposed.64 The ‘battle’ was more of a massacre as the German machine
guns and artillery killed thousands of Herero, including women and chil-
dren. Most of the Herero, though, managed to break through on the
south-eastern flank to the Omaheke, making use of dried-up riverbeds as
cover. The Omaheke, the western extension of the great Kalahari Desert
remains one of the most inhospitable places on Earth and, in 1904, was
virtually terra incognita for Europeans. When the Herero fled into the
desert, Trotha was handed the opportunity to seek the complete destruc-
tion of the Herero people and thus radicalise the conflict from total war to
genocide. After the battle, Trotha sent mobile units out to pursue the
survivors. This was costly and dangerous because of the inhospitable ter-
rain. The pursuit after the survivors inherently changed the nature of the
conflict, as it no longer aimed for the pacification of the Herero capability
to rebel, but instead aimed for their physical destruction, in whole or
in part.65
The Omaheke itself was a key component of this new strategy: instead
of pursuing the Herero, Trotha gave orders to patrol the desert’s borders,
poison waterholes and cut off escape routes. In effect, the Omaheke
became a natural prison for the Herero survivors. To make his intentions
of extermination clear, Trotha issued the infamous Vernichtungsbefehl
(extermination order) on 2 October 1904. ‘The Herero people,’ it stated,
‘must now leave the country.’ Every Herero ‘within the German frontiers
with or without arms will be shot.’66 Women and children were to be
driven back to the desert by shooting over their heads.67 Thus, instead of
the bullet, they would face likely death by starvation, thirst and exhaustion
in the Omaheke. On the same day as the extermination order was issued,
Trotha pre-emptively defended his position, arguing that the ‘nation (the
Herero) as such should be annihilated.’ Moreover, peace was futile,
because ‘the Negro’ only respects ‘brute force’. ‘Mildness on my side,’ he
asserted, ‘would only be interpreted as weakness. They have to perish in
the Sandveld or try to cross the Bechuanaland border.’68 Trotha’s extermi-
nation order is generally considered the key moment of genocidal intent
in GSWA. However, there remains some disagreement on when the geno-
cidal phase of the conflict began. According to Zimmerer, for instance, the
genocide began with the battle of Waterberg, with the south-eastern flank
left intentionally exposed so that ‘the Omaheke would finish the extermi-
nation’.69 Isabel Hull, however, suggests that genocidal intent only devel-
oped after Waterberg with the Vernichtungsbefehl as a way to actively
pursue and kill the remaining Herero.70 Strategically, however, leaving the
flank towards the Omaheke exposed resonated with contemporary mili-
tary strategies, because it was likely that the German officers believed the
Herero would be least likely to flee in this direction.71 The timing of geno-
cidal intent therefore remains disputed.
In GSWA, the order immediately changed the nature of military opera-
tions. Importantly, though, there was no consensus behind it. Several
German officers, such as Major Ludwig von Estoff (later promoted to
Colonel), who tried to convince Trotha to reconsider and enter negotia-
tions with the Herero, actually criticised it. For Estoff, Trotha’s
exterminatory policy was ‘as equally gruesome as senseless’. Instead, he

believed that ‘we could still have saved many of them and their rich herds,
if we had pardoned them. They had been punished enough. I suggested
this to General von Trotha but he wanted their total extermination.’72
Others, such as Lieutenant von Beesten, were less critical and took the
order to heart. After making contact with a group of Herero survivors,
Beesten lured Herero captain Yoel Kavezeri and his followers to an aban-
doned farmhouse, promising not to hurt them. When they arrived,
Beesten had already issued instructions to his troops to be ready for battle
and flank the Herero so that they would be trapped. Caught within the
fences of the farmhouse, up to fifty Herero were mowed down with
machine guns. Beesten, in his report, commended the Kaltblütigkeit
(cold-bloodedness) of his troops in executing his orders.73
In Germany, news of the extermination order was received negatively
and was heftily criticised by the Social Democrats. August Bebel, while
admitting to the barbarism of Africans, proclaimed that the suppression of
the Herero rebellion was ‘not just barbaric, but bestial’.74 According to
another Social Democrat, Georg Ledebour, the extermination order ‘con-
tradicted our entire conception of humanity in war, even in those con-
ducted against natives’.75 In the government, Chief of the General Staff,
Count von Schlieffen had been informed of the Vernichtungsbefehl already
two days after it was issued, but alongside Chancellor von Bülow, he
quickly distanced himself from the order and appealed to the Kaiser, who,
following intensifying pressure, rescinded the order in December 1904.76
Instead of shooting the Herero on sight, German troops were now to take
prisoners. Many did surrender to the Germans voluntarily, especially after
appeals from missionaries working as intermediaries.77 However, captivity
was not much of an improvement in terms of violence: those who surren-
dered were chained, branded with the letters ‘GH’ (Gefangene Herero)
and sent to concentration camps. Rescinding the extermination order thus
had two immediate outcomes. First, it paved the way for concentration
camps to be the main feature of the German suppression of the Herero
rebellion. Second, it allowed Trotha to focus his attention to the south,
where the Nama had rebelled a day after the proclamation of the extermi-
nation order.78
Nama troops had aided the Germans against the Herero and saw
slaughter at Waterberg. In this sense, the Nama War, or Hottentottenkrieg,
as contemporaries termed it, was a pre-emptive strike, while the extermi-
nation order was the last straw.79 Trotha, upon hearing the news, was
angered and had the Nama troops who fought for him put in detention.
Eventually they were deported to Togo where most would perish from
tropical diseases and malnourishment.80 The Nama posed a completely
different challenge to the Germans than the Herero. They had been famil-
iar with German strategies since the Bondelswarts rebellion in 1903 and
Waterberg had proven the urgency to avoid a large-scale battle. The Nama
therefore employed guerrilla warfare and made full use of their knowledge
of the rugged terrain to the south, extending the conflict to 1908.81
Concentration Camps: Transfer

of Colonial Methods
In the context of colonial violence, the most significant entanglement

between British and German colonial spheres in Southern Africa involved
the circulation of concentration camps as a practice.82 Indeed, the camps
used by the Germans against the Herero and Nama were directly inspired
by the British example from the South African War which had only ended
two years previously. During the South African War, German observers
condemned the practice but also noted its usage against guerrilla warfare.
For instance, Friedrich von Lindequist, later Governor of GSWA but at
the time Consul General in Cape Town, was an ardent critic of the use of
concentration camps in South Africa, but, in GSWA, he continued with
and even intensified the usage of such camps against the Herero and Nama.
The term ‘concentration camp’ today sparks connotations of the Nazi
regime and the Holocaust, a key perspective for historians advocating a
colonial Sonderweg.83 However, the concentration camp as a colonial
method at the turn of the nineteenth century was a common practice on
the part of colonial powers that differed fundamentally from those created
during World War II. Instead, they were intended to ‘clear’ the country-
side of civilians that sustained guerrilla resistance.84 While the first concen-
tration camps were established during the South African War, the idea of
‘re-concentrating’ civilian population was invented in 1896 by Spanish
general Valeriano Weyler Y Nicolau to curb guerrilla resistance against
Spanish rule in Cuba. In order to cut off the guerrilla’s supply and support
from the civil population, he ‘re-concentrated’ most of the rural popula-
tion into towns. Similar to South Africa, it was a move to counter the
Cuban guerrillas and it is estimated that up to 170,000 civilian Cubans
died as result of this policy, earning Weyler the nickname ‘the butcher’.
Despite American criticism of Weyler’s policy, the American military used

