Representations of the Herero War

Abstract

In 1904 the Herero revolted against the German colonists in the German colony of South West Africa. This resulted in a genocidal war, known today as the ‘Herero genocide’. The historiography of the war is mainly focused on the classification of the Herero war as a genocide, as well as the contingencies between the Herero genocide and the Holocaust. Hence, this research distances itself from the major debates and focuses on the representation and framing of the Herero war in Dutch newspapers. Three Dutch newspapers; the ‘Algemeen Handelsblad’, ‘Telegraaf’ and ‘Het Volk: Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij’, will be examined through the social framework analyzation of Erving Goffman. The social framework, constructed by the Dutch newspaper, displays how the political background of a newspaper, the neutrality policy of the Netherlands, and geopolitical interest influenced the process of framing Dutch news. The research will demonstrate how the German colonial practices were legitimised or rejected and how the atrocities and Herero population were framed in the three newspapers. This will allow us to understand how the representation of genocidal conflict shaped Dutch perceptions and public opinion in regards to early cases of ‘genocide’ and the perception of the Herero.