what makes you think our technology
has more to offer then the inherit knowledge of the local farmers for thousands of years.
Tranfer of Technology (TOT) has proven time and time again of being a hindrance not a help.
Not to mention the overt exploitaion and plundering...
http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/Wrench_Recon/Wrench_Recon_18.htmlThe Germans were the last Europeans to colonize. They were also the people most imbued with the faith of modern science, and this taught them, with a clear conscience, to pursue the rights of the fittest to its extreme, logical conclusion. Armed with this faith, they conquered three areas in Africa: South-west Africa, the Cameroons, Tanganyika.
The Germans date their colonial empire from 1884, when Lüderitz hoisted the German flag at Angra Pequena, a port of South-west Africa, Nachtigal did the same at Duala, a port of the Cameroons, and Karl Peters and his companions landed at Zanzibar. So began their part in the exploitation of the Dark Continent.
Many countries had preceded them, Portugal, Britain, France and Belgium and, in their exploitation of their new territories, had not always refrained from cruelty. One of them, Belgium, under the influence of its king, was in the nineties to give an example of cruelty on such a large scale and so pitiless that, when knowledge of it became public, it projected a widening wave of horror through the United States, Britain, France, and Belgium itself. The period of harsh treatment of natives had come to an end as far as the great publics of Western Europe and America were concerned.
With this equal start in the three colonies in the year 1884, the German version of the policy of exploitation began.
As regards South-west Africa, a dry land and chiefly of agricultural value because of its pasture land, Paul von Rohrbach defined the policy in the Deutsche Kolonialwirtschaft, in these words, as quoted by Mr. G. L. Steer in his book of convincing thoroughness, Judgment on German Africa, 1939: 'The decision to colonize South-west Africa could after all mean nothing less than this: that the native tribes would have to give up their lands on which they had previously grazed their stock in order that the white men should have the land for foraging their own.'
The Hereros and Hottentots were the chief peoples concerned in this appropriation. It was begun with a harsh oppression of both peoples, particularly of the prouder and more warlike of the two, the Hereros.
One of their chieftains described the German methods in words, again quoted from Mr. Steer's book, which is my guide in this chapter: 'Our people were being robbed and deceived right and left by German traders. Their cattle were taken by force. They were flogged and ill-treated and got no redress. In fact, the German police assisted the traders instead of protecting us. Very often one man's cattle were taken to pay other people's debts. If we objected and tried to resist, the police would be sent for and, what with floggings and threats of shooting, it was useless for our poor people to resist. If the traders had been fair and reasonable, like the old English traders, we would never have complained. But this was not trading at all. It was only theft and robbery.'
The Hereros rebelled in 1904, and fought according to their savage code, calculated to call for reprisals. They were defeated and, to finish the work, General von Trotha issued an order of total extermination, the Vernichtungs-Befehl. This is how it ran:
'I, the great general of the German soldiers, send this letter to the Herero nation. The Hereros are no longer German subjects. They have murdered and robbed, they have cut off the ears and noses and privy parts of wounded soldiers, and they are now too cowardly to fight ... The Herero nation must now leave the country. If they do it not I will compel them with the big tube. Within the German frontier every Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will not take over any more women and children, but I will either drive them back to your people or have them fired on. These are my words to the nation of the Hereros. The great General of the Mighty Emperor, von Trotha.' By the end of 1905 official extermination had reduced the Herero people from 90,000 to 15,000.
In October 1904 the Hottentots also rebelled and were partly exterminated. As to the human result upon the Protectorate of the policy, Leutwein, the German historian of the south-west, declared: 'At the cost of several hundreds of millions of marks and several thousand German soldiers we have, of the three business assets of the Protectorate, mining, farming and native labour, destroyed the second entirely, and the last as to two-thirds.'
Before the Germans were themselves conquered in the Great War, the condition of the natives is thus summed up by Mr. Steer: 'Officially still, the native was a State serf, guilty of serf-like offences. Out of 4,356 convictions against natives, in the Protectorate between 1 January 1913 and 31 March 1914, 3,167 were for desertion, negligence, vagrancy, disobedience, insolence, laziness and contravention of the Pass laws; crimes not of man against man, but of the slave against his boss.' This did not include the punishments of 'Väterliche Züchtigung', or paternal punishment, allowed to the German master over their serfs, which led Governor Seitz, in order to avoid a further native revolt, to threaten in 1912 'to withdraw labour supplies from those "who rage in mad brutality against the native, and consider their white skin a charter of indemnity from punishment for the most brutal crimes".'
After the Great War, South-west Africa was allotted as a Mandated Territory to the Union Government of South Africa.
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