Urges in the colony. Men and women in colonial Windhoek, 1890-1905

Abstract

This paper explores the sexual economy of the quasi-urban context of early colonial Windhoek - a settlement characterised by the dominating presence of the German colonial military - and elsewhere during the first two to three decades of colonial control in Hereroland. Colonising men's and colonised women's sexual interaction is explored in the different spatial and social settings of an incipient colonial settlement. This encounter was characterised by violence and consent, mainly transient, yet sometimes permanent and in manifold commercial and other arrangements, at times even offering an economic niche for enterprising women.