Selective Memory: British Perceptions of the Herero–Nama Genocide, 1904–1908 and 1918

Abstract

This article examines British officials’ perceptions of, and degree of involvement in, the Herero–Nama war and subsequent genocide in German South-West Africa in 1904–1908. By examining contemporary British correspondence on this event and comparing it to the British ‘Blue Book’ of 1918, the article shows that British officials were far more interested in retaining stability than in the suffering of Africans in German territory at the time of the genocide. Nevertheless, by 1918 they used this event as an instrument to confiscate Germany’s colonies. Being part of a wider transnational approach to German colonial history, this article challenges the idea of German colonial exceptionalism and the approach to this genocide within a historical framework of the Third Reich. Instead, this event should be understood within the wider transnational context of imperial history.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my dear friends Stefanos Koryzis, Andrew Harrison and Christian Weber for their help in preparing this article; also my supervisors, Charles Boxer Professor Francisco Bethencourt and Rhodes Professor Richard Drayton, and the readers and editors at JSAS for their feedback and suggestions.

Notes

¹ J. Bridgman, The Revolt of the Hereros (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1981), pp. 73–74.

² For a detailed account of the war and genocide see C. Erichsen and D. Olusoga, The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism (London, Faber & Faber, 2010). See also C. Erichsen, “The Angel of Death Has Descended Violently among Them”: Concentration Camps and Prisoners-of-War in Namibia, 1904–1908 (Leiden, African Studies Centre, 2005).

³ The term ‘genocide’ was applied first in H. Dreschler, “Let Us Die Fighting”: The Struggle of the Herero and Nama against German Imperialism (1884–1915), trans. B. Zollner (London, Zed Press, 1980). See also H. Bley, South-West Africa under German Rule, 1894–1914 (London, Heinemann, 1971). In autumn 2016, Germany initiated negotiations with Namibia over official recognition of the atrocities as genocide.

⁴ M. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Pre-History of the Holocaust? The Sonderweg and Historikerstreit Debates and the Abject Colonial Past’, Central European History, 41, 3 (2008), p. 503. For the Sonderweg, see, among several titles, H-U. Wehler, ‘Bismarck’s Imperialism 1862–1890’, Past & Present, 48, 1 (1970), pp. 119–150; W. Mommsen, Der Autoritäre Nationalstaat. Verfassung, Gesellschaft und Kultur in deutschen Kaiserreicht (Frankfurt-am-Main, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990). For a contrasting view, see G. Eley and D. Blackbourne, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984).

⁵ See P. Kennedy, The Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism 1860–1914 (London, Ashfield Press, 1980).

⁶ In this article, ‘British’ refers to the British Empire as a whole (i.e., South Africa and London are here converged).

⁷ Studying Germany and Britain in Africa may be dated back to P. Gifford and W. Roger Louis (eds), Britain and Germany in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1967). For a recent transnational contribution, see, for instance, V. Barth and R. Cvetkovski (eds), Imperial Co-operation and Transfer, 1870–1930: Empires and Encounters (London, Bloomsbury, 2015).

⁸ Several titles on German colonialism with a transnational scope have been published in recent years. See especially S. Conrad, German Colonialism: A Short History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010); J. Leonhard and U. von Hirschhausen, Comparing Empires: Encounters and Transfers in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011); B. Naranch and G. Eley (eds), German Colonialism in a Global Age (Durham, Duke University Press, 2014).

⁹ U. Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen: Deutschland und Großbritannien als Imperialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914 (Frankfurt-am-Main, Campus Verlag, 2011), p. 254.

¹⁰ J.H. Wellington, German Southwest Africa and its Human Issues (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 235.

¹¹ See Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen; M. Fröhlich, Von Konfrontationzur Koexistenz: Die deutsch-englischen Kolonialbeziehungen in Afrika zwischen 1884 und 1914 (Bochum, Brockmeyer, 1990); Dreschler, “Let Us Die Fighting”, p. 138.

¹² H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co.,1951); A. Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. J. Pinkham (New York, Monthly Review Press, 2000).