the same practice in the Philippines in 1901, with the same purpose of
separating guerrillas from the civilian population with similar catastrophic
consequences for civilians. The British use of concentration camps during
the South African War, which perhaps remains the most notable example
of concentration camps in the colonial world, was thus not a practice that
emerged in a vacuum. The concentration policies in Cuba, the Philippines,
South Africa and, as we shall see, GSWA, all shared similarities and were
linked in the minds of contemporaries.85 Formal links wherein colonial
powers shared practices and methods of colonial rule therefore existed.
According to Lindner, this amounted to what she terms a ‘shared colonial
archive’, where the experiences of other colonial powers were drawn upon
and amended to the local context.86
The camps used by the British during the South African War were
notorious for their abysmal conditions and the high mortality rate of Boer
prisoners. In a bid to counter the bittereinders’ (literally ‘bitter-enders’)
successful guerrilla campaign, Commander of the British forces Horatio
Kitchener decided to conduct a scorched earth strategy and sent civilians
into concentration camps in order to starve out the guerrillas.87 To this
day, differing views of these concentration camps and of whether this
amounted to genocide remain. Undoubtedly, though, the horrible condi-
tions, in part caused by maladministration and outbreaks of measles, rep-
resented one of the main reasons for so many deaths. According to Peter
Warwick, as many as 26,000 civilian Boers, most of them children, died in
these concentration camps.88 Concentration camps were established for
Africans too but these actually saw a lower mortality rate than those for
the Boers because diseases were less widespread.89 The camps were at the
crux of criticism levied against Britain during the South African War, both
internationally and domestically.90 In Britain, the strong presence of
humanitarian groups and actors, most notably ‘that bloody woman’,
Emily Hobhouse, sustained active criticism of the war and Britain’s con-
duct, placing immense pressure on the British government and on the
conduct of the war.91 By 1904, Britain therefore had a record and experi-
ence in the usage of concentration camps, but had also witnessed their
tragic consequences and the criticism this generated.
When the Germans used the same practice a few years later across the
colonial border, it was not a case of direct copying. As part of the transfer
of such practices, several amendments were made according to local con-
ditions and the intentions of the perpetrators. A crucial and important
difference between the camps in South Africa and those in GSWA was
their intention: while the camps used by the British should not be vindi-
cated, they were not intended to exterminate, enslave or significantly
reduce the Boer population. The intention of the German camps in
GSWA, however, was exactly that, as the reduction of the Herero and
Nama populations opened up land for German settlers.92 While there was
a prevailing desire to punish the Boers, this never became the sole purpose
or the function of the camps in South Africa. Indicatively, the prisoners in
the camps were considered ‘refugees’ in ‘protective custody’.93 Conversely,
the camps in GSWA were intended to procure forced labour for dangerous
building projects and to satisfy widespread demand to punish savage
races.94 The concentration camps in GSWA, however, were not exclusively
exterminatory in function but also served two ostensibly strategic pur-
poses: first, as was the case with previous usages of concentration camps, a
main aim was to prevent the continuation of guerrilla resistance. In having
prisoners located in camps far from their homelands, there was little chance
of them re-joining the rebels should they escape. Furthermore, guerrillas
were cut off from civilian support in terms of supplies or information and
the camps could be used to lure resistance fighters to give up in the hope
of release for their friends and family. Second, the camps were intended to
mitigate inherent labour shortages in GSWA. Indeed, while the camps
were, for the Germans, an excellent method of punishing the Africans, the
concentration of a large indigenous population in camps also facilitated an
easy procurement of (forced) labour. Use of such labour could also further
strengthen Germany’s position, ensuring that ‘the fear and sub-ordinance
of Germany would spread.’95 Thus, the camps became intrinsically linked
to several major construction projects in GSWA such as railroads and wave
breakers. With these gruesome, yet pragmatic functions, the concentra-
tion camps policy was actually a Berlin induced policy intended to move
away from Trotha’s genocidal policy as proclaimed in the Vernichtungsbefehl.
However, it is reasonable to add another, third, purpose to these
camps—in particular, the Shark Island camp near Lüderitz. The reduction,
if not extermination, of Africans was not a bi-product of the concentration
camps nor an unintended consequence but a partially intended outcome.
In reducing the local population, the Germans aimed to dole out a severe
punishment and prevent future rebellions. Attempts were made to improve
prisoners’ conditions a few times, but these were negligible and cannot
overshadow the brutalities that occurred.96 In the end, the main difference
between the British concentration camps during the South African War
and those of the Germans in GSWA centred upon genocidal intentions

and practices in the latter. Indeed, prisoners in GSWA were subjected to
intentionally perpetrated atrocities that did not occur in South Africa. The
death rate in GSWA also reflected this—it was more than twice as high as
the camps in South Africa.97
The concentration camps in GSWA therefore had contradictory aims—
securing a labour force for projects that would be key to the colony’s
development on one hand and, on the other, exterminating or reducing
the numbers of the Herero and Nama, who would in essence make up that
same labour force. The result was a paradoxical and malicious policy of
extermination and exploitation. At the most notorious concentration
camp at Shark Island, the prisoners were subjected to constant beatings
and rape, and were kept behind barbed wire and guarded with machine
guns.98 The German administration estimated that 7682 of approximately
17,000 prisoners died the concentration camps between October 1904
and March 1907. These figures, however, remain highly dubious and
there are no indications how they could reach such an exact number.99
Labour shortage was an intrinsic problem in GSWA from the outset,
preventing the construction of otherwise important projects that would
further colonial hegemony, such as railways and harbours. The prisoners in
the concentration camps therefore posed a welcome opportunity for the
Germans to overcome this problem by using them as forced labourers.
The prisoners at Shark Island, for instance, were used to construct the
railway to Kubub and for the expansion of the harbour so that the town
could better facilitate trade, thus breaking the dependence on Walvis Bay
as the only deep-water harbour on the coastline.100 The plans were fin-
ished and the Germans were ready to commence construction of the har-
bour just as a large number of Nama prisoners arrived at Shark Island in
October 1906. Thus, the movement of prisoners in accordance with
labour needs was methodically organised.101 Construction of the harbour
included dangerous work such as blowing up boulders for a wave breaker,
which claimed many casualties. In overseeing this work, lack of concern
for Africans’ welfare was highly evident. The technician overseeing the
construction, Richard Müller, certainly did express concern, but not in
relation to the mistreatment and sufferings of the prisoners—rather about
the problems of maintaining a steady labour force because many prisoners
died so quickly when undertaking the dangerous work. Müller complained
that he had been promised ‘1600 Nama prisoners at his disposal’, but
ended up with only ‘30 to 40’, causing delays to the construction of the
wave breaker. ‘The reason for decline is to be found in the fact that seven
to eight Nama die daily. If measures are not taken to acquire (new) labour-
ers, I fear the work will not be completed.’102 The problem for Müller
therefore was that there was a malicious unbalance between exploitation
and forced labour on the one side and the murdering of prisoners on the
other. When the latter escalated, it would severely encumber the former
and thus delay construction projects that had become dependent on the
steady supply of forced labour from the concentration camps. This brutal
disregard for human life, reducing the prisoners to labourers with little or
no humanity, remains indicative of the savage nature of the genocide
in GSWA.
The link between forced labour and European colonialism in Africa
remains an inherent paradox, given the widespread notions of anti-slavery
associated with the imperial project. Indeed, anti-slavery and humanitari-
anism permeated metropolitan cultures of imperialism in Europe and were
written into treaties on colonialism, such as the 1885 Berlin Treaty, where
the signatory powers promised to suppress slavery and the slave trade in
Africa and ‘bringing home’ to the Africans, ‘the blessings of civilisation’.103
Yet, as Alice Conklin has shown in the case of French West Africa, the
colonial state often found it increasingly necessary to impose some kind of
coercion to ensure ‘sufficient manpower for building essential civilising
projects’ such as railroads.104 For instance, in Southern Rhodesia after the
1896 Matabele (Ndebele) and Shona rebellions, British officials were in
doubt whether the British South African Company’s compulsory labour
scheme should be discontinued. For High Commissioner to South Africa,
Alfred Milner, it was imperative that Africans were drawn upon as a
resource for labour under the guise of ‘public works’, not merely for the
sake of the physical development of the colony but also because it was
imperative to prevent them ‘becoming idle, and consequently restless and
dangerous’. The problem, he recognised, was that such a scheme could
easily lead to ‘mistaken accusations of slavery’.105
The supposed ‘educational’ effect of forced labour was also evident in
GSWA. For instance, the settlers in the district of Grootfontein expressed
in a petition to the Kolonial Abteilung their desire for harsh punishment
in the shape of forced labour because ‘only if the native feels that he works
will he be a useful member of the human race’. Furthermore, the ‘habit of
work will finally let him realise the benefits of this compulsion (forced
labour).’ Through forced labour, therefore, the Africans would be civilised.
It was a mean justified by its end. But more importantly, forced labour
would not merely be beneficial for Africans, they believed, it would also
give authority to the German colonial government as forced labour would
teach the Africans the habit of subjecting to a colonial state.106 Summarily,
through forced labour, renowned German colonial scholar Paul Rohrbach
proclaimed that the Africans could ‘earn a right to existence’.107
Despite its seemingly clear violation of established principles associated
with colonialism, the civilising mission and the Berlin Treaty of 1885,
forced labour was widespread in GSWA and was justified as a civilising
measure. Of course, the use of forced labour was not a feature unique to
German colonialism in GSWA. However, the application of concentration
camps as a method to procure a pool from which to draw forced labour
was a feature specific to the camps in GSWA together with the excessive
‘everyday’ violence committed against the Herero and Nama.108
Circulation of colonial practices through a shared archive was always
amended in accordance with local needs and conditions and depending
where the practice was to be used. In this sense, the camps in GSWA were
distinct from any previous concentration camps because of their genocidal
aims and the logic of enslavement.
* * *
Colonial violence in GSWA was shaped and informed by an inadvertent

