In 1880 fighting between the Namaqua, who were led by Jan Afrikander, son of Jonker and grandson of Christian Afrikander, and the Damara broke out afresh, and was not ended until the establishment of European rule. In German rule established. 1883 F.A.E. Lüderitz (1834-1886), a Bremen merchant, with the approval of Prince Bismarck, established a trading station at Angra Pequena. This step led to the annexation of the whole country to Germany (see [Africa], § 5) with the exception of Walfish Bay and the islands actually British territory. On the establishment of German rule Jonker Afrikander’s old headquarters were made the seat of administration and renamed Windhoek. The Hottentots, under a chieftain named Hendrik Witboi, offered a determined opposition to the Germans, but after a protracted war peace was concluded in 1894 and Hendrik became the ally of the Germans. Thereafter, notwithstanding various local risings, the country enjoyed a measure of prosperity, although, largely owing to economic conditions, its development was very slow.
In October 1903 the Bondelzwarts, who occupy the district immediately north of the Orange river, rose in revolt. This act was the beginning of a struggle between the Germans and the natives which lasted over four years, and cost Herero war. Germany the lives of some 5000 soldiers and settlers, and entailed an expenditure of £15,000,000. Abuses committed by white traders, the brutal methods of certain officials and the occupation of tribal lands were among the causes of the war, but impatience of white rule was believed to be the chief reason for the revolt of the Herero, the most formidable of the opponents of the Germans. The Herero had accepted the German protectorate by treaty—without fully comprehending that to which they had agreed. To crush the Bondelzwarts, an object attained by January 1904, the governor, Colonel Theodor Leutwein, had denuded Damaraland of troops, and advantage was taken of this fact by the Herero to begin a long-planned and well-prepared revolt. On the 12th of January 1904 most of the German farmers in Damaraland were attacked, and settlers and their families murdered and the farms devastated. Reinforcements were sent from Germany, and in June General von Trotha arrived and took command of the troops. On the 11th of August von Trotha attacked the Herero in their stronghold, the Waterberg, about 200 m. N. of Windhoek, and inflicted upon them a severe defeat. The main body of the enemy escaped, however, from the encircling columns of the Germans, and thereafter the Herero, who were under the leadership of Samuel Maherero, maintained a guerrilla warfare, rendering the whole countryside unsafe. The Germans found pursuit almost hopeless, being crippled by the lack of water and the absence of means of transport. To add to their troubles a Herero bastard named Morenga, with a following of Hottentots, had, in July, recommenced hostilities in the south. On the 2nd of October 1904 von Trotha, exasperated at his want of success in crushing the enemy, issued a proclamation in which he said: “Within the German frontier every Herero with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will not take over any more women and children. But I will either drive them back to your people or have them fired on.” In a later order von Trotha instructed his soldiers not to fire into, but to fire over the heads of the women and children, and Prince Bülow ordered the general to repeal the whole proclamation. Whenever they had the chance, however, the Germans hunted down the Herero, and thousands perished in the Omaheke desert, across which numbers succeeded in passing to British territory near Ngami.
On the day following the issue of von Trotha’s proclamation to the Herero, i.e. on the 3rd of October 1904, Hendrik Witboi sent a formal declaration of war to the Germans. Hendrik had helped to suppress the Bondelzwarts rising, and had received a German decoration for his services, and his hostility is said to have been kindled by the supersession of Colonel Leutwein, for whom he entertained a great admiration. The Witbois were joined by other Hottentot tribes, and their first act was to murder some sixty German settlers in the Gibeon district. Both British and Boer farmers were spared—the Hottentots in this matter following the example of the Herero. In November, considerable reinforcements having come from Germany, the Witbois were attacked, and Hendrik’s headquarters, Reitmont, captured. Another defeat was inflicted on Hendrik in January 1905, but, lacking ammunition and water, the Germans could not follow up their victory. As in Damaraland, the warfare in Namaqualand now assumed a guerrilla character, and the Germans found it almost impossible to meet their elusive enemy, while small detachments were often surprised and sometimes annihilated. In May 1905 von Trotha tried the effect on the Hottentots of another of his proclamations. He invited them to surrender, adding that in the contrary event all rebels would be exterminated. A price was at the same time put on the heads of Hendrik Witboi and other chiefs. This proclamation was unheeded by the Hottentots, who were in fact continuing the war with rifles and ammunition seized from the Germans, and replenishing their stock with cattle taken from the same source. In the north, however, Samuel Maherero had fled to British territory, and the resistance of the Herero was beginning to collapse. Concentration camps were established in which some thousands of Herero women and children were cared for. Meanwhile, the administration of von Trotha, who had assumed the governorship as well as the command of the troops, was severely criticized by the civilian population, and the non-success of the operations against the Hottentots provoked strong military criticism. In August 1905 Colonel (afterwards General) Leutwein, who had returned to Germany, formally resigned the governorship of the protectorate, and Herr von Lindequist, late German consul-general at Cape Town, was nominated as his successor. Von Trotha, who had publicly criticized Prince Bülow’s order to repeal the Herero proclamation, was superseded. He had in the summer of 1905 instituted a series of “drives” against the Witbois, with no particular results. Hendrik always evaded the columns and frequently attacked them in the rear.
In November 1905 von Lindequist arrived at Windhoek. The new governor issued a general amnesty to the Herero, and set aside two large reserves for those who surrendered. His conciliatory policy was in the end successful, and the Ovampo, who threatened to give trouble, were kept in hand. The task of pacifying Damaraland was continued throughout 1906, and by the close of that year about 16,000 Herero had been established in the reserves. Some 3000 had sought refuge in British territory, while the number who had perished may be estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000.
