Tobacco Fantasies in German Southwest Africa, 1884–1915

German efforts to cultivate tobacco in Southwest Africa (1884–1915, modern-day Namibia) underscore conflicts between imperial fantasies and environmental/logistical realities; such a discussion also allows for a better understanding of knowledge transfer, the racialised construction of African consumption, and everyday violence in the age of settler colonialism. This chapter traces German scientific efforts to transform an arid landscape into a tobacco-producing paradise. Emerging by the 1890s, German tobacco cultivation dismissed pre-colonial African efforts and expertise. The 1904–1908 war and genocide, which destroyed African lives and disrupted markets, shaped later discriminatory labour practices and expanded German desires to centralise tobacco cultivation. The arrival of German experts, the opening of an experimental station, and setbacks given arid landscapes ultimately defined cultivation and prominent settler narratives well beyond World War I.