British factor. In terms of the suppression of the Herero and Nama rebel-
lions, the total war strategy applied by Trotha was not particularly unique.
Indeed as observed by, among others, Gesine Krüger, total war, where the
civilian population was targeted was in fact the norm for colonial powers
in Africa.109 Furthermore, a frequent, if not natural, consequence of settler
colonialism in general was dispossession of indigenous lands alongside
oppression, racism and violence. As the idea of GSWA as a settler colony
was inspired by the British examples of South Africa, Canada and Australia
in particular, the violence that developed from settler colonialism also
emerged in GSWA. However, it is important in this context to reiterate
that this does not imply British complicity—these elements were adopted
by the Germans and not transmitted by the British. Indeed, they were
always adapted to local conditions and to serve aims established by the
Germans.
This adoption of modes of colonialism was perhaps most visible in the
idea of concentration camps as a transferable practice. It is clear that the
concentration camps policy in GSWA took on proportions and functions
that were not the case in Cuba, the Philippines or South Africa. The dif-
ference between the camps in GSWA and South Africa did not merely
centre upon the prisoners themselves, but also on the intentions and pur-
poses of the camps. In South Africa, the main aim was to curb the guerril-
las, whereas the Herero and Nama were ‘rebellious prisoners’. As
Kreienbaum has noted, as there were less of a guerrilla war in GSWA, the
only transferable aspect was ‘the vague idea of interning a population per-
ceived as hostile, which consisted mainly of women and children, in an
enclosed place a camp.’ While a ‘process of deadly learning took place’,
several other local factors were therefore at play rather than the ‘encoun-
ters of empires’.110 Crucially, while the camps in GSWA were inspired by
the British example, they were inherently different: the British camps in
South Africa had a military function, as civilians became part of the con-
flict as it escalated to total war. In GSWA, however, the prisoners posed
little or no military threat, were kept far from conflict zones, and the
camps continued to operate long after the fighting ended and peace was
declared. Indicatively, while the Herero resistance was virtually crushed by
1905, Herero prisoners were kept in the camps until 1908.
Notes
1. F. Cooper, ‘Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African
History’, The American Historical Review, vol. 99, 5 (1994),
p. 1530, ff. 49.
2. For a broader examination of ‘Settler colonial violence’, see among others
P. Wolfe ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal
of Genocide Research, vol. 8, 4 (2006), C. Elkins and S. Pedersen (eds.),
Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies
(New York, 2005) and L. Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical
Overview (London, 2010). For racism, see especially F. Bethencourt,
Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2014).
3. See, for instance J. Saha, ‘Histories of Everyday violence in British India’,
History Compass, vol. 9, 11 (2011). For an excellent study of everyday
violence in GSWA, see M. Muschalek, Violence as Usual. Policing and the
Colonial State in German South West Africa (Ithaca NY, 2019).
4. P. Dwyer and A. Nettelbeck, (eds.), Violence, Colonialism and Empire in
the Modern World (London, 2018), p. 2.
5. M. Häussler, ‘Collaboration or Sabotage? The Settlers in German
Southwest Africa between Colonial State and Indigenous Polities’ in
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Hát ennyi emberben annyi életrevalóság sem volna, hogy
mindegyik vágyakoznék legalább a legutolsó lenni, s ha a mohácsi
vész után ennyi millió árva van, pityergés helyett vigyen mindenik
egy darab követ egy rakásra, s meglátják, hogy annyi anyagból egy
új nemzetet lehet megint építeni.
Annyi bánatot és örömet mondtak el e nyelven és ha mi ezt
elvesztenők, lenne mit hallani a másvilágon, ha minden elhunyt
magyar pirongatásképen csak egy szót szólna is.
Mit siránkozunk annyi századon keresztül? ha összedült az egyik
fészek: míg ott ordítozunk, addig ugyanazt a hangyák réges-régen
újra építenék.
Egykor az ősök oly kevesen voltak, hogy a legyőzött szomszédok
azért nem akarták megszámlálni őket, mert e marok néptől
legyőzetni százszoros gyalázat! Százszorosan kellett hát győznie,
hogy a világ nemzetnek ösmerje e csodanyelvű népet – és most
annyian vagyunk, hogy ha nem teszünk is egyebet, csak a nyelvet
beszéljük, – meg vagyunk mentve!
Miért esnénk kétségbe a multért? hisz oly dicső volt apáinknak
multja, hogy ha tudnánk, hogy úgy járunk, mint egyszer Lothnak
felesége, hogy a mint hátranézett sóbálványnyá meredt, még akkor
is vissza kellene néznünk.
S most akarunk temetkezni, mikor annyiak vagyunk már, hogy a
szomszéd irgalomból sem vesződik ennyi haldoklóval s végre is
fogna rajtunk az a régi átok, hogy egyik magyar a másiknak ásná
meg vermét.
Volt egykor olyan pusztulás az ország hosszán, hogy tán számra
több volt már a farkas, mint az élő magyar és ez is félve nyitá meg
az ajtót, nehogy a bátor ellenség helyett egy kiéhezett vadat leljen a
küszöbön.
Ilyen idők voltak, s meghalni még sem tudtunk, most pedig a
mennyien vagyunk, ha egy intésre mindannyian megszólamlanánk –
életjelnek elegendő volna.
Ha már nemzetnek vallottuk magunkat, birjunk el valamit, hogy
saját erőnket megpróbáljuk; és ha megosztjuk az idők terhét, ne
feledjük, hogy annyi millió még temérdeket elbir.
Ezt írta ez a néhány ember, s egy pár jólelkű hazafi elhúzódott
félre a Balaton sarkához, megelégedtek, hogy egy kis szűk hely
befogadta őket, s ha nem adhatott egyebet a lelkesült csoportnak,
legalább – becsülést azt adott.
A dunántúli kerületnek közelebb eső részeiből jöttek az egyszerű
fogatok, a kocsik oldalain nem volt odapingálva sem a törökfej, sem
a zöld mező – hisz most már nem járunk el a törököket verni, s a
zöld mező ma már csak annyit jelent, hogy a juhok legelnek ott; inas
sem volt a bakon, kinek kabátjára elől-hátul föl lehet varrni a híres
czímert – hogy a ki előlről észre nem vette, legalább hátul
megláthassa a család dicsőségét; hisz ezek egyszerű írók – minden
czímerük egy árva lúdtoll, melynek a pecsenyéjét bizonyosan más
ette meg, legalább a kit megdicsőit e toll, az irigység sem foghatja
rá, hogy a libapecsenyéért tette.
A keszthelyi szőlőkben, nem messze az országúttól, volt egy
pincze, s annak irányában két úr száll le egy csinos fogatról, s
egyenesen a pinczének tartanak, melynek belsejében az öt-hat
ember üli körül a tüzet, szalonnát pirítván az izzó tűznél, a gazda
pedig sorba kinál egy úgynevezett vándorkorsót, mit már
harmadszor töltött.
Vigan pattogott a szikra, s midőn a keszthelyi vendégek
egyenkint érkezének, a jelül elsütött mozsárnak hangja a szőlőkben
is visszhangozék, s a borozók egyike mondja:
– De nagyot szól az az ágyú!
– Ez csak mozsár – mondja Holvagy Pista – sorra eresztvén egy
újabb korsót, mit most hozott ki a pinczéből – aztán párbeszédbe
keveredve folytatja – hát ha még az igazi ágyút hallanád, öcsém!
– Ugyan, Pista bácsi – mondja a fiatalabb legény – kelmed már
látott közelről ágyút?
– Meg is lőttek vele a francziák.
– Pedig azt mondták, hogy a franczia nem akarja bántani a
szegény embert, csak az urat meg a papot.
– Már hisz nem tudom akkor, hogy grófnak néztek-e engem vagy
püspöknek? de majd láb nélkül jöttem haza.
Vigan pattogott a szikra.
– Pedig azt mondták ám minálunk, hogy a franczia azért jött be,

