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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | 'Certain Uncertainties' or Venturing Progressively into Colonial Apologetics? |
| Author: | Hillebrecht, Werner |
| Year: | 2007 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Namibian Studies |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 73-95 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Namibia Germany |
| Subjects: | Herero revolt genocide colonialism historiography History and Exploration Ethnic and Race Relations Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| Abstract: | The Namibian genocidal war of 1904-1908 remains a contentious issue. Apart from its centenary commemoration, it has been put into the limelight by the attempt of a section of the Herero community of Namibia to sue certain private companies and the German State for reparations. This article does not attempt to summarize a 'debate' which is not really a debate but a constant exercise in the denial of historical evidence. It analyses, and attempts to explain, the background of an article by Namibian historian and archivist Brigitte Lau, 'Uncertain certainties', which has become a centrepiece in a campaign against characterizing the war as genocidal. The article was first published in 1989 in the Namibian grassroots magazine 'Mibagus', reprinted in 1995 in an updated version, and has since been republished three times in German translation. The present article refutes Lau's call for a revision of the historiography of the war and explains the controversy sparked by the article in terms of a specific Namibian-German psychological reaction to the trauma of 20th-century German history among Namibian Germans. App., bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |