Paper short abstract:

This paper will investigate into the ways in which the police force in German Southwest-Africa built on war and the military (its physical infrastructure, but also its ideologies, values, and practices) to police the emerging urban areas of German Southwest-Africa.

Paper long abstract:

The police force in German Southwest-Africa - the so called berittene Landespolizei für Deutsch Südwest - was created in the midst of the ongoing war of annihilation which the German army waged against the African population living there. Most of its 600 to 700 members had fought as soldiers in the war or had been involved in it, on either side. These men were both African and German, and they were charged with the task to bring a new order to a colonized and colonizing society marked by extreme violence, suffering, and fear.

My paper investigates into the practices of policing in the emerging urban areas of German Southwest-Africa towards the end of the war. I claim that the police built on the war and on the military - both on its physical remainders as well as on its non-material legacies - in order to fulfill its mission. Yet, the paper will also show that these policing practices were no longer inscribed into a logic of war and absolute destruction, but rather made up a culture of everyday, run-of-the-mill violence in which all inhabitants of the colonial settlement sought an elusive stability through the regularized ways in which they built individual lives, formed and reformed communities, and organized social life.