hogy minden ember egyenlő legyen!
– Persze, hogy azért – hagyá helyben Pista – valamennyinkről
lehúzták volna a magyar nadrágot, aztán adtak volna ránk egy
nagyszájú bugyogót, hogy valamennyien egyenlők legyünk.
– Ejnye, hogy a bűne verje meg – mondja amaz – hiszen akkor
az a franczia csakugyan ellenség!
– Bolond ember vagy – tréfálódzék Pista – hisz mit ér a te ruhád?
más volna, ha a gróf jajgatna majd az aranyos mentéért.
– Aztán arról is lehúznák?
– Hát hogyan lennénk egyenlők, ha arról le nem húznák?
– De hát a ki nem hagyná?
– Dehogy nem hagyná – okoskodik amaz – te a grófét hagynád,
a gróf meg a tiedet.
– Hátha összefognánk, Pista bácsi? mi lenne akkor?
– Akkor kivernők a francziát, öcsém – mondja Pista – hanem
megint úgy maradnánk, mint voltunk – egyik lenne paraszt, a másik
pedig aranyos mentéjű gróf.
– De nem kellene bugyogóba bújni?
– A hasznáért megtehetnéd, öcsém – okoskodik amaz – aztán
milyent nézne anyád, ha fecskefarkú ruhában mennél el a ház előtt,
aztán eltagadnád, hogy magyarul is tudtál?
– Tudom megátkozna, szegény édesanyám.
– Ki hallaná meg azt az átkot?
– Meghallaná azt valaki, István bácsi, él még a magyarok istene!
A fiú nem tudott aztán fölvidulni, mert észrevette, hogy a gazda
nem ok nélkül gúnyolódott, tehát szivesen hallgatott, hogy több szó
ne érje, s midőn az ajtón Dunay és Festetics grófokat látta belépni,
azon gondolatban, hogy azok ott künn mindent meghallottak,
rettentően megszégyenlé magát.
Levett kalappal állt valamennyi a váratlan vendégek előtt s Dunay
megismervén a házi gazdát, barátsággal kéri, hogy néhány szép
fiatal berkenyefát láttak meg az országútról, jó pénzért szivesen
megveszik.
– Akár valamennyit! méltóságos uram.
– Csak néhány szálat! – felel rá Festetics, ismét kimenvén a
szabadba, s a fák felé tartott, hogy a szükséges szálakat
kiválogathassa.
Pista hátraintett, hogy az ásókkal jőjjenek utána, hogy a mely
ágat kiválasztanak, majd rögtön kivehessék, maga azonban ment a
szőlőtőkék között egyenesen a berkenyefáig. Festetics nagyon előre
sietett, tehát Pista megszólítja Dunay grófot, kivel régóta
bizalmasabb viszonyban állott már.
– Ő méltósága nagyon megkivánta talán a berkenyét?
– Ez egészen más okból lesz használva – felel a gróf, mindig
lassabban menve, s éppen e miatt a hátulsók is elérték őket és a
beszédet egy szóig érthették, midőn a gróf folytatta – holnap ez
ágakat mi a nagy kertben fogjuk elültetni, minden ágnak adunk majd
egy nevet.
– Valami nagy uraságnak a neve lesz az? – kérdi Pista.
– Nem édes barátom, hanem vannak és voltak hajdanában lelkes
hazafiak, kik olyan magasan állnak, hogy bizonyosan magasabbak
nálunknál egy fejjel az ő érdemeik után – tehát minden esztendőben
másért dugunk le egy ág berkenyét, hogy az élőfa legyen
bizonysága, hogy az ő neve nem halt ki közülünk!
– Vedd le a süvegedet! – löki meg egyik paraszt a másikat, nem
tudván hirtelenében más tiszteletet adni a beszédnek, s a gróf
hamar észrevette, hogy az egyszerű emberek szavainak adnak ily
becsületet.
– Mivel tartozunk az ágakért? – mondja Festetics, három szálat
kiválasztván kiásás végett, de Pista közelebb lépvén a grófhoz,
tisztelettel mondja:
– Nem pénzért adom, méltóságos uram!
– De ingyen nem fogadhatunk el senkitől is olyant, minek értéke
van.
– No hát ne mondjuk meg, hogy mennyit ér ez a három szál fa,
méltóságos uram – mondja Pista – legalább mikor leássák, ha nem
tudok hozzáadni a tisztelethez, méltóságos uram, legalább nem
mondhatja senki, hogy elvettem belőle!
Festetics elgondolta, hogy gróf Dunaytól megtudták, mi okból kéri
ő a berkenyefát, tehát nem unszolta tovább az árt, hanem hogy
cserében ő is adjon még valamit, azt mondja:
– Jó – elfogadom a szép ajándékot, hanem a mely fa megtetszik
az én kertemben, szivesen odaadom.
– Ne igérjen semmit, méltóságos uram – én egyebet kérek.
– Hadd hallom, mit tehetek én is?
– Engedjék meg méltóságos urak, hogy én áshassam le az
ágakat a földbe.
– Ezer örömmel! – válaszol Festetics – és ha még akar valakit
magával hozni, azt is megengedem.
Pista hátranézett, látta, hogy az előbbeni beszélgető még mindig
halavány, rámutatott Pista a fiúra, s aztán a grófhoz fordulva mondja:
– Ezt viszem el, méltóságos uram engedelmével. A gróf nem
firtatta a dolgot, hanem megmondván a napot és az órát, mikor
okvetetlenül ott kell lenni, nyájassággal vőn búcsút a körülállóktól, s
aztán Keszthelyre hajtatott, hol a vendégek nagy csoportja várta.
Pista elkiséré a vendégeket egész a kocsiig, aztán pedig
visszament a berkenyeágakhoz, melyeket már szorgalmasan ástak
ki a földből, kivált a beszédes fiú, ki legbuzgóbb volt valamennyi
között.
– Na fiú – mondja Pista, – cserélnél-e most egy hatökrös
gazdával?
– Még a gróffal sem, hallja, Pista bácsi! – mondja szörnyen
örvendezve.
– No lásd, édes öcsém, hogyan leszünk legkönnyebben
egyenlőkké – nézd ez a két gróf milyen derék magyar ember – aztán
magadat is annak tartod!
Vigan folyt a munka, a fának gyökerét jól körülásták és a
kirendelt időre a kastélyban voltak, ünnepi ruhában és Pista nem is
merte volna hinni, hogy a mai napon kivel találkozik.
Mielőtt azonban idáig érnénk, nézzünk körül, kit látunk az
érkezett vendégek közt, nem értvén a szájtátókat, vagy a
világlátókat, hanem azt a kis csoportot, mely az akkori irodalom
embereiből került ki és a vendéglátó «Keszthelyi gróf» körül
összesereglének.
Ruszek apát vezeté karonfogva Kis Jánost, a későbbi
szuperintendenst, szemközt pedig Dukai Takács Judit jött, s a két
férfi nyájasan üdvözli a hölgyet.
– Épen Kist keresem – modja Takács Judit – valami közlendőm
lenne.
– Titok? – kérdi Ruszek, hogy alkalmatlan ne legyen.
– Éppen nem, sőt kérem az apát urat, kisérjen bennünket egyik
terembe!
Mindhárman elváltak a nagyobb társaságtól, hogy a bizalmas
közlést meghallhassák, s a mint a harmadik ajtót megnyitják, egy
ősz földmívelő áll a három vendég előtt.
– Édes apám! – mondja Kis, meglepetve lépvén apjához, ki
örömkönyűk közt karolá át fiát, ki, midőn apja karjaiból kibontakozék,
a két kisérőnek mondja:
– Ez az öreg férfiú az én édes apám.
– Gondolta-e édes öregem – mondja a hölgy – hogy ma fiát fogja
itt meglátni?
– Álmomban sem hittem volna, nagyasszonyom (így ám), hanem
mivel berendelt az én méltóságos uraságom, kinek én is egyik
jobbágya vagyok…
– Mától fogva nem – mondja a hölgy – fogadja ez írást, kedves
öreg… földjét öröktulajdonban birja, s most maga az első jobbágy,
kinek földesura nincsen!
Az öreg remegő kézzel nyúlt az írás után, mit a nemeslelkű gróf
ily gyöngéd kezek által nyújtott neki, s a négy ember sokáig szótlanúl
állt, e nem várt tettet megbámulván, míg utóbb az ajtó lassan
megnyilt és a gróf is közöttük állt.
Kis még most sem tudott a meglepetéstől magán uralkodni, s
ámbár erőlködött, hogy valami hálát mondjon, utóbb a nagy
