OT: German West African colony?

[victor steinbok]

Good point. Because Gmail's threading leaves a lot to be desired, I
sometimes miss parts of a conversation because they end up in a different
thread (and, I'm sure, I am not the only one). Usually, clicking on
everything in sight eventually recovers the lost threads, but not always in
time.

As for the distinction between West Africa and Southwest Africa, aside from
administrative tags and general geographic positioning, it is sometimes
hard to parse. It's a question of partitioning into four quadrants vs.
eight "octants", I guess. If you only have four, Namibia can go either into
South or West. But, I'm sure "Southwest Africa" was the correct
administrative nomenclature prior to WWI. [Yes, all German territories,
including the aforementioned ones in Africa, plus New Guinea, some minor
islands and small bits of Asia, were assigned mandates to either European
or large neighboring countries by the League of Nations. I believe, Namibia
was the last of these to become independent.]

VS-)

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 6:04 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

>
> At 4/27/2012 05:51 PM, victor steinbok wrote:
> >Didn't Germany control Namibia as well?
>
> The discussion quoted below was about German West
> Africa, which I couldn't equate to modern
> countries, not German South West Africa.  Namibia
> had been agreed about earlier.
>
> And yes, Germany's treatment of Namibia was
> brutal.  Wikipedia says "Exposés followed in the
> print media throughout Germany of the Herero
> rebellions in 1904 in German South West Africa
> (Namibia today) where in military interventions
> between 50% to 70% [citation needed] of the
> Herero population perished."  Governing in other
> German colonies was pernicious as well.  If some
> Africans thought treatment under the Germans was
> better than that under the Belgians, French, and
> English, one can only be awed by how brutal the
> latter three must have been.  (Belgium under Leopold is notorious.)
>
> Joel
>
> >My impression was that Namibia was
> >the original "ethnic cleansing"territory--an indirect precursor to later
> >practices in Europe.
>

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