Germany’s Colonial Genocide in Namibia (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Germany’s Colonial Genocide in Namibia (2018)

ahrp.org

14 pointsgeorgecmu7 comments

It’s not very well known, but this was probably the first Genocide of the 20th century. As Deutsche Welle noted[1], it doesn’t get much attention, but it’s really worth learning about[2], if only to understand how things came to such a pass:

> Between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros, 10,000 Nama and an unknown number of San died in the genocide... The first phase of the genocide was characterised by widespread death from starvation and dehydration, due to the prevention of the Herero from leaving the Namib desert by German forces. Once defeated, thousands of Hereros and Namas were imprisoned in concentration camps, where the majority died of diseases, abuse, and exhaustion.

[1] https://youtu.be/WOHhyppuzzI

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

Coincidentally, a couple days ago I stumbled upon Bruce Gilley's "The case for German colonialism', which, as the name suggests, draws a completelybdifferent picture. He does focus on other colonies, though.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338555799_The_Case_...

Since this is a fascinating article but with zero comments, here's a discussion question:

Despite that they don't get as much attention in contemporary discussion (at least, in the US), were European powers' continental African genocides morally worse, or not morally worse, than the New World's (institution of) slavery?

Even more fascinatingly, this article has disappeared without a trace from the front page a few minutes ago and, as far as I can tell, is not to be found anywhere in the top 500 links -- I checked. It hasn't been flagged to death, so I'm at a loss. @dang?

Noticed the same thing. I am sure I saw it on the front page, but now it only shows on "new"

> Despite that they don't get as much attention in contemporary discussion (at least, in the US), were European powers' continental African genocides morally worse, or not morally worse, than the New World's (institution of) slavery

That's like comparing Ebola to the plague, both were terrible. If presses, I'd say that European colonisation was slightly less bad from a moral standpoint, because there was usually at least some improvements in infrastructure, schools, there were some efforts around medicine, vaccination, healing, etc. and oftentimes traditional power structures were kept, just under the European colonial hierarchy. And colonial subjects usually had at least some limited rights ( mostly after the initial very bloody years/decades with genocides and atrocities which resulted in a backlash so things were scaled down). Compared to New World slavery where slaves had no rights, and were initially uprooted from where they lived to be shipped overseas for labour. And their descendants were subjected to the equally terrible "born into slavery" practice.

> That's like comparing Ebola to the plague, both were terrible.

Clearly both were morally reprehensible. I posed this question from a perspective that European colonialism seems to get more of a "pass" in the public consciousness -- at least from an American perspective. I would be interested to know how much it is talked about in Europe, where I haven't lived or visited in several years.

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