In Namaqualand von Lindequist found an enemy still unbroken. On the 3rd of November, however, Hendrik Witboi died, aged seventy-five, and his son and successor Samuel Isaac Witboi shortly afterwards surrendered, and the The Hottentots subdued. hostility of the tribe ceased. Morenga now became the chief of the rebel Hottentots, and “drives” against him were organized. Early in May 1906 an encounter between Morenga and a German column was fought close to the British frontier of the Bechuanaland protectorate. Morenga fled, was pursued across the frontier, and wounded, but escaped. On the 16th of May he was found hiding by British patrols and interned. Other Hottentot chiefs continued the conflict, greatly aided by the immense difficulty the Germans had in transporting supplies; to remedy which defect the building of a railway from Lüderitz Bay to Kubub was begun early in 1906. A camel transport corps was also organized, and Boer auxiliaries engaged. Throughout the later half of 1906 the Hottentots maintained the struggle, the Karas mountains forming a stronghold from which their dislodgment was extremely difficult. Many of their leaders and numbers of the tribesmen had a considerable strain of white (chiefly Dutch) blood and were fairly educated men, with a knowledge not only of native, but European ways; facts which helped to make them formidable opponents. Gradually the resistance of the Hottentots was overcome, and in December 1906 the Bondelzwarts again surrendered. Other tribes continued the fight for months longer, but by March 1907 it was found possible to reduce the troops in the protectorate to about 5000 men. At the height of the campaign the Germans had 19,000 men in the field.
In August 1907 renewed alarm was created by the escape of Morenga from British territory. The Cape government, regarding the chief as a political refugee, had refused to extradite him and he had been assigned a residence near Upington. This place he left early in August and, eluding the frontier guards, re-entered German territory. In September, however, he was again on the British side of the border. Meantime a force of the Cape Mounted Police under Major F.A.H. Eliott had been organized to effect his arrest. Summoned to surrender, Morenga fled into the Kalahari Desert. Eliott’s force of sixty men pursued him through a waterless country, covering 80 m. in 24 hours. When overtaken (September 21st), Morenga, with ten followers, was holding a kopje and fired on the advancing troops. After a sharp engagement the chief and five of his men were killed, the British casualties being one killed and one wounded. The death of Morenga removed a serious obstacle to the complete pacification of the protectorate. Military operations continued, however, during 1908. Herr von Lindequist, being recalled to Berlin to become under-secretary in the colonial office, was succeeded as governor (May 1907) by Herr von Schuckmann. In 1908 steps were taken to establish German authority in the Caprivi enclave, which up to that time had been neglected by the colonial authorities.
The discovery of diamonds in the Lüderitz Bay district in July 1908 caused a rush of treasure-seekers. The diamonds were found mostly on the surface in a sandy soil and were of small size. The stones resemble Brazilian Discovery of diamonds. diamonds. By the end of the year the total yield was over 39,000 carats. One of the difficulties encountered in developing the field was the great scarcity of fresh water. During 1909 various companies were formed to exploit the diamondiferous area. The first considerable packet of diamonds from the colony reached Germany in April 1909. The output for the year was valued at over £1,000,000.
Authorities.—Karl Dove, Deutsch-Südwestafrika (Berlin, 1903); W. Külz, Deutsch-Südafrika ... (Berlin, 1909); T. Leutwein, Elf Jahre Gouverneur in Deutsch-Südwestafrika (Berlin, 1908), an authoritative work, largely historical; P. Rohrbach, Deutsche Kolonialwirtschaft, Band 1: Südwestafrika (Berlin, 1907), a comprehensive economic study; I. Irle, Die Herero, ein Beitrag zur Landes-, Volks- und Missionskunde (Gütersloh, 1906), a valuable summary of information concerning Damaraland; Major K. Schwabe, Im deutschen Diamantenlande (Berlin, 1909); T. Rehbock, Deutsch-Südwestafrika, seine wirtschaftliche Erschliessung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Nutzbarmachung des Wassers (Berlin, 1898); C. von François, Deutsch-Südwestafrika: Geschichte der Kolonisation bis zum Ausbruch des Krieges mit Witbooi, April 1893 (Berlin, 1899), a history of the protectorate up to 1893; H. Schintz, Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Forschungsreisen durch die deutschen Schutzgebiete Gross-Nama und Hereroland, nach dem Kunene, &c., 1884-1887 (Oldenburg, N.D. [1891]); H. von François, Nama und Damara (Magdeburg, N.D. [1896]). See also for Ethnology, “Die Eingeborenen Deutsch-Südwestafrikas nach Geschichte, Charakter, Sitten, Gebräuchen und Sprachen,” in Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen (Berlin and Stuttgart) for 1899 and 1900; and G.W. Stow, The Native Races of South Africa (London, 1905); ch. xvii. contains an account of the Afrikander family. For geology consult A. Schenk, “Die geologische Entwicklung Südafrikas (mit Karte),” Peterm. Mitt. (1888); Stromer von Reichenbach, Die Geologie der deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika (Munich and Leipzig, 1896). Of early books of travel the most valuable are: F. Galton, Tropical South Africa (1853; new ed. 1889); Charles J. Andersson, Lake Ngami (1856), The Okavango River (1861) and Notes of Travel (1875). See also Sir J.E. Alexander, An Expedition of Discovery into the Interior of Africa (London, 1838). Reports on the German colonies are published by the British foreign office. The Kriegskarte von Deutsch-Südwestafrika (Berlin, 1904), in nine sheets on a scale of 1 : 800,000, will be found useful.
(F. R. C.)