German South West Africa (Namibia): the Herero/Nama genocide
A settler-and-extraction colony whose repression became the first genocide of the 20th century
Germany colonized South West Africa from 1884, dispossessing Herero and Nama peoples of land and cattle. When they rebelled, General Lothar von Trotha issued an extermination order (1904); tens of thousands died in the ensuing genocide, later formally acknowledged by Germany in 2021.
What happened
After the Herero uprising and the Battle of Waterberg, von Trotha issued the Vernichtungsbefehl (“annihilation order”), declaring the Herero no longer German subjects and ordering that any found within the colony’s borders be shot; survivors were driven into the Omaheke desert.
Any Herero found within the German borders with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall no longer receive any women or children. (von Trotha, 1904)
Under each definition
Direct foreign colonial administration over a subject territory.
German settlement and expropriation of indigenous land and cattle, with the elimination of those who resisted, is settler-colonial logic in extremis.
This is formal colonial rule, not post-independence control.
A standard example of colonialism and colonial genocide.
The case that the label applies
A European power ruled the territory as a colony, expropriated indigenous land and cattle for settlers, and annihilated those who resisted — colonialism (with genocidal violence) in its clearest form, in the colonizer’s own words.
The case against
None as to the colonial character. Debate exists over the genocide label’s legal application to events predating the 1948 Convention, but Germany itself acknowledged “genocide” in 2021; the colonial status is undisputed.
In their words
Any Herero found within the German borders with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot.
The verdicts above are how each definition would most likely classify this situation — illustrative guidance, not court rulings. Colonialism has no treaty crime, so no application is a legal “finding”; every characterization is attributed to the person or body that made it. The lenses diverge most on two questions — whether there is a “metropole” and who counts as “indigenous” — and on the difference between a historical judgment and a moral analogy. See the Definition tab for each definition’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.