Herero uprising
series of German colonial wars in South West Africa
The Herero and Nama War is the collective term for a series of interlinked, anti-colonial armed struggles by native peoples in German South West Africa (present-day Namibia), mainly the Herero and Nama people, against the German Empire. The overall conflict took place between 1904 and 1908, and included the Herero uprising and the Second Nama Rebellion.
Names
The 1904–1908 conflict has received numerous different names, with Herero and Nama War being a popular choice, including the variant war against the Ovaherero and Nama. The alternatives Namibian-German War or Namibian War had gained popularity by the 2020s, emphasizing the anti-colonial and inter-ethnic character of the conflict. As part of the debate on Namibian genocide reparations, the Scientific Services of the German Bundestag released a 2016 paper where the overall conflict was dubbed Rebellion by the Ethnic Groups of the Herero and Nama in German Southwest Africa; this naming was strongly criticized by historian Harald Kleinschmidt who regarded it as "discriminatory" and based on German colonial literature.
Instead of giving the entire war one name, however, researchers have often focused on individual sections or phases of the fighting and given those individual names. As such, the 1904–1908 conflict has been subdivided into the Herero uprising (1904–1907), alternatively known as Herero Revolt, Revolt of the Hereros, Herero War, or the Ovaherero-German War; and the Second Nama Rebellion (1904–1908) or Nama-German War.
Background
Pre-colonial South-West Africa
Before colonization, the most populous groups in Namibia were the Herero in the central and southern regions, the Nama in the south, and the Ovambo in the north. The Ovambo were agriculturists as their lands had access to the waterways of the Etosha Pan, whereas the other native peoples were mainly semi-nomadic cattle-raisers. By the 19th century, the Herero were transitioning into a form of "nomadic feudalism", with a greater division of wealth and a political-religious elite which included the chiefs of the around 20 oruzo (paternal derivation groups).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Herero uprising” is series of German colonial wars in South West Africa. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Herero, uprising and series, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16512674. Authority coordinates are -22.000, 17.000. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904, 1908, 2016 and 1907.
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This entry incorporates text from “Herero uprising” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.