The Human Infrastructure of the Namibian War: Origins of the «Namibian Labor Corridors» in War and Genocide, 1904–1908
April 2 @ 12:15 - 14:00
This presentation by William Lyon (Universität Zürich) is part of the African History Colloquium Research Seminar.
The presentation, jointly orgniased by the African History Research Seminar of the Department of History (University of Basel) and the BAB, focuses on how the German colonial war in Namibia (1904–1908) relied on forced local labor and migrant workers to power the military’s logistics and infrastructure, a “human infrastructure” critical to waging war. The genocide simultaneously destroyed local labor populations while fueling recruitment of migrants from West Africa, South Africa, and elsewhere, laying the groundwork for Namibia’s mining-led economy. William Lyon has recently published the monograph «Forged in Genocide» (2024) and is currently a Postdoc at the University of Zurich and is interested in the history of capitalism, consumerism and labor in Southern and West Africa.