Colonialism, genocide and International Relations: the Namibian–German case and struggles for restorative relations
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066120938833 |
| Author | Heloise Weber,Martin Weber |
| Subject Matter | 25th Anniversary Special Issue |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120938833
European Journal of
International Relations
2020, Vol. 26(S1) 91 –115
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066120938833
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E
JR
I
Colonialism, genocide and
International Relations: the
Namibian–German case and
struggles for restorative
relations
Heloise Weber and Martin Weber
The University of Queensland, Australia
Abstract
The case of the first genocide of the 20th century, committed by German colonial troops
against Ovaherero and Nama peoples in what is today Namibia, poses a significant
ethical and political challenge not only in practice but also for International Relations
theory and theorising. We develop our critical analysis by building on postcolonial
critiques of eurocentrism in IR and world politics, and on critical historiographies
of the discipline. In particular, we show how the bedrock of dominant international
institutional arrangements in the early 20th century rests on a normative inversion,
which can be explicated clearly in the context of the Ovaherero and Nama experiences.
The normative inversion is manifested in the claims to supreme moral authority for
continued European colonial rule in the aftermath of genocidal violence. While the
League of Nations (LoN), and the legacies of imperialism have increasingly been addressed
in historiographies of IR, neither this normative inversion, nor its political implications
have been explicated in the way we pursue this here. Through the lens of our case, we
argue that how IR and IR theory conventionally conceive of the international political
order is not plausible or justifiable in light of the normative inversion. The struggles for
justice and restorative relations by Ovaherero and Nama peoples draw attention to
necessary shifts in political practices. The case signals the need for a more fundamental
rethinking of premises in international political theory, and of global public political
history. This can be meaningfully addressed by acknowledging and explicitly processing
the implications of the normative inversion, its antecedent conditions, and its continuing
presence in world ordering.
Corresponding author:
Martin Weber, The University of Queensland, GPN 39A, St Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia.
Email: m.weber@uq.edu.au
938833EJT0010.1177/1354066120938833European Journal of International RelationsWeber and Weber
research-article2020
25th Anniversary Special Issue
92 European Journal of International Relations 26(S1)
Keywords
Postcolonialism, international history, genocide, normative theory, colonialism,
International Relations
Introduction
The first genocide of the 20th century occurred over 110 years ago in the context of
European colonisation in southern Africa. It was committed by German troops against
Ovaherero and Nama peoples in the context of settler-colonialism in what is today
Namibia (then referred to by Europeans as Southwest Africa).1 There is little awareness
of the first genocide of the 20th century in the academy beyond clusters of specialist
historians and postcolonial scholars. Standard accounts, including Genocide and the
Modern Age (Walliman et al., 1987), miss it. Kuper’s Genocide: It’s Political Use in the
Twentieth Century briefly mentions German atrocities committed against “Herero,” but
problematically presents these in terms of reprisals for rebellion against colonial rule
(Kuper, 1981: 16); no mention is made of the Nama experience. Ovaherero and Nama
were killed in large numbers in a brutal and indiscriminate campaign conducted by regu-
lar German armed forces. Many more died as captives as a consequence of their intern-
ment in concentration camps.2 Despite much recent interest in mass atrocities and
genocide, the prevalence of both in the context of colonialism has been generally under-
exposed in IR. This omission is all the more surprising given ample evidence that the
German treatment of captives constituted the first instance of concentration camps used
as death camps.3
The genocide committed against Ovaherero and Nama (between 1904 and 1908)
occurred in a historical context that has long been held to be significant for the emerging
liberal world order that became dominant in the 20th century. As we show drawing on the
case of Ovaherero and Nama experiences, an institutional bedrock of International
Relations (IR), and by extension of liberal IR, was constituted on the basis of a normative
inversion. Instituted 12 years after the end of the genocide, the League of Nations (LoN,
1920) dealt explicitly with the transgressions by German forces but perpetuated the nor-
mative inversion vis-a-vis its victims and survivors.4 The LoN, held up as an exalted
project for constructing a more peaceful political world order, rendered the victims of
genocidal and colonial violence as ‘peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the
strenuous conditions of the modern world’, and concluded that the ‘well-being and
development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation and that securities for the
performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant’ (LoN: Article 22).
The case of Ovaherero and Nama is thus of special significance for rethinking founda-
tional assumptions of IR and world politics. Theorisation of world order in IR has conven-
tionally been traced to the historical example of the LoN. It has been the point of reference
for the question of whether or not it was plausible to expect stable peace based on the
progressive institutionalisation of international affairs. The LoN came to be central to
what was later cast as the ‘First Great Debate’ in the discipline of IR. Both, advocates and
detractors (‘liberal institutionalist’, or ‘realists’), took the question of international order-
ing through institutional integration to be framed by its success or failure.
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