"A question of fundamental, farreaching importance for all the future": German compensation payments as a result of the Herero War, 1904-1914

Jacob Zollmann

A chapter in An unresolved issue: genocide in colonial Namibia, 2024, pp 199-217 from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: The German state has already paid compensation for damages caused by the Ovaherero war – to the German settlers and companies that were able to claim such war damages from 1904 onwards, as well as to some Africans. Attentive readers of Helmut Bley’s seminal monograph on German colonial rule (1968) or of contemporary Wilhelmine texts and parliamentary minutes have long been aware of this.1 Yet, as far as can be seen, these possible precedents play no role in current political-legal and historiographical debates about possible German reparation payments to the Ovaherero and Nama in Namibia (and possibly also in Botswana and elsewhere). Even (legal) historians working on German colonial history in Namibia, or on the history of reparation payments, or on claims for reparations hardly took up these examples.2 This is remarkable, as they sparked heated debates in the Reichstag (Imperial parliament) and in the colony Deutsch-Südwestafrika (GSWA, German South West Africa) more than a century ago. In the following, after some conceptual legal discussions, the early beginnings of this colonial reparations debate, the main actors of this political struggle, and the (preliminary) results will be briefly analysed; well aware that the topic awaits a monographic treatment.

Keywords: Krieg; Westafrika; Deutsches Kaiserreich; Kompensation; Zahlungsbereitschaft; Kolonie; südliches Afrika (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/312780/1/F ... n-of-fundamental.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:eschap:312780

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in EconStor Open Access Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().