German South-West Africa

German South West Africa was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915. In 1884 Heinrich Ernst Göring was appointed commissioner and established his administration at Otjimbingwe; the colonial capital was later moved to Windhoek, which became the colony's administrative and commercial centre. German rule was extended inland through treaties and military expeditions, and the colony attracted settlers, missionaries and mining companies. The colonial economy depended on cattle, copper and later diamonds, and on railway construction linking the coast to the interior. The Herero and Nama wars of 1904–1908 led to the deaths of most of the Herero and a large part of the Nama population, a genocide that shaped the territory's modern history. South African forces captured the colony in 1915 during the First World War; Germany formally ceded it in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and it passed to South African administration under a League of Nations mandate.