Water, Sand, Molluscs: Imperial Infrastructures, the Age of Hydrology, and German Colonialism in Swakopmund, Southwest Africa, 1884-1915

Abstract

How did nature challenge German colonialism in Southwest Africa? What role did water, sand, and a small mollusc play as Germans tried to establish their first and, in many ways, only settler colony? This paper explores the events surrounding the town of Swakopmund, a small coastal settlement defined as the main entry point (Eingangstur) into German Southwest Africa at the time. As a case study, Swakopmund arguably provides an excellent framework when showcasing the importance of widely underestimated environmental protagonists in the construction of the German Empire; it also underlines the value of incorporating environmental history more broadly into discussions of German colonial fantasies in the age of hydrology.

Extraction and the Ocean “Frontier”: Dispossession, Exclusion, and Resistance in Namibia

“…This was informed by European imaginations of the ocean as a “surface”, a flat space to be explored and conquered before being swept‐up as a terrestrial frontier of colonial rule (Kopytoff 1987:211; Mawani 2018). Due to a perceived dearth of minerals in Namibia (Kinahan 1990:25), imperial interests were initially offshore including in Walvis Bay—which served British and French whaling interests (Kalb 2020:179). However, control over phosphate extraction featured during colonialism, albeit in a different form.…”

“…As the ocean became associated with connectivity and opportunity, colonial rule reduced Namibia’s engagement with its own marine scape, with the result that Namibia remains to this day a site of extraction, reliant on external actors to “tap from this resource” (Esau, quoted in de Klerk 2019). The first mainland territorial claim occurred in 1878 with the annexation of Walvis Bay by the British (Dreyer 1984:497; Kalb 2020:184). Shortly after, in 1884, what was then colonially known as German South West Africa was contentiously annexed following a petition by the German trader Adolf Lüderitz (Sullivan 2021:19; Wallace and Kinahan 2011:112, 116) who cited the potential for mineral extraction.…”

Specters of the Colony

“…Behind it, on the wall, a friendship had left behind a rough etching, artists Lisa, Jena, Mona, and Timo, green marker pen on white paint and brickwork, date unknown. To our left, the Atlantic smashed against the structure placed there by colonists at the turn of the twentieth century, an atmospheric and ambitious defense system against an ambiguous enemy (Kalb 2020). This did not stop people from climbing on it, but by now, the beach itself was almost devoid of people save for one lone figure, the details of whom I could not make out.…”