küzdelemben végtére is ennyit mondott:
– Méltóságos uram, maga az oka, hogy én most azt mondom,
hogy semmit sem tudok mondani! – Bármennyire szivesen időzném
e képnél, mégis inkább kedves olvasóimra hagyom elképzelni ezt az
öt embert, kik a nagy boldogságban oly ügyetlenül álltak, hogy azt le
nem merem írni, csak annyit mondok, hogy mégis mind az ötnek
vajmi nagyon jól állt ez a kis ügyetlenség, s akár mit mondtak volna,
vagy igen nagy dicsekedés, vagy igen alázatos köszöngetés volna.
Hagyjuk tehát őket, majd valahogy csak szétválnak, mi meg menjünk
odább.
Egy igénytelen külsejű, rövid homlokú, meglehetős komor képű
úr válik ki a többi közől, s mindenütt elmaradozik, mintha ki akarna
szökni, azonban csak azt veszi észre, hogy valamennyi szemközt
fordul neki, s a merre ő előbb visszahúzódott, most minden ember
arra tart, s némelyik alig várja, hogy az a kis barna ember mondjon
már valamit, mert hiába, akármennyire húzódozik a sok ösmeretlen
között, mégis sokan ösmerik, mit ő maga legkevésbé látszik tudni,
mert annyira hátrál, hogy már az ajtóhoz ér, hol éppen Kisfaludy
Sándor lép be, hanem a hátráló ember egész csizmasarokkal rálép a
lábára.
Egy nagy kiáltás hallik, csakhogy nem az kiáltott, kinek
tyúkszemére léptek, hanem a hátráló kiált engedelemért, azt
gondolván, hogy hátha valami nagyságos úrnak lábát tiporta le.
– Ne búsuljon Berzsenyi uram, én vagyok! – mondja Kisfaludy
meg sem hunyorodván, s ekkép megnyugodott, s minthogy Kisfaludy
őt kereste, elment vele a szomszéd szobába, de a mit valaha
becsülettudásképen belévertek, az ma mind fölengedett benne, mert
akármennyire tuszkolta is Kisfaludy, hogy ő menjen elől, sehogysem
bírt vele.
A szobába érkezvén, egy papirt mutatott Berzsenyinek, s
leolvasák róla azon adományokat, melyek a heliconi ünnepély
napján elosztandók voltak.
1-ször. Kétezer forintot szántam a megcsonkult magyar
vitézeknek, hogyan keressenek szegények, hisz ha utána kellene
menni, nem vinné a lábuk, mert nincsen, s ha találnak valahol egy
fillért, egy kézzel könnyen fölvehetik.
2-or. Házi szegényeimnek szintén kétezer forintot adok, én
eltartom a magam szegényeit, meghagyom a többit másnak, hogy
legyen nekik kivel jót cselekedni.
3-or. A keszthelyi diákoknak adok ötszáz forintot, – azok legalább
nem rakják a láda fenekére, aztán a mit nekik adok, az leghamarább
szétmegy a világon, annyi, mintha azoknak is adnám.
4-er. A hazai íróknak kétezer forintot bátorkodom ajánlani; – ők
legalább tudják, hogy ez nem ajándék; valamint azt is tudják, hogy
mennyivel tartozik egy ember édes hazájának.
Berzsenyit úgy meglepte a dolog, hogy egy pillanatra azt is
megbánta, hogy a «Romlásnak indult» kezdetű verset írta s
minthogy most már a nyomtatásból ki nem lehetett vakarni, legalább
azt gondolta, hogy ez az ember mindenesetre kivétel, csak a többi a
nem jó.
Midőn eléggé elteltek a nagy hazafinak sokoldalú figyelmével,
saját körülményeiről kezdett beszélni a két jeles ember és Kisfaludy
nagy örömét nyilvánítá, hogy Berzsenyit is valahára el lehetett csalni
Keszthelyre, hol ő ugyan máskor is megfordult, de sehogysem
tudták a grófhoz fölczipelni.
A gróf ezt jól tudta, mert a vendéglősök szerződés szerént
tartoztak minden úri vendéget a kastélyba küldeni, mit annál inkább
szivesen megtettek, mert a vendégért azért ők is megkapták a
tartáspénzt, ha nem evett is a korcsmában; de Berzsenyi annyira
tartózkodó volt, hogy inkább nem evett, de még sem ment el a
kastélyba.
A vendéglős mindig fölrovogatta Berzsenyiért a tartáspénzt, s
utóbb a gróf végignézvén a vendéglős számadását, csodálkozva
látja, hogy Berzsenyinek neve háromszor is előfordul, de ő nála
egyetlenegyszer sem volt, tehát mi dolog ez?
Elhivatták a korcsmárost.
– Hallja az úr, – mondja a gróf – nem panaszolkodott Berzsenyi
úr a kastélybeli szakácsra?
– Egy szót sem hallottam tőle, méltóságos uram – mondja a
korcsmáros egész becsülettel.
– De mindig evett valamit, mikor ismét visszament?
– Egy falatot sem, méltóságos uram, – állítja a korcsmáros –
hiába is kért volna; mert nem adtam volna neki, mint az
megparancsolva van.
– Pedig lássa az úr, – mondja a gróf – én nálam egyszer sem volt
Berzsenyi úr sem ebéden, sem vacsorán, akár voltam itthon, akár
nem.
– Akkor éhesen is ment haza, vagy abból evett, méltóságos
uram, a mit magával hozott.
A gróf nem vallatta tovább a korcsmárost, hanem nagyon
érzékenyen vette, hogy a köztiszteletű férfi ennyire kerüli, tehát nincs
más mód, mint hogy ő menjen Niklára, s kiadta a parancsot, hogy
minden késedelem nélkül álljon elő a fogat. Még jól fönn volt a nap,
mikor a gróf Niklára ért, illetőleg a határba s a tehénpásztor éppen
az út mellett legeltetvén, megkérdi a tehenestől, hogy Berzsenyi úr
körülbelül melyik házban lakik.
– Éppen ott megy az úton – mondja a tehenes – alig van ide
kétszáz lépésnyire, ő maga legkönnyebben elvezet házáig.
Megköszönte a gróf az emberséget, azután pedig leszállván a
kocsiról s az országút szélén haladva, a faluvégén már jól
megközelíté Berzsenyit, s mindenütt vagy három ölnyire követé;
midőn Berzsenyi a kapuig ért, megállt a kapu előtt, hanem úgy, hogy
még mindig nem látta a grófot, ki most éppen egy magyar mentés
úrral beszélt.
– Ugy-e, ebben a házban lakik Berzsenyi Dániel úr?
– Igen is! – válaszol a megszólított, egyenesen a grófra nézvén,
ki elég hangosan beszélt, hogy Berzsenyi is meghallhassa.
– Én, kérem alázatosan, gróf Festetics György vagyok – mondja
a gróf sietve, hogy a másiknak ne maradjon ideje hálálkodni –
nagyon szépen kérem uraságodat, mondja meg tekintetes Berzsenyi
Dániel úrnak, hogy ugyan jól tudom, hol lakik; hanem ha ő elkerülte
az én házamat, én sem merek ő hozzá bemenni!
Berzsenyi az utolsó szóig hallott mindent, visszafordult, s
odasietett a grófhoz, hogy valami mentséget mondjon, azaz, hogy ne
az igazi okot mondja meg, mi nem egyéb volt, mint hogy nem igen
vágyakozott nagy urakkal egy tálból cseresznyét enni. A becsületes
ember odament; hanem már az arczáról meglátta Festetics azt a
gyötrelmet, hogy akar ugyan hazudni kénytelenségből; de
bármennyire erőlködik is, nem tud.
– Ne is törje az eszét, Berzsenyi úr, csak mondja ki, hogy nem
akart bejönni hozzám.
– Nagyon nagy nekem az a kastély, méltóságos uram!
– Én inkább azt hinném, hogy Berzsenyinek igen kicsiny, –
igazítá ki a gróf.
– Nézze a gróf, – mutatja Berzsenyi a niklai kis tanyát – mily
kicsiny helyen elférek.
– Azért is bemegyek, – mondja nevetve – higye meg, Berzsenyi,
tudom, hogy kicsiny helyt megférek; tehát menjünk! – kezdi a gróf.
– Mivel érdemlem meg ezt a megtiszteltetést, méltóságos uram?
– Kettővel, édes Berzsenyi. Először, ha nem hí engem
méltóságos úrnak, mert akkor én még egygyel fölebb kezdem,
másodszor pedig, ha Keszthelyre is eljő!
– Nem kerülöm el többé!… (Itt egy nagyot nyögött Berzsenyi;
