How German merchants drove colonialism in West Africa

Hamburg-based merchant Adolph Woermann's shipping firm went from making huge profits in West Africa to transporting the German soldiers that subjugated the Herero and Nama in Namibia.

What was the Woermann Company?

1868. Woermann, a shipping and trading firm from Hamburg, first set up shop in Douala, Cameroon, in 1868. It traded along the West African coast.

Adolph Woermann took over the family business of his father, Carl Woermann, in 1874. The ambitious younger Woermann believed Africa was a market in which to sell cheaply made German products like alcohol and a source for cheap labor to produce valuable raw materials for German factories, DW reports.

Why did Woermann push for colonies?

A growing number of colonies set up by other European nations made Woermann fear that he and other German businesses would lose access to African markets. Chancellor Otto von Bismack was reluctant to establish colonies, seeing them as an expensive luxury.

But as European competition for African markets grew, so did lobbying from business people like Woermann. In 1883, he proposed establishing protectorates in West Africa, convincing Bismarck it would show that Germany had arrived as a great power.

How crucial was Woermann to the colonial project?

Leading historians argue the German colony of Cameroon would not have happened without Woermann. The Germano Douala Treaty of July 1884, signed by Douala Kings Bell and Akwa, guaranteed Woermann land rights and monopoly on trading in Cameroon.

Woermann was a crucial player in the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference that essentially formalized European colonial claims. The Woermann shipping business prospered, becoming the right arm of German imperial power. 

"Protectorates" were good for merchants because they shielded German firms and their markets from European competition. They could also rely on German military backing.

What did the Woermann company trade?

About 60 per cent of German exports to Cameroon consisted of alcohol products. Weapons soon followed to help defend the colonies from local rebellion and other European powers.

This emboldened German colonial officers to venture into the interior to exploit local trade routes. By 1905, some 200 firms operated in West Africa, 30 belonging to Woermann alone. They had established cash crop plantations for palm oil, cocoa, rubber, tobacco and coffee in Cameroon, far from the harbors. 

Didn't the Germano Douala Treaty forbid this?

Douala chiefs believed they had signed an agreement that limited German activity to the coast. However, colonial officials presented the chiefs with a document different from the German version that was eventually signed. The protectorate status allowed German companies to operate with military backing, and the Doula gradually lost control of their trade routes and land.

How did colonialism affect Cameroonians?

The exports delivered vast profits to the Woermann Company while destroying the fabric of Cameroonian society, many of whom hadn't heard of — let alone agreed to — the terms of the Germano Douala Treaty.

Droves of men and women were forced to work on new plantations, where conditions were brutal and corporal punishment was common. 

Violent colonial officers like Jesko von Puttkamer ensured that 20,000-30,000 Cameroonians were forced to harvest and transport rubber from the hinterland to waiting ships. Traditional leaders who resisted were publicly humiliated, and villages were burned down, which forced migration to German towns.

When Rudolf Douala Manga Bell, whose father had signed the Germano Douala Treaty in 1884, protested that his people were being abused and their land confiscated, he was summarily arrested for treason and executed in 1914.

How did the Woermann Company affect Namibia?

The Woermann Line monopolized transport to German colonies and shipped around 15,000 soldiers to South West Africa to crush the Herero and Nama Uprising between 1904 and 1907. It made millions from shipping personnel, supplies and weapons for the German state. At one point, it amounted to more than 600 million marks, an astronomical sum at the time that German taxpayers.

The Nama and Herero that survived the military campaign were taken to prison camps at Swakopmund and Lüderitz, where German companies, including Woermann's, used the prisoners of war as slave labor for infrastructure projects like building railroads and harbors.

What happened after Germany lost its colonies in 1919?

The Woermann Company's close association with the German state meant it lost influence in Africa when Germany was forced to relinquish colonial territories after World War I. The era of exploitative colonial trading was over, but the damage wrought by its greed and violence still scars communities in Cameroon and Namibia to this day.