Though envisioned by its overseers as a "model state," German Southwest Africa never became the success story colonial officials hoped for. Despite the immiseration they inflicted upon the indigenous population--from exploitative labor practices to genocidal violence--the colony lasted only thirty-five years and yielded little for the metropole before being lost to the British Empire. In this now-classic study--available here for the first time in English--the author provides an indispensable account of how German colonial ambitions foundered in what is present-day Namibia. As he shows, the highly rationalized planning of Wilhelmine authorities could not accommodate the practical, lived realities of both colonizer and colonized.