Environing Empire
Nature, Infrastructure and the Making of German Southwest Africa
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Berghahn Books
Published:8th Apr '22
Should be back in stock very soon
Even leaving aside the vast death and suffering that it wrought on indigenous populations, German ambitions to transform Southwest Africa in the early part of the twentieth century were futile for most. For years colonists wrestled ocean waters, desert landscapes, and widespread aridity as they tried to reach inland in their effort of turning outwardly barren lands into a profitable settler colony. In his innovative environmental history, Martin Kalb outlines the development of the colony up to World War I, deconstructing the common settler narrative, all to reveal the importance of natural forces and the Kaisereich’s everyday violence.
“…a brilliant contribution to the growing corpus of more-than-human histories of Africa. Integrating humans, animals, microorganisms, sea currents, desert sands, rainfall, harbors, railways, and other nonhumans as agentive forces in the history of the German settler colony of Southwest Africa (now Namibia), Kalb makes …major contributions…a master class in writing more-than-human histories of both colonialism and African countries. It deserves the greatest success and the highest praise.”• H Net
“In this compelling portrait of how non-human actors—from ocean currents to arid interiors to naval shipworms—thwarted German colonial ambitions, Martin Kalb fills a significant gap in the scholarship about a country and a region of growing international interest to environmentalists and ecotourists.”• Thomas M. Lekan, University of Southern Carolina
ISBN: 9781800732902
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
322 pages