The angel of death has descended violently among them

Abstract

Abstract provided by author:

Apart from the mandatory sections of methodology and literature survey, which effectively comprise chapter I, the thesis contains four chapters. The second chapter deals with the wider context of concentration camps in Namibia, i. e. when, why and where they were. The third chapter gives fresh insights and provides new evidence about the history of the Shark Island camp. It is argued that although Shark Island has a certain degree of notoriety in the on-going discourse about the Namibian anti-colonial wars 1904-08, information about the camp has largely been recycled in the Namibian historiography based on three pages about the island in Horst Drechsler's seminal study from 1966, i. e. nothing new has really emerged for the last 38 years. The fourth chapter deals with forced labour as it related to the camps, again looking specifically at Shark Island prisoners, but also focussing on the construction of Namibia's railroads, which were to a large extent built by concentration camp prisoners. Lastly, Chapter Five places the thesis within the existing genocide debate, arguing that that the use of camps had a morbid sense of purpose, which related to domestic political concerns in Germany