Facing Germanys Dark Legacy In Africa

Germanys colonial past has been, if not forgotten, certainly a less-explored aspect of the history of European incursion and exploitation of Africas peoples and resources. But this book goes a long way in correcting this oversight. The author, Henning Melber, born in 1950, is the son of German immigrants who settled in Namibia in 1967. He later joined SWAPO, the Namibian liberation movement, and has since become one of the most respected academics on Germanys colonial brand.

Melber posits that the recent invigoration of debate on Germanys colonial past has been hindered by amnesia, denialism and ignorance among the German population as a whole. His book is a modest effort to combat this.

He suggests that Germanys colonial history in Africa has often been overshadowed by the horrors of the Holocaust. But Melber also points out that many senior Nazis had colonial careers. He writes: A colonial mentality remained an intrinsic part of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era. A study of Germanys colonial rule in Africa can thus provide new perspectives on Nazism, German racial thinking and colonisation.

The book traces the period from the mid 1800s when Germany actively sought to expand its global reach, control and trading potential. In 1862, the Brandenburg African Company established the small trading post of Great Friedrichsburg on the coast of what is today Ghana.

By the turn of the 20th century, Melber informs us, Imperial Germany had become one of the biggest colonial empires in terms of foreign territory, euphemistically dubbed acquisitions.