A Protectorate Divided: The Otjimbingue Petition and Settler Contestations of Railway Construction in German Southwest Africa, 1897–1902

Abstract Supporters of the State Railway in German Southwest Africa heralded its construction as ‘the dawn of a new era for the protectorate’ (Windhoeker Anzeiger, 27 October 1898). While railways did enable the expansion of colonial communities, not all settlers wrote as optimistically about this change as did the Anzeiger’s editor. Between 1897 and 1902, familial correspondence and debates in the protectorate’s first newspaper, the Windhoeker Anzeiger, reveal how various settlers negotiated the railroad’s transformative impact on colonial society and their everyday lives. Opposition voices argued that the railroad would harm the fragile colonial economy, serving only metropolitan business interests. This opposition stemmed from the farmers and tradespeople involved in the Frachtverkehr—the protectorate’s ox-wagon transport system—who feared losing their livelihoods. Opponents from the former colonial administrative seat at Otjimbingue also responded with an (unsuccessful) petition protesting their town’s exclusion from the new rail line. These voices clashed with entrepreneurs and the colonial administration, who eagerly anticipated a rail link with global markets and the mining industry’s advancement. By utilizing the framework of ‘colonial transactions’ to analyse this brief but acrimonious conflict, this article disrupts the tidy narrative that the railroad inevitably followed the rinderpest and saved the colony. We gain greater insight into how the railroad acted as a site of negotiation about settler identity, economic existence and control in everyday colonial society.