While Germany’s colonial past is not entirely erased from memory, it has largely been an unexamined facet of European exploitation and territorial invasions in Africa. This book by Henning Melber aims to address that oversight. Born in 1950 to German immigrants who moved to Namibia in 1967, Melber became involved with SWAPO, the Namibian liberation movement, and has developed into a prominent scholar on Germany’s colonial legacy.
Melber suggests that current conversations about Germany’s colonial legacy are hindered by societal forgetfulness, denial, and a general lack of awareness among many Germans. His publication represents a “humble effort” to bridge this gap.
He argues that Germany’s colonial activities in Africa are frequently eclipsed by the horrors of the Holocaust. However, Melber highlights that many leading Nazis had colonial backgrounds, asserting, “A colonial mindset persisted throughout the Weimar Republic and during the Nazi period.” Thus, probing into Germany’s colonial governance in Africa can yield new perspectives on Nazism, racial ideologies, and the consequences of colonization.
Origins of genocide
The book outlines a timeline beginning in the mid-1800s when Germany sought to enhance its global reach and trade capabilities. In 1862, the Brandenburg African Company created the modest trading post of Great Friedrichsburg, now located on Ghana’s coast.
“By the dawn of the 20th century,” states Melber, “Imperial Germany had transformed into one of the largest colonial empires concerning foreign territories, referred to euphemistically as ‘acquisitions’.”
South West Africa – today known as Namibia – stands as the most troubling legacy of German colonialism. Adolf Lüderitz from Bremen envisioned the development of Lüderitz Bay, originally called Angra Pequena by the Portuguese, recognizing its potential for guano deposits and as a trade center for copper, ostrich feathers, cattle, and firearms.
Lüderitz’s negotiations with the German government led to the first elevation of the German flag in the bay in 1884, symbolizing the declaration of German South West Africa. Nevertheless, an official German administration did not appear until 1893 in this largely unproductive colony.
Initially, Melber points out, German settlers showed little regard for the rights of indigenous people. Indigenous leaders opposing colonization were coerced into “protection treaties” through military force or execution. By the late 1890s, a wave of settlers began seizing land and livestock through violent and deceitful tactics.
The local Ovaherero community maintained significant control and economic importance until a devastating cattle plague hit in 1896-97. This catastrophic loss of livestock left them more vulnerable and dependent on traders, land exchanges, and labor. By the end of the decade, the economy was increasingly dominated by settler-colonial interests.
This oppression ultimately sparked a rebellion met with brutal violence, including mass executions and “unlimited force of arms.” Those among the Nama and Ovaherero who resisted German authority faced deportation to concentration camps, where they endured forced labor and horrific death rates. Many historians classify the events of 1904-1908 as genocide—the first recognized in the 20th century. Estimates of casualties are between 24,000 and 100,000 Ovaherero and 10,000 Nama, with many more driven into the desert to die of dehydration.
As Melber notes: “If there are keywords to encapsulate the principal effects of German colonial rule on indigenous peoples, they would be land fraud, genocide, contract labor, and apartheid.”
Brutality and insurrection
Violence was also key to Germany’s efforts to establish control over Cameroon. The Hamburg Chamber of Commerce endorsed Adolph Woerman’s plan to annex the Cameroon coast, permitting traders to bypass taxes imposed by French and British colonial regimes. The goal was to facilitate access to the interior.
In 1884, supported by certain local Duala kings, a German flag was raised—yet these leaders insisted on maintaining “ownership of the land and recognition of the local chiefs as rulers of the Cameroons.” This hope, as Melber observes, proved to be misplaced.
Conflicts arising from this situation led to violence and German “pacification” policies. By 1889, a direct German colonial governance was implemented. Land seizure and forced labor quickly became hallmarks of rule, including the recruitment of a mercenary unit from Dahomey in 1891 to carry out especially violent operations. Yet military administration continued until the fall of German control over nearly half of the territory.
Melber recounts various Africans who courageously resisted against the encroaching Europeans.
He highlights Prince Mpondo Akwa, son of King Dika Akwa, who had been educated in Germany and soon became a source of concern for the colonial authorities. In 1902, he famously declared that indigenous peoples would reject “being deprived of their black culture, law, and customs, which had existed long before the encounter with whites.”
Upon his return to Cameroon, he was imprisoned in June 1911 for allegedly making “German-phobic remarks” and was extrajudicially executed in 1914. Ultimately, as Melber emphasizes, the Germans could not “harvest the fruits of the terror they had sowed.” A collaborative British and French invasion from September 1914 to January 1916 effectively ended the violent German presence, yet it offered no benefits to the local populations.
“Cameroon was divided as prey between the British and French… which sowed new seeds of enduring internal conflict and violence,” Melber asserts.
A famine in East Africa
In East Africa, German colonial authority in Tanganyika was spearheaded by German citizen Carl Peters, who, according to Melber, was driven by “an imperialist nationalism fused with social Darwinism.” The German East Africa Company was founded, and the Berlin Conference set boundaries for German zones of influence that, by 1886, included present-day Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi, with German East Africa eventually becoming Germany’s largest colony.
Similar to South West Africa, Peters—described by Melber as “a megalomaniac convinced that ruthless violence was the only language understood by the locals”—met resistance with severe force during a combined Swahili and Arab uprising.
Colonists sought to create a plantation economy focused on sisal, coffee, rubber, and cotton, yet these ambitions were met with labor shortages due to the violent and unhealthy conditions. Hermann Wissmann was appointed as the commissioner for East Africa, arriving in Zanzibar in March 1889 and resorting to massacres against rebels while deploying mercenaries, primarily from Sudan, Somalia, and Zulu backgrounds.
By the mid-1890s, uprisings were widespread, culminating in the fierce suppression of the Maji Maji uprising—potentially resulting in the loss of up to 300,000 lives amidst cycles of famine.
Confronting blindness to history
Reflecting on the brutal legacies present in Namibia, Cameroon, East Africa, and beyond, Melber posits that Germany must “walk the walk” of reconciliation. “This means acknowledging the atrocities carried out in the name of German ‘civilization’ abroad and addressing these historical injustices with the same gravity as the later Nazi mass exterminations conducted domestically.”
He examines topics such as reparations, the return of artifacts, and current narratives concerning Germany’s colonial history. Most notably, he concludes that the government should foster public awareness and progressive education to elevate recent initiatives beyond “merely political symbols.”
Echoing the book’s opening lines: “We cannot change the past, but we can alter our blindness to the past.”
The Long Shadow of German Colonialism: Amnesia, Denialism and Revisionism
By Henning Melber
£30 Hurst Publishing
ISBN: 9781805260455