mert már nem merte megméltóságosozni; hanem valahányszor
hasonló helyre került, a czímezés helyett egy darabb időig rendesen
kitartá a nagy pauzát, s aztán ment még odább.)
Így tudták Berzsenyit elhozni Keszthelyre, hol az ünnepélyen
kitünő vendég vala, s mi azon ünnepélyek leírását negyven
esztendőnek elmúlta után részben neki köszönhetjük.
Az akkori dunántúli írók nagy részben jelen voltak, valamint az
irodalombarátok is, kik közől első helyen gróf Dunayt említhetjük, ki
ez ünnepélyre serdülő lányát is elhozta, kinek ez ünnepélyen az a
foglalatosság jutott, hogy a költőknek és szavalóknak koszorúkat
nyujtson.
Mindenki készült az ünnepélyre, az öreg Baltay legaranyosabb
mentéjét öltötte magára, s a mi legföltünőbb, daczára annak, hogy
Dunayék is itt valának, nem maradt el a nagy ünnepélyről.
András felöltöztette a nagyságos urat, mi természetesen szó
nélkül nem esett meg, tehát halljuk ezt a két öreget, összeférnek-e
már?
Egészen felöltözött az öreg, csak az aprólék hiányzott, hogy azt
is elrakja valahol a mentezsebekben.
– Hol a dohányzacskóm? hadd teszem el.
– Éppen bizony, – dörmög András – még utóbb is az én
szégyenemre azt mondanák, hogy én milyen vén szamár vagyok, s
az uraságomat úgy kibéllelem, mintha a kaszások után akarnám
ereszteni.
Baltay csakugyan észvette, hogy Andrásnak igaza van; reggel
óta igen szórakozott, kiállt az ajtóba, Dunaynak leányát látta előtte
elmenni, s a kemény ember nem birt elfordulni tőle, s midőn a
gyönyörű hölgy elmenvén előtte, s egy szép jóreggelt kivánt, úgy
elbámészkodott, hogy majd a leány nyakába dült. Aztán pedig
kihúzott oldalzsebéből egy rég megviselt levelet, eltette, elolvasta,
megint elolvasta, megint eltette, s tán tovább is ismételné ezt a
munkát, ha András meg nem csudálja a dolgot és azt nem mondja
szokatlan tréfával:
– Már látom, hogy a nagyságos úr is mond egy verset, nagyon
sokáig tanulja!
– Tudom, szeretné kend hallani ezt a verset!
– Ha én tarthatnám azt a papirost, aztán látnám, hogy szóról-
szóra el tudja mondani.
– Ha azt megérem még, András, a mi ebben van megírva.
– Csak ne búsuljon megint a nagyságos úr, mert aztán én is
együtt jajgatok ám!
Baltay eltette az írást, melynek egyik részét mi is jól ismerjük, ez
a herczeg levele, melyből Baltay újra meg újra olvassa, a mit még
nem tudunk.
– Benn van minden a zsebemben? – kérdi újra a szórakozott
ember.
– Ott van minden! – felel András, hogy megnyugtassa, pedig felét
sem tette oda a megszokottnak, hanem az öreg körültapogatódzott,
nem hiányzik-e valami?
– Hát a Kisfaludym itt van-e? (Értsd a könyvet.)
– De már az ott van, – annyit mondhatok! – mondja András itt-ott
igazítván el az öreg úron, s aztán elkisérte a nagy teremig, hol a
vendégek helyet foglaltak már.
A későn jövőnek oda kell ülni, a hol helye marad, s az a furcsa
véletlenség a kis Dunay Jolán mellett hagyott egy üres helyet, s az
öreg a sor elején végigmenvén, kénytelen volt leülni, s a
fölolvasásokat a kis leány mellett hallgatni; hanem az öreg úr most
már engedelmesebb volt maga iránt, s a kedves gyermeket
szüntelenül nézte.
Az intézeti növendékek kardala nyitá meg az ünnepélyt, aztán
pedig a pályajutalmazottak nevei olvastatának föl.
Kisfaludy Sándor ült az itélőszéken, s a következő sorokat
olvasá, míg Jolán előtt a jutalmak álltak, hogy a nyerteseknek
oszsza:
«Mi volt őseink kötelessége a haza iránt a multban, s mi a mienk
a jelenben?» szól az első kérdés, melynek megfejtője ezüstkoszorút
kap gróf Dunay Jolán ajándékából – olvassa a biró – megfejtőjének
jeligéje: Kard és könyv!
A mondott jeligéjű levél a hölgy előtt feküdt, s a gyengéd
gyermek halványan ült a kis emelvény előtt, melyről a levelet fölvette
és midőn fölbontá a levelet, a benne levő nevet nem merte
kimondani.
Baltay közelebb hajolt, s a lány elébe tartá a levélkét, hogy
könnyebben olvashassa: de Baltay maga is néma maradt, mi a
körülülőket, valamint az egész hallgatóságot nagyon meglepte; de
még inkább az, hogy András leghátulról szólamlott meg, s azt
mondja:
– Az biz az úrfinak a neve, csak mondja ki nagyságos uram! –
mondja a kínlódó szolga, ki alig várta, hogy ifjú uraságának
dicsőségét lássa.
A derültség általános lőn, s a biró a meglepett ifjút a jutalomért
vezeté; a fiú nem mert bátyjára nézni, valamint a leány is reszketve
nyúlt a koszorú után.
A grófné és az öreg asszony már készen valának, hogy a
reszkető lányt az összerogyástól megóvják, de az öreg még többet
is tett, s öcscsének egyik kezét, s a lánynak nyújtva a másikat, mind
a kettőt annyira bátorítá, hogy a leány a koszorút átnyújthatta, s a fiú
Jolánra mert nézni.
– Én Baltay Imre vagyok! – mutatja be magát Imre a jutalomosztó
hölgynél.
– S én e nevet megkoszorúzom – mondja Jolán, odanyújtva a
jutalmat.
– Tehát elvihetem? – kérdi bizalmasabban Imre.
– Ejnye, öcsém – szól bele az öreg úr – talán ráadást is akarsz?
– Jutalomnak csekély! – mondja Jolán, átengedvén a csinos
művet, melyet Imre remegő kézzel vőn át.
– Kicsiny érdemnek óriás jutalom! – Béke velünk! – mondja
czélzatosan Imre, egész erejét összeszedvén, hogy a leány arczán a
búcsúszónak hatását is meglássa, ki neki a legjobbat mondá.
A jutalomosztások után következének a szavallatok, azután
pedig az egész társaság kiment a kastély melletti kertbe, hogy a
berkenyeültetésnek tanúja lehessen.
Az irodalom emberei kiosztott rendben, utánuk a vendégek
menének a kertbe, hova nagy tömeg ember kéredzett, s a
virágállványokat mászták meg, hogy a leültetést megláthassák, a
kinek pedig szék jutott, azon foglalt helyet.
András addig csinálta a helyet másnak, hogy saját úrfiához közel
jutott s a jó öreg ember legelőször életében most süvegelte le magát
a fiatal ember előtt, ki szárnyai alatt nőtt fel. A fiú hirtelenében azt
gondolta, hogy András valakinek másnak teszen ily nagy tiszteletet,
hanem midőn látta, hogy András a karjára fűzött koszorú előtt úgy áll
meg, mintha oltárképet látna, mindenkép akarta, hogy András ne
álljon előtte ilyen födetlen fővel.
– Tegye fel édes jó öregem!
– Nem én, nagyságos úrfi, hadd gyönyörködjék bennem az
úristen, midőn én azt köszönöm meg, hogy az úrfiban megadta
érnem, a mit csak reméltem.
– Megelégszik velem, András bácsi?
– Meg, édes úrfi – mondja az öreg jókedvvel – már most
elkisértem idáig, nem kell vezetőnek az öreg András, már most azt
mondja a nagyságos úr, hogy nem töri el egykönnyen a csontját, én
pedig azt látom, hogy a padlásra felhordjuk a legjava szemet, – isten
áldja meg az úrfit.
Nem lehet őszintébb az édes anyának öröme, mint ezé az
egyszerű emberé, ki a tarka vendégek közt is meg mert szólalni,
midőn tudta, hogy azt éri kitüntetés, kit ő gyermekkorától nagyranőni
látott.
Siettek a vendégek, csak az öreg asszonyság ment lassan, hogy
a tolongást elkerülje, s ha már éppen nem látja is a további
ünnepélyt, majd elbeszéli azt neki a kis unokaleány.