¹³ J. Zimmerer, ‘War, Concentration Camps and Genocide’, in J. Zimmerer and J. Zeller (eds), Genocide in German South-West Africa: The Colonial War of 1904–1908 and its Aftermath, trans. E.J. Neather (London, Merlin Press, 2008), p. 60.

¹⁴ A. Eckl, ‘The Herero Genocide of 1904: Source Critical and Methodological Considerations’, Journal of Namibian Studies, 3 (2008), p. 56. See also J. Zimmerer, Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz? Beitragezum Verhältnis von Kolonialismus und Holocaust (Münster, Lit Verlag, 2011).

¹⁵ Erichsen and Olusoga, The Kaiser’s Holocaust, pp. 250–51.

¹⁶ J. Sarkin, Germany’s Genocide of the Herero – Kaiser Wilhelm II, His General, His Settlers, His Soldiers (Cape Town, UCT Press, 2010), pp. 20–22. See also Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2006), which claims that there was a military culture carried on from the colonies to the Third Reich.

¹⁷ S. Conrad, German Colonialism, p. 4, and B. Kundrus, ‘From the Herero to Holocaust? Some Remarks on the Current Debate’, Africa Spectrum, 40, 2 (2005), pp. 299–308.

¹⁸ T. Kühne, ‘Colonialism and the Holocaust: Continuities, Causations, and Complexities’, Journal of Genocide Research, 15, 3 (2013), p. 340.

¹⁹ S. Kuss, Deutsches Militär auf kolonialen Kriegsschauplätzen: Eskalation von Gewalt zu Beginn des 20 Jahrhunderts (Berlin, Cristoph Links Verlag, 2010). For another comparison to Germany’s other colonial ventures, see also George Steinmetz, The Devil’s Handwriting – Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa and Southwest Africa (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008).

²⁰ Indeed, P. Gosse sought to establish a ‘conceptual framework’ in studying GSWA and the Holocaust together in ‘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, University of Nebraska Press, 2005), p. 118.

²¹ 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, 35, 3 (2005), pp. 429–64.

²² R. Kössler, ‘Genocide in Namibia, the Holocaust and the Issue of Colonialism’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 38, 1 (2012), p. 237.

²³ For recent historiographical reviews, see, for instance, Kühne, ‘Colonialism and the Holocaust’, and S. Conrad, ‘Rethinking German Colonialism in a Global Age’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 41, 4 (2013), pp. 543–66.

²⁴ H. Winkler, Germany: The Long Road West, trans. Alexander Sager, vol. 1 (New York, Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 1–2.

²⁵ 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, Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 255. For an excellent discussion of the implications of drawing parallels, continuities and so on, see B. Kundrus, ‘Continuities, Parallels, Receptions: Reflections on the “Colonisation” of National Socialism’, Journal of Namibian Studies, 4 (2008), pp. 25–46, and R. Kössler, Namibia and Germany: Negotiating the Past (Windhoek, University of Namibia Press, 2015), pp. 84–5. For popular culture, see the BBCdocumentary, ‘Racism: A History’, part 2 (2007).

²⁶ R. Gewarth and S. Malinowski, ‘Hannah Arendt’s Ghosts: Reflections on the Disputable Path from Windhoek to Auschwitz’, Central European History, 42, 2 (2009), pp. 279–300. See also F. Schumacher, ‘Kulturtransfer und Empire. Britisches Vorbild und US-amerikanische Kolonialherrschaft auf den Philippinen im frühen 20 Jahrhundert’, in C. Kraft, R. Lüdke and J. Martschukat (eds), Kolonialgeschichten. Regionale Perspektive auf einglobales Phänomen (Frankfurt-am-Main, Campus Verlag, 2010), pp. 306–27.

²⁷ Kühne, ‘Colonialism and the Holocaust’, p. 343; T. Dedering, ‘Compounds, Camps, Colonialism’, Journal of Namibian Studies, 12 (2012), pp. 36–9.

