Raphael Lemkin's view of European colonial rule in Africa: between condemnation and admiration

Killing the dead: The logic of cemetery destruction during genocidal campaigns

“…Lemkin—profoundly shaped by the Armenian Genocide (Balakian, 2013: 60), atrocities committed within European colonialism (Schaller, 2005: 531) and the Holocaust—proposes that what distinguishes genocide is that people are not targeted as individuals but as representatives of their larger community. A genocide is the killing of an ethnic or national community, which also aims to destroy the cultural elements of a nation's collective identity (1946).…”

Women and Genocide in Africa

“…Even as Lemkin recognized that European efforts to undermine the indigenous religious values and ways of life they encountered as part of their broader efforts to promote the spread of commerce, civilization, and Christianity were often enforced by unspeakable violence, he reserved his condemnation for German and Belgian colonial rule and was otherwise broadly supportive of colonization as necessary for "civilizing" the continent. 8 Despite the realization that colonial officials frequently used disproportionate violence-including mass killings-to punish civilians who resisted or angered them, Lemkin concluded that only two cases met his criteria for genocide: the atrocities perpetrated by the colonial administration of King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo Free State (modern Democratic Republic of Congo) from 1885 to 1908, and those perpetrated by the military forces of Kaiser Wilhelm II in German South West Africa (modern Namibia) from 1904 to 1908. Indeed, Lemkin was unconcerned by the atrocities inflicted upon the Cape San Peoples in Dutch-and British-occupied South Africa from 1795 to 1828, for example, which has recently come under investigation as another possible example of a colonial genocide.…”

“…9 He saw the British, in particular, as more humane colonizers, though more recent historical scholarship has revealed the biases and errors in his position and has opened scholars' eyes to the full spectrum of political violence-from the subtle everyday structural inequalities to the overt episodes of armed conflict-that frequently characterized life under colonial rule across Africa and elsewhere. 10…”

“…Lemkin's analysis of the Congo Free State led him to conclude that the atrocities constituted an "unambiguous genocide" in which an estimated 75 percent of the indigenous population was annihilated, though he wrongly blamed "native militias" who were allegedly employed by the Belgian traders for murdering and enslaving their own people. 20 More recent studies place primary criminal responsibility for the atrocities on Leopold and his colonial administration, while acknowledging the role that Congolese collaborators played in their implementation. Among those experts who use a broad social-scientific definition of genocide, these atrocities are widely recognized as an early example of colonial genocide.…”

“…During a series of early-19th-century trade wars the Herero had shifted from hunter-gatherers and subsistence agriculturists to pastoralists famous for cattle-breeding, who held power in the south. 24 With the establishment of the Cape Colony in South Africa, Christian missionaries had begun working in the region, and so many Herero, Nama, and Ovambo were already familiar with European ways of life. For these reasons, the Germans hoped German South West Africa would remain peaceful.…”