– Csókolom kegyes kezét a nagyságos asszonynak – mondja
András, kitörölvén szeméből egy nagy könyűt, mit némileg
szégyenlett volna kemény hajdú létére annyi ember előtt
elcsöppenteni, hanem addig erőlködött, hogy egy tarka kendőbe
nyomhatta szét, s mikor megint kinyitá a szemét, a nagyságos
asszony mellett állt már.
– Öreg, öreg! – kezdi az asszonyság, – még csak mindig nem
akar megvénülni?
– De bizony már nagyon megpuhulok, nagyságos asszonyom, –
felel András kulimászos bajszát jobban oldalra húzva, – hanem azért
még nincs mindennek vége.
– Mi jót remél, András gazda? – mondja meg nekem is!
– Nagyságos asszonyom, ezek a gyerekek ma megríkattak, de a
mint az ízét éreztem annak a könycseppnek, mintha nem volna
olyan keserű, mint véltem.
A két öreg elbeszélgetett még, addig pedig a kertbe ért már az
egész társaság, hogy a berkenyefát a halhatatlanok emlékére
leássák a földbe, s a megkeresztelésnek tanúja legyen az egész
népség.
Rövid beszéd után Kis János elvette a Pistától a berkenyeágak
egyikét, s a nyitott gödörbe helyezte, mindaddig tartván, míg a fát a
körülrakott földtömeg saját gyökerén megtartotta, ekkor azt mondja
Kis:
«Gyöngyösy Istvánnak emléke legyen köztünk áldott!»
A zene megszólalt, s egy kis hézagul szolgált, míg a fa helyén állt
már, aztán pedig Kisfaludy Sándor ment a körbe, s a fiatalabbaktól
átvette az ágát, hogy a gödörbe ereszsze. Már behelyezé az ágat, s
Holvagy Pista rakni kezdé a földet, néhányszor azonban fölnézett
munka közben, hogy a fának egyenességét a szomszéd fáéhoz
mérje, s midőn így felnézett, Kisfaludy tisztán meglátja az arczot,
melyet ugyan sohasem feledt el, de hogy egykor megláthassa, még
azután is kételkedett, midőn a nádortól megtudta, hogy még életben
van.
– Jó barátom, – mondja Kisfaludy, – soha sem láttuk mi
egymást?
– Egyszer, nagyon régen! – mondja Pista, megismervén
Kisfaludyt.
– Akkor megigértem, hogyha találkozunk, megszólítom, – úgy-e,
hogy így mondám?
– Minden szóra emlékszem, uram! – mondja Pista, egészen
megtömvén a fa mellékét, s időt engedett Kisfaludynak, hogy a fát
jobb kézzel fogván, az ünnepélyt folytassa.
– Kisnek, a nagynak! – szól ünnepélyes hangon a lelkes férfiú,
oldalt fordulván, hol Festetics és Dunay közt állt Kis, nem is
gyanítva, hogy az egyik fát az ő tiszteletére szánták, s midőn nevét
hallá a tegnapi meglepetés által megzaklatott ember, alig tudott
támaszkodás nélkül megállni, s Dunay karjára fogván mutatá a
vendégseregnek, mely harsogó éljenekkel üdvözlé az ünnepelt
költőt.
Visszament az ünnepi sereg a grófi lakba, s míg a menet beért,
Kisfaludynak elég alkalma volt elmaradni a többitől, hogy Pistával
beszéljen.
– Legelőször is azt mondja meg barátom, hol lakik?
– Keszthelyen, uram, az alsó városon.
– Nem szenved szükséget valamiben?
– Vitéz őrnagy uram, ilyen erős ember, mint én, csak délig koplal.
– De tán mégis volna valami kérni valója, lássa barátom, én
sokban segíthetek.
– Magamért soha sem kérek, őrnagy uram, koldus pedig nincs a
környéken, mert a méltóságos gróf minden szegénynek juttat
valamit.
– Az érdemet nem lehet jutalmazatlanul hagyni – mondja
Kisfaludy.
– Nem tudok én annak mértéket venni, őrnagy uram, meg az árát
sem tudom.
– Majd tudja más! – viszonzá Kisfaludy, a kapuig kisérteté magát,
hol aztán azt is megmagyaráztatá, hogy Pista merre lakik, adandó
alkalommal föl akarván keresni Pistát, midőn Kisfaludy majd Budáról
megfordul.
Imre bátyjával van, jól esett az öregnek az a tudat, hogy mellőle
hajtott ki az ág; de azért egy szót sem szólt néki, hanem csak
lógósnak ereszté, hogy a gyerek ne tudja a bácsi büszkeségét,
mikor az a sok ember között olyanképen vezeti a kitüntetett fiút,
mintha mutatóba vinné.
Még mindenki ünnepi köntösben van, s az egyik teremben látunk
egy zömök embert keményen kisodrott bajuszszal, nagy szakállal,
széles karddal, s az egész ember oly készen áll az ütközetre, mintha
már azt várná, hogy mondják neki, hova kell bevágni.
Az elmenők nagy figyelemmel köszöntik, környezete sohasem
fogy, hanem inkább szaporodik, s ő nem hagyja unatkozni a
körülállókat.
Éppen most bámulja valamennyi, mert azt állította, hogy a
magyarnak van csak egyedül istene a keresztény faj között, mert a
többi már mind megtagadta.
– Hát az angolnak nincsen? – kérdi valaki.
– Nincs bizony, – mondja oly komoly képpel, mintha meg akarna
rá esküdni.
– Hát a francziának sincs? – kérdi megint egy másik.
– Annak sincs, és még rosszabb, mint az angol, mert csak félig
tagadta meg, nem úgy, mint az angol vagy olasz.
– De hát miből bizonyítja meg ezt, édes Ádám bácsi? – kérdi egy
harmadik fiatal ember, ki a vitatkozóval bizalmasabb lábon áll.
– Az legkönnyebb, – mondja a kérdett egy nagy olajfestményhez
fordulva, mely éppen az atya istent ábrázolá, szokott helyzetben
ülvén mennyei székében.
– Hasonlít ez a kép valami francziához, angolhoz vagy olaszhoz?
– kérdi a körülállókat.
– Hisz a francziának csak bajusza van; de szakála nincs! – szól
az egyik.
– Az olasznak pedig csak szakála van; de bajusza nincs! –
mondja egy másik.
– Az angolnak sem bajusza sem szakála! – jegyzi meg egy
harmadik.
– Nekünk pedig szakálunk is van, meg bajuszunk is! – mondja
diadallal Ádám bácsi, magára hagyván a bámuló tömeget, melyből
valaki kérdi:
– Ki ez az ember?
– Horváth Ádám – nevezi őt meg a kérdett, s egyszersmind
elmondá a sajátságokkal megrakott embernek akkor közszájon
forgott furcsaságait, minthogy mindig azon törte a fejét, hogy vigyen
föl bennünket Adámig, mit aztán névrokona Horváth István meg is
cselekedett.
Még többet is mondott Horváth Ádám a heliconi ünnepélyen,
melyeket azonban egyenkint fölhordani körünkön kívül esik, hanem
mégis említetlenül nem hagyhatánk őt; mert a heliconi
ünnepélyeknek mindenkor feltünő tagja volt, s ezen alkalomra
mindig tartogatott valami furcsaságot, mit előkerült alkalommal
közreadott, s ha bár különczsége nem is volt szentírás, de mindig
megbocsátható egy nemzetnek, ha egyes emberei ez
előszeretetben akár a legszélső vonalig mennek is el.
Néhány óranegyedig Horváth Ádámmal foglalkozott az egész
társaság, s legalább annyi jutalma volt, hogy mindenki vágyott őt
meglátni, s ennyi jutalom neki untig elegendő volt elolthatlan
buzgalmáért; s ha már e nagy hitnek nem térített is meg sokat, de
hallgatni mindenki szerette.
A nagy ebéd elég nagy volt, ennek leírásához nem is fogok; mert
először nem értek hozzá, másodszor pedig azt gondolom, hogy ha jó
volt, azoknak volt legjobb, kik részt vehettek benne, kiknek annál
jobb ízűen eshetett, mert a vendégszeretet olyan embertől jött, ki
tetteit nem méltóságos czímével, hazafiúságával mérte föl.
Midőn a vendégsereg nyugodni ment, Dunay még sokáig
beszélgetett nejével, s a házastársak boldog reménységgel
beszélgettek gyermekük jövendője fölött, s minthogy az öreg

