What is the light gray colour in German South West Africa in 1914 representing? The Herero War?
The NextGen OTL Worlda Series
- Thread starter hadaril
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Yeah, definitely. Although the maps I posted focus on China.
Also Kazakh juzes, Russian Civil War, Soviet claim in Bessarabia, and DAESH are some things someone should get around to fixing. I’ll do it myself if needed.
Protectorate areas within German South West Africa where there was only indirect German rule
Why isn't there a border, then? And what's the source for there being an administrative distinction?
I always thought that it was parts of the colony not controlled by Europeans, but it certainly wouldn’t make sense for German SW Africa to be the only colony where that’s shown.
This is still a WIP correct? But it is really nice to see someone map out Arabia just after the great war
I’m sorry to get everybody’s hopes down, but I only fixed an existing map of 1920. And it was only for China.
Key then gonna try and piece together the RCW over the week
Okay, we would have to go back to when Southwest Africa was first shown like that on a map to look up the source map. But what I can tell you both offhand is that:
1. German Southwest Africa was initially a protectorate from the 1880s until the 1890s. After it became a colony, the north of the area remained indirectly ruled IIRC (this in part explains the origins of the later Bantustans that South Africa created when it governed the territory). It was controlled by the Europeans in much the same way as northern Nigeria or the interior of Gambia, Sierra Leone or Gold Coast was controlled by Europeans (that's why it is shaded as protectorate grey for Germany rather than some local colour or as "uncontrolled" green).
2. As for other colonies being shown like that, most actually were shown like that until the British and French actually established firmer control over the interiors (and even in the case of Nigeria for instance I believe it is still supposed to be shown as a colony only around Lagos with the rest of the area being shown as the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and the Northern Nigeria Protectorate until everything got joined together as the Colony and Protectorate in 1914 - so it is still supposed to be shown the same way but with slightly different borders now showing a more amalgamated administrative entity). If I'm not mistaken, the French, Belgians and Portuguese went about establishing firmer control over the interior of their African territories than the British, Germans or Italians (for the Portuguese it helped that they had been very long established (from the 1500s) in what is now Angola and Mozambique, whereas most other powers only really began to exert claims and influence in the mid to late 1800s).
3. I don't believe there was a formal border. Often times formal border (like the Northern Nigerian Protectorate border with the Southern Nigerian Protectorate, or the borders of the native states in the Dutch East Indies) were based (roughly) on the pre-existing borders of native state entities (like Sokoto). I don't believe the local people in northern Southwest Africa were organized along the lines of the East Indies native states or Sokoto (and some of the local people were semi-nomadic in any case).
That's largely what I suspected, though the distinction between colony and protectorate can get a little fuzzy sometimes (IIRC German colonies were all called protectorates no matter what the level of local control was). Now, though, I have to wonder why this level of detail as far as the de facto situation goes isn't shown more, for example in Angola (Portugal didn't fully assert control over the east until the 1930s).
If I'm not mistaken SouthWest Africa was actually declared a colony in the 1890s by Germany.
Likely a lack of good source maps. After all, until some good source maps can show what is going on, the default way to show things on these maps is to use the traditional and well known maps of official control. If the area can't be shown with reasonable certainty on a map it is often left off until a good source comes along.
Yeah, honestly. I wish I was skilled enough to do it myself
The basemap with editable labels seems to be inaccessible. Has it been deprecated?
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