²⁸ B. Lau, ‘Uncertain Certainties’, Mibigaus, 2 (1989). Reprinted later in B. Lau, History and Historiography, 4 Essays in Reprint (Windhoek, Discourse/MSORP, 1995). For a comprehensive reply, see W. Hillebrecht, ‘Certain Uncertainties’, Journal of Namibian Studies, 1 (2007), pp. 73–95, and T. Dedering, ‘The German–Herero War of 1904: Revisionism of Genocide or Imaginary Historiography’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 19, 1 (1993), pp. 80–88.

²⁹ For an excellent analysis of the ‘genocide debate’ and the extermination order, see J-B. Gewald, ‘The Great General of the Kaiser’, Botswana Notes and Records, 26 (1994), pp. 67–76.

³⁰ See Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen, and ‘Encounters Over the Border: The Shaping of Colonial Identities in Neighbouring British and German Colonies in Southern Africa’, in Lindner et al., Hybrid Cultures, Nervous States: Britain and Germany in a (Post)Colonial World (Leiden, Brill, 2010), pp. 2–22.

³¹ Also, P. Curson, Border Conflicts in a German African Colony: Jakob Morenga and the Untold Tragedy of Edward Presgrave (Bury, Arena Books, 2012).

³² T. Dedering, ‘The Ferreira Raid of 1906: Boers, Britons and Germans in Southern Africa in the Aftermath of the South African War’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 26, 1 (2000), pp. 43–60, and ‘War and Mobility in the Borderlands of South Western Africa in the Early Twentieth Century’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 39, 2 (2006), pp. 275–94.

³³ Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen, p. 252.

³⁴ C. Twomey, ‘Narratives and Imperial Rivalry: Britain, Germany and the Treatment of “Native Races”, 1904–1939’, in T. Crook and B. Taithe (eds), Evil, Barbarism and Empire: Britain and Abroad, c. 1830–2000 (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 201–25.

³⁵ J. Silvester and J-B. Gewald, Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book (Leiden, Brill, 2003).

³⁶ British Library, 08157.f.8, Deutsche Reichskolonialamt, The Treatment of Native and other Populations in the Colonial Possessions of Germany and England: An Answer to the English Blue Book of August 1918 (Berlin, 1919), pp. 50–55.

³⁷ Lindner, ‘Hybrid Cultures’, p. 5.

³⁸ Lindner, ‘German Colonialism’, p. 262.

³⁹ L.H. Gann, ‘The Berlin Conference and the Humanitarian Conscience’, in S. Förster, W.J. Mommsen and R. Robinson (eds), Bismarck Europe and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference 1884–1885 and the Onset of Partition (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 330–31.

⁴⁰ Silvester and Gewald, Words Cannot Be Found, p. xv.

⁴¹ Twomey, ‘Narratives and Imperial Rivalry’, p. 225, and Eckl, ‘The Herero Genocide’, p. 37.

⁴² Silvester and Gewald, Words Cannot Be Found, pp. xviii–xix.

⁴³ Administrator’s Office, Windhuk: ‘Report on the Natives of South-West Africa and their Treatment by Germany’ (London, 1918), in Silvester and Gewald, Words Cannot Be Found, p. 9.

⁴⁴ The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), FO 881/5181, General Act, 1885, Article 6 and Administrator’s Office, ‘Report on the Natives’, pp. 33–4.

⁴⁵ R. Kössler, ‘Sjambok or Cane? Reading the Blue Book’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 3 (2004), p. 708.

⁴⁶ Administrator’s Office, ‘Report on the Natives’, p. 15.

⁴⁷ Ibid., pp. 17–18.

⁴⁸ TNA, FO 64/1645, General-Consul for British South Africa, D.H. von Jacobs, to Prime Minister, Cape Town, 12 September 1904.

⁴⁹ J. Masson, ‘A Fragment of Colonial History: The Killing of Jakob Marengo’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 21, 2 (1995), p. 255.

