The war emerged from a widening colonial project that combined land loss, disarmament, commercial exploitation and physical violence. Under German rule, traders increasingly extended credit for consumer goods and demanded repayment in cattle, while the legal system imposed unequal penalties: German settlers could receive light sentences for violence against Africans, and some crimes were not prosecuted at all. These pressures weakened the authority of ovahona and deepened resentment among communities whose land, herds and political autonomy were being eroded.

Railway construction added a further source of tension. In 1903 the South West Africa Company began planning a line from Otavi to the coast at Swakopmund, and Samuel Maharero agreed to cede land for the track after pressure from Governor Leutwein. Missionaries and colonial officials proposed reserves, but the plans were widely unpopular because the land offered was insufficient and poorly watered, while areas such as Okahandja, Omaruru, the Waterberg and Omburu contained some of the richest Herero grazing grounds. The proposed reserve system was interrupted by the outbreak of war.

The Herero polities still possessed organisation, military skills and weapons, and oral testimony identified the registration or “vaccination” of weapons as a reason for taking up arms. Support for the uprising was uneven. Younger men, some women and communities directly affected by land sales often supported resistance, while rivalries among leaders and memories of earlier political violence produced hesitation or opposition. Damara communities and other non-Otjiherero-speaking groups also faced the consequences of the war, sometimes fighting for the Herero, sometimes assisting German forces, and sometimes remaining neutral or fleeing.

By 22 February 1904 the main Herero force under Samuel Maharero, Tjetjo and other commanders was based at Otjosasu, east of Okahandja, before moving toward the Onjati hills. During March and April, Herero forces used mobility, local knowledge and ambushes in dense bush to make German firepower less effective. German troops suffered from poor communications, disease, shortages and the difficulty of campaigning in arid conditions, while the Herero destroyed settler farms and seized their occupants’ herds across much of central Namibia.

German forces attacked near Mount Ongandjira on 7 April, but Samuel Maharero was driven back despite determined Herero charges. Two days later, Herero troops ambushed German soldiers at a waterhole at Oviumbo, forcing a retreat to Okahandja after several hours of fighting. In June, General Lothar von Trotha replaced Leutwein as military commander. German reinforcements increased rapidly, and von Trotha spent the months before August building supply lines and encircling the Waterberg.

On 11 August 1904 German forces attacked the Herero positions at the Waterberg. The Battle of Ohamakari ended within a day. German units seized the Waterberg plateau from the west, while Herero resistance was strongest in the south and south-east. The defeat left women, men and children at the rear exposed to German fire, and those who escaped fled south-east into the omaheke, the desert region east of the Waterberg extending toward British Bechuanaland.

The route across the omaheke, which had previously been used for movement between eastern Namibia and western Botswana, became a death trap under conditions of defeat and mass migration. Waterholes were occupied at the edge of the desert, depriving refugees of access to water. Herero oral traditions preserved the trauma of the scattering, while songs and memories described hunger, the separation of communities and the struggle to protect Samuel Maharero from capture.

Von Trotha rejected peace terms and issued a proclamation on 2 October 1904 ordering the Herero people to leave the country or be forced out by arms. The proclamation threatened armed and unarmed Herero, including women and children, and instructed German soldiers to fire on those who remained within German boundaries. Although a proviso called for warning shots, the conditions of the omaheke made expulsion tantamount to a death sentence.

Some fugitives reached Botswana, survived in the veld, or escaped toward other parts of Namibia and British territory at Walvis Bay. Most Herero, however, died in the omaheke or in concentration camps where they were later imprisoned. The author characterises this German policy as the first genocide of the twentieth century. The war’s violence also affected Damara and San communities, whose experiences varied according to local relations with Herero and German forces.

The slaughter in central Namibia, combined with accumulated grievances over land loss and defeat, helped make war in the south appear inevitable. German-language newspapers accessible to many Nama-speakers threatened the Nama with a fate similar to that of the Herero, while German authorities moved toward disarmament and the settlement of what they called the “native question.” In September, reports from Witbooi fighters described new German methods of conquest and heightened fear.

Two developments further destabilised southern politics. Jakob Morenga, a leader of the Bondelswarts uprising in the previous year, returned to the Karas Mountains in August 1904. He attracted followers and began guerrilla attacks on German forces and farms. The visible pages end while introducing Morenga’s mixed Herero and Nama parentage, so the subsequent course of the southern war cannot be established from this lot alone.

