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How German merchants drove colonialism in West Africa

January 30, 2024

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.

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File photo shows the Adolph Woermann steamer docking
The Woermann shipping line was based in Hamburg, but did much of its lucrative business on the West African coastImage: picture alliance / arkivi

What was the Woermann Company? 

C. 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. 

How colonialism boosted Germany's merchant fleets

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.

Illustration of Douala harbor during the colonial era
An idyllic depiction of colonial-era Woermann Company factory in Douala, Cameroon. But for most Cameroonians, the exploitative practices of German colonialists caused much miseryImage: picture-alliance/akg-images

How crucial was Woermann to the colonial project?

Historians, like Kim Todzi from the University of Hamburg, 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.  

Postcard picture of Gustav Nachtigal, the Germany's first imperial commissioner
Gustav Nachtigal may have been the political figurehead of Germany's African imperial empire, but the push to colonize Cameroon came from merchants Image: Koloniales Bildarchiv, UB Frankfurt/Main

What did the Woermann company trade?

About 60% 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. 

Douala Manga Bell: African king who stood up against Germans

How did the Woermann Company affect Namibia?

The Woermann Line monopolized transport to German colonies and shipped around 19,000 soldiers and military personnel to South West Africa to crush the Herero and Nama Uprising between 1904 and 1907. It made millions from shipping personnel, supplies, horses and weapons for the German state. At one point, the war costs amounted to more than 600 million marks, an astronomical sum at the time that had to be borne by German taxpayers. According to historian Kim Todzi’s research, considering that the buying power of 1 mark in 1904 corresponds to about €6.1 today, the total monetary costs of the war would be around €3.7 billion in today’s money!

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. 

Examining Germany's brutal history in Namibia

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. 

Edited by: Keith Walker

Shadows of German Colonialism is produced by DW with funding from the German Foreign Ministry (AA). Consulting was provided by Prof. Lily Mafela, Prof. Kwame Osei Kwarteng and Reginald Kirey.  

DW Africa's Cai Nebe smiles into the camera
Cai Nebe Producer, podcaster and reporter for DW Africa