⁵⁰ J. Masson, Jakob Marengo: An Early Resistance Hero of Namibia (Windhoek, Out of Africa, 2001), pp. 52–3.

⁵¹ Administrator’s Office, ‘Report on the Natives’, p. 168.

⁵² TNA, FO 367/63, Hutchinson to Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Earl of Elgin, 8 August 1907.

⁵³ TNA, FO 367/63, Grey to Elgin, 9 August 1907.

⁵⁴ TNA, FO 367/63, Ambassador to Austro-Hungarian Empire, E. Goschen, to Grey, 16 August 1907.

⁵⁵ TNA, FO 367/63, Hutchinson to Governor of GSWA, 2 October 1907.

⁵⁶ Kennedy, Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 441.

⁵⁷ TNA, FO 367/63, F. Lascelles to Grey, 25 September 1907.

⁵⁸ A. Calvert, South West Africa during the German Occupation 1894–1914 (London, T.W. Laurie, 1916), p. 32.

⁵⁹ Ibid., p. 8.

⁶⁰ Administrator’s Office, ‘Report on the Natives’, p. 173.

⁶¹ Calvert, South West Africa, pp. 23–4.

⁶² TNA, CO 879/52, High Commissioner to South Africa, A. Milner, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, J. Chamberlain, 13 October 1897.

⁶³ W. Roger Louis, Germany’s Lost Colonies, 1914–1919 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 99.

⁶⁴ Administrator’s Office, ‘Report on the Natives’, p. 103.

⁶⁵ TNA, FO 64/1645, Lt. Bruce to Commander-in-Chief, Cape Station, 19 July 1904.

⁶⁶ Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen, p. 239.

⁶⁷ Calvert, South West Africa, pp. 24–5.

⁶⁸ Administrator’s Office, ‘Report on the Natives’, pp. 60–62.

⁶⁹ Deutsche Reichskolonialamt, Treatment of Native and Other Populations, p. 43.

⁷⁰ D. Gilfoyle, ‘Veterinary Research and the African Rinderpest Epizootic: The Cape Colony 1896–1898’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 1 (2003), p. 136; P. Phoofolo, ‘Epidemics and Revolutions: The Rinderpest Epidemics in Late Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa’, Past and Present, 138, 1 (1993), p. 126.

⁷¹ Hillebrecht, ‘Certain Uncertainties’, pp. 82–3.

⁷² Erichsen and Olusoga, The Kaiser’s Holocaust, p. 264.

⁷³ Lau, ‘Uncertain Certainties’, p. 46.

⁷⁴ Deutsche Reichskolonialamt, Treatment of Native and Other Populations, p. 50. See also Wellington, South West Africa and its Human Issues, pp. 250–53.

⁷⁵ TNA, War Office [WO] 33/117, Confidential Report by Capt. H.S. Walker [undated] 1898, p. 99.

⁷⁶ TNA, CO 879/47: E. Fairfield to W. Evans, 22 October 1896.

⁷⁷ See, for instance, G. Krüger, Kriegsbewältigung und Geschichtsbewusstsein: Realität, Deutung und Verarbeitung des deutschen Kolonialkrieges in Namibia, 1904 bis 1907 (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), pp. 62–3, where the same rhetoric as Schlieffen’s during the Franco-Prussian war is taken into account.

⁷⁸ Lindner, ‘German Colonialism’, p. 257.

⁷⁹ Dedering, ‘The Ferreira Raid of 1906’, pp. 46–7.

⁸⁰ TNA, FO 64/1646, Selbourne to Lyttelton, 24 May 1905.

⁸¹ TNA, FO 64/1646, Lyttelton to Selbourne, 5June 1905.

⁸² TNA, FO 64/1645, Report by von Gleichen, enclosed in Lascelles to Secretary of State, Lord Lansdowne, 9 April 1904, pp. 1–2.

⁸³ TNA, FO 64/1646, J.B. Whitehead, British Embassy, Berlin, to Lascelles, 13 June 1905.

⁸⁴ Dedering, ‘The Ferreira Raid of 1906’, pp. 50–51.