In early October 1904, a local district administrator was shot by a Witbooi, and a missionary was also killed. The Witboois then rose against the German authorities, joined by the Fransmann people under Simon Koper, the Red Nation under Manasse Noroseb, and the Veldschoendragers under Hans Hendrik. Other Nama-speaking communities also entered the conflict, although the Bondelswarts were divided: some were interned, some worked in South African mines, and others joined Morenga’s forces.

The initial Nama forces exploited the geography of southern Namibia. Their mobility allowed them to withdraw into deserts and mountains, cross international borders, and evade German pursuit. They obtained supplies from captured enemy property, smuggling from the Cape and Bechuanaland, livestock, and marginal agricultural areas. This method of warfare placed severe burdens on women, children, and other non-combatants, who often travelled with the fighting groups or sought refuge across the border.

The Witboois suffered defeats at Naris and Koës in December 1904, but Hendrik Witbooi and Simon Koper regrouped in the Auob Valley. At Gross-Nabas in January 1905, the Nama forces resisted German operations despite exhaustion and shortages. Morenga’s men also defeated a German division at the Aob waterhole, before being forced into flight at Narudas in March. The conflict therefore developed into a mobile and protracted war rather than a short colonial campaign.

German forces repeatedly faced difficulties of distance, disease, and water shortage. By November 1905, the hospital at Keetmanshoop was overcrowded with troops suffering from scurvy, dysentery, typhoid, heart conditions, rheumatism, and battle wounds. Nama fighters likewise endured acute scarcity, surviving through captured supplies and movement across marginal environments. At times, German pursuit was checked because troops could not sustain long operations in the desert.

Hendrik Witbooi was fatally wounded at the battle of Vaalgras on 29 October 1905 and died soon afterwards. In November, Witbooi followers and allies began to surrender; Isaac Witbooi later sought peace in February 1906. The recorded surrender included 278 men and 306 women and children. The terms initially appeared relatively lenient, but the next governor, Friedrich von Lindequist, later rescinded them.

Morenga and Cornelius Fredericks continued the struggle after the Witbooi surrender. On 24 October 1905, German forces were trapped under Morenga’s guns at Hartebeestmund on the Orange River, where 17 Germans died. Cornelius Fredericks’s forces were eventually defeated at Gochas in January 1906; by early March, 235 men and 176 women and children had surrendered and been imprisoned. Morenga later gave himself up to Cape authorities in British territory, who refused to hand him over to the Germans.

German military pressure and British diplomatic pressure eventually produced negotiations with Johannes Christian of the Bondelswarts. The Peace of Ukamas, also called the Peace of Heirachabis, was agreed in December 1906 amid considerable mutual distrust. It represented a negotiated settlement rather than an outright German victory and demonstrated the effectiveness of Bondelswart guerrilla warfare, which had prevented the colonial army from imposing a rapid military solution.

Under the treaty, the Bondelswarts were resettled on part of their former lands and received access to three waterholes. They were loaned goats and cattle, while their kaptein received 300 sheep and a team of oxen. By April 1907, 769 members of the group had returned from the Cape. They were nevertheless disarmed, compelled to enter wage labour, and forbidden to leave the newly defined settlement without passes.

The German authorities declared peace on 31 March 1907. The settlement remained coercive, and the return of Morenga to South West Africa with 400 followers did not end the violence. He was killed in battle on the British side of the border in September. Simon Koper’s followers later established settlements in Bechuanaland, and in 1909 the Germans agreed to make regular payments to him in exchange for maintaining peace until his death in 1913.

The end of open fighting brought a new phase of organized coercion. German authorities established concentration camps in which defeated African groups—including men, women, and children—were imprisoned and subjected to forced labour. Conditions produced extreme misery and very high mortality. The camps formed part of the broader aftermath of the war, in which military defeat was followed by confinement, labour exploitation, and restrictions on movement.

On 12 December 1904, at Berlin’s command, von Trotha rescinded his order for the extermination of the Herero, but German policy shifted toward imprisonment of the defeated population. Arbitrary shootings and public hangings continued in central Namibia and the south. In November 1905, von Lindequist allowed Rhenish missionaries to establish collection camps, while survivors outside the camps remained vulnerable to German patrols and killings around bush areas and poisoned water holes.

The conditions described for Nama and Herero survivors were marked by hunger, thirst, forced movement, and fear. A photograph captioned on printed page 173 shows Herero prisoners presenting themselves for detention in Omaruru in 1905, after the defeat and slaughter of 1904. The image is associated with missionary collection camps where destitute survivors could hand themselves in, illustrating the coercive humanitarian and colonial structures that followed the military campaigns.