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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review. ABSTRACT.Approximately 20,000 ethnic Germans reside in Namibia, a century after the establishment of the German protectorate. Main concentration of farms owned by them is in the central and northern sections of white Namibia where cattle raising dominates the economy. In the drier areas of the south and west, farms are larger, and sheep are the main source of income. Ethnic Germans also reside in urban areas. Since the beginning of white settlement, ethnic Germans have made a lasting imprint on rural and urban landscapes of Namibia. T HE German Empire established a protectorate in South-West Africa, orNamibia as the area will be identified in the rest of this article, in 1884. The German colonial period lasted only until 1915, the second year of World War I, but active development for white settlement by Germans did not commence until after 1906. Nevertheless, the German settlers left a deep and lasting imprint on the cultural and physical landscapes of Namibia, which has been administered by South Africa since 1915. No geographical studies of the current patterns of German origin exist. This article fills that gap by showing the number and distribution of ethnic Germans there in 1984, by explaining and analyzing the current settlement pattern in terms of the principal migrations of Europeans into the country during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and by demonstrating that the current pattern is based to a great extent on activities and settlements introduced during the German colonial period.It should be noted from the outset that almost all white settlement, including that of the ethnic Germans, is on the interior plateau (Fig. 1). It rises from the western coast of the continent in several steps to altitudes that range from approximately 1,000 meters in the south and north to more than 1,800 meters in the center where it is surmounted by a massif reaching elevations of almost 2,500 meters. This plateau has arid and semiarid conditions. Annual precipitation is between 150 and 200 millimeters in the south, but it gradually increases to 400-500 millimeters in the center and to more than 600 millimeters in the north.A survey conducted in the spring of 1984 revealed that almost 30 percent of the estimated 6,000 farm units were owned by Germans or by persons of * I am grateful to Arizona State University for a sabbatical leave and a research grant and to the German Academic Exchange Service for a research grant during the summer of 1984.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review. I N THE thirty years since the boundary shift of I919 the South Tyrol, has undergone certain basic changes in its economic, political, and social structure which illustrate the thesis that a boundary can produce important and lasting effects on an area passing into new hands.2 In I946, at the conference of foreign ministers in Paris, Austrian hopes for recovery of the South Tyrol were disappointed, and the Austro-Italian agreement of September, I946, which was written into the Treaty of Peace with Italy of I947, left the boundary unchanged. The question of irredentism was of particular interest. The following observations, giving the writer's impressions of the South Tyrol, are based on field investigations carried out in the summer and fall of I948.The boundary between Austria and Italy, as it was established in I9I9,3 runs along or near the divide that separates Adriatic and Black Sea drainage. Three times it descends from mountain ridges: at the low passes of Resia (Reschen) and Brenner and at the valley of the Drau (Drava) River. In these places the boundary was superimuposed on a culturally uniform landscape. On both sides settlement types, language, customs, and farm organization were similar or alike. Many farmers owned land on the opposite side, and in normal times difficulties of crossing were not great; farmers in the northeastern South Tyrol were still able to send their herds to their mountain pastures in Austria. In view of the many centuries of the South Tyrol's political unity with, and ethnic relationship to, the Austrian Tyrol, the close ties with friends and relatives on the other side of the border are not surprising, though contacts became weaker as time passed. During and after World War II visiting permits were curtailed, and contacts were, and still are, very few. The important point, however, is not merely change or uniformity ' The South Tyrol as discussed in this paper is the pre-I948 Italian province of Bolzano (Alto Adige), slot the region to which the name "South Tyrol" is usually applied, i.e. the Italian autonomous region (since 1948) of Trentino -Alto Adige (the former Italian department of Venezia Tridentina), which comprises the two Italian provinces of Trento and Bolzano (see below, p. 370).

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.