⁸⁵ The Kruger Telegram (1896), available at http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=754, retrieved 10 November 2015.

⁸⁶ P. Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781–1997 (New York, Vintage, 2008), pp. 197–8.

⁸⁷ TNA, FO 64/1646, Secret Report, Military Intelligence Department, enclosed in Hutchinson to Lyttelton, 21 June 1905.

⁸⁸ Erichsen and Olusoga , The Kaiser’s Holocaust, pp. 141–2.

⁸⁹ Dedering, ‘The Ferreira Raid of 1906’, p. 46.

⁹⁰ TNA, FO 64/1646, Secret Report, Military Intelligence Department, enclosed in Hutchinson to Lyttelton, 5 July 1905, pp. 1–2.

⁹¹ Dedering, ‘The Ferreira Raid of 1906’, p. 43.

⁹² Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen, p. 253.

⁹³ Ibid., p. 255.

⁹⁴ F.R. Vivelo, ‘The Entry of the Herero into Botswana’, Botswana Notes and Records, 8 (1976), pp. 39–40, and R. Pennington and H. Harpending, ‘How Many Refugees Were There? History and Population Change Among the Herero and Mbanderu of Northwestern Botswana’, Botswana Notes and Records, 23 (1991), p. 209. For a cultural history of the Herero refugees and the ancestors in Botswana, see K. Alnaes, ‘Living with the Past: The Songs of the Herero in Botswana’, Africa, 59, 3 (1989), pp. 267–99.

⁹⁵ TNA, FO 64/1645, Hutchinson to Lyttelton, 18 November 1903.

⁹⁶ Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen, pp. 256–7.

⁹⁷ Bundesarchiv, Lichterfelde, R1001/2111, Der Chef des Admiralstabs der Marine to Auswärtiges Amt, Kolonial Abteilung, 16 February 1904.

⁹⁸ Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen, p. 254.

⁹⁹ TNA, FO 64/1646, von Jacobs to Major-General E. Smith-Brook, 24 December 1904, enclosed in Hutchinson to Lyttelton, 25 February 1905.

¹⁰⁰ TNA, FO 64/1645, Resident Commissioner, Mafeking, F. Panzera to Governor of Transvaal and Orange River Colony, A. Milner, 7 October 1904, enclosed in Milner to Lyttelton, 17 October 1904.

¹⁰¹ TNA, CO 417/442, Selbourne to Elgin, 28 January 1907. See also Dedering, ‘War and Mobility’, pp. 286–88, and Curson, Border Conflicts, pp. 136–7, for the refugee camps. For the emigration to the Rand, see J-B. Gewald, ‘The Road of a Man Called Love and the Sack of Sero: The Herero–German War and the Export of Herero Labour to the South African Rand’, Journal of African Studies, 40, 1 (1999), pp. 21–40, where it is suggested that the pre-war export of labour may even have been a factor in the outbreak of the war.

¹⁰² TNA FO 64/1645, Panzera to Milner, 7 October 1904, enclosed in Milner to Lyttelton, 17 October 1904.

¹⁰³ Pennington and Harpending, ‘How Many Refugees Were There?’, p. 210. The Herero relations with Sekgoma were not straightforward and had political ramifications. See J-B. Gewald, ‘“I was Afraid of Samuel, Therefore I Came to Sekgoma”: Herero Refugees and Patronage Politics in Ngamiland, Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1890–1914’, Journal of African History, 43, 2 (2002), pp. 211–34.

¹⁰⁴ Pennington and Harpending, ‘How Many Refugees Were There?’, p. 217.

¹⁰⁵ TNA, FO 64/1645, Panzera to Milner, 3 November 1904.

¹⁰⁶ Kuss, Deutsches Militär, p. 321.

¹⁰⁷ Dedering, ‘War and Mobility’, p. 283.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., pp. 282–3.

¹⁰⁹ TNA, FO 64/1645, Lyttelton to Milner, 26 November 1904.