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Britain Germany and Colonial Violence in South West Africa 1884 1919 The Herero and Nama Genocide Mads Bomholt Nielsen Full Chapter PDF

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Britain, Germany and Colonial Violence

in South-West Africa, 1884-1919: The

Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial

Migrant Traders in South Africa: Migrant Traders in

Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West

Early Anthropocene Literature in Britain, 1750–1884 1st

Violence Against Women and Criminal Justice in Africa:

The Decolonial Turn in Media Studies in Africa and the

Bridging East and West: Rabindranath Tagore and Romain

Religion, Extremism and Violence in South Asia 1st

Mads Bomholt Nielsen

More information about this series at

Britain, Germany and

ISSN 2635-1633 ISSN 2635-1641 (electronic)

This book is the culmination of a long journey. When I moved to London

2 Colonial Violence in Southern Africa at the Turn of the

3 Imperial Cooperation and Anglo-German Diplomacy 43

4 Concerns and Non-Cooperation 71

5 Case 609: African Refugees in British Territory 93

6 Knowledge and Reactions121

7 Atrocity Narratives and the End of German Colonialism,

A.B.I.R Anglo-Belgian-India Rubber

Speaking in the House of Lords on 3 July 1919—less than a week after

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

renowned piece of evidence presented on German colonial violence was

statesmen, officials and colonial officers, it examines British and South

Despite criticism of the pervasive notion of Britain as a more benign

associated with the purpose and justification of empire; meaning, that

colonial spheres—drawing connections with the Holocaust, whether

In other words, the origin of German colonialism as exceptionally brutal

Trans-colonialism in Anglo-German Southern Africa

trans-colonial and international context. At the same time, however, it

colonial powers in turn attempted to exert control by means of violence.38

12. Porter, ‘Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery and Humanitarianism’, p. 198. See also

22. U. Lindner, ‘German Colonialism and the British neighbour in Africa

Colonial Violence in Southern Africa

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

in the colonial world were inherently different from those in Europe.

neighbours, as rebellions and fragility in one colony could severely impact

The Brutal Germans? Mutual Perceptions

From its very beginning, German colonialism was to a large degree

condescending lens that rarely avoided pervasive stereotypes. Indeed, the

Picture 2.1 ‘Colonial Powers’ by Thomas T. Heine, Simplicissimuss, 1904, vol.

phases: first, through the 1890s, British observers often considered

Anglo-German Southern Africa. For instance, while German colonialism

German colonial authority, von François raided the Nama settlement of

elsewhere and so Leutwein and the German government in Berlin looked

The Herero and Nama Rebellions, 1903–8

exterminatory policy was ‘as equally gruesome as senseless’. Instead, he

Concentration Camps: Transfer

In the context of colonial violence, the most significant entanglement

Despite American criticism of Weyler’s policy, the American military used

and those of the Germans in GSWA centred upon genocidal intentions

Colonial violence in GSWA was shaped and informed by an inadvertent

Vigan pattogott a szikra.

– Pedig azt mondták ám minálunk, hogy a franczia azért jött be,

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