¹¹⁰ W.D. Haacke, ‘The Kalahari Expedition, March 1908: The Forgotten Story of the Final Battle of the Nama War’, Botswana Notes and Record, 24 (1992), p. 2.

¹¹¹ Ibid., p. 12, and, for the permission to cross the border, see TNA, CO 417/437, Selbourne to Elgin, 6 November 1907, and TNA, CO 417/438, Selbourne to Elgin, 25 November 1907.

¹¹² TNA, CO 879/102, Selbourne to Grey, 2 February 1909.

¹¹³ Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen, p. 458.

¹¹⁴ Fröhlich, Von Konfrontationzur Koexistenz, p. 266, and Dreschler, “Let Us Die Fighting”, p. 138.

¹¹⁵ TNA, FO 367/136, Intelligence Report by Captain H.S.P. Simon, 6 March 1909, enclosed in Hutchinson to The Secretary of State for the Colonies, The Earl of Crewe, p. 2.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., pp. 3–4.

¹¹⁷ A. Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War: South African Blacks and the First World War (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1987), pp. 58–60.

¹¹⁸ Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen, pp. 240–41.

¹¹⁹ TNA, FO 64/1647, Colonel F. Trench to Chief Staff Officer, Cape Town, 3 October 1903.

¹²⁰ TNA, FO 367/8, Trench to the War Office, London, 15 March 1906, pp. 8–9.

¹²¹ TNA, FO 64/1647, Trench to Lansdowne, 15 November 1905. For a recent study of the camps, see J. Kreienbaum, ‘Deadly Learning? Concentration Camps in Colonial Wars Around 1900’, in Barth and Cvetkovski (eds), Imperial Co-operation, pp. 219–36.

¹²² Lindner, Koloniale Begegungen, p. 242.

¹²³ TNA, FO 65/1647, Major Berrange to Commander, Cape Mounted Police, 20 October 1905.

¹²⁴ W. Roger Louis, ‘Great Britain and German Expansion in Africa’, in Gifford and Louis (eds), Britain and Germany in Africa, p. 34. For a comparison of the Congo atrocities and GSWA, see David Bargueño, ‘Humanitarianism in the Age of Empire: Deutsch-Südwestafrika and L’État Indépendent du Congo’, Journal of Namibian Studies, 9 (2011), pp. 17–60.

¹²⁵ For the Congo Crisis and the British public opinion, see W. Roger Louis, ‘Roger Casement and the Congo’, Journal of African History, 5, 1 (1964), pp. 99–120, and, recently, D. Pavlakis, British Humanitarianism and the Congo Reform Movement, 1896–1913 (New York, Routledge, 2016).

¹²⁶ TNA, FO 367/136, Intelligence Report by Captain H.S.P. Simon, 6 March 1909.

¹²⁷ Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War, pp. 86–7. Reports include cases of ears being cut off, eyes scooped out and even castration.

¹²⁸ For Anglo-German views on colonial scandals, see F. Bösch, ‘Are We a Cruel Nation? Colonial Practices, Perceptions and Scandal’, in D. Geppert and R. Gerwarth (eds), Wilhemine Germany and Edwardian Britain: Essays on Cultural Affinity (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 115–42.

¹²⁹ Louis, ‘Great Britain and German Expansion ’, pp. 38 ff., 153.

¹³⁰ Twomey, ‘Narratives and Imperial Rivalry’, pp. 215–16.

¹³¹ Bösch, ‘Are We a Cruel Nation?’, pp. 139–40.

¹³² Andreas Eckl has shown a correlation between the arguments of the Blue Book and Dreschler’s “Let Us Die Fighting”. See Eckl, ‘The Herero Genocide’, pp. 38–41.

¹³³ Louis, Germany’s Lost Colonies, p. 35. For British colonial violence, see, for instance, R. Gott, Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt (London, Verso, 2011).

¹³⁴ Louis, ‘Great Britain and German Expansion’, p. 36.

¹³⁵ See also Dedering, ‘War and Mobility’, p. 294.

¹³⁶ Conrad, ‘Rethinking German Colonialism’, p. 544.