ABSTRACT
During the 1760's the American colonies had depleted the whale stocks off the New England coast and it became necessary to go hunting for whales on the open seas. While proposals for American colonization of southern African territory had become public as early as 1796, it was not until the 1820s that similar proposals were offered for Namibia. Returning to the US with volumes ot maps, documents, and other evidence, Benjamin Morrell attempted to interest the United States Government in colonizing Namibia. Namibia played a contributing role to the outcome of the War Between the States during the 1860s, albeit a more military than economic role; in 1863 the Confederate raider "Alabama" was ravaging Yankee shipping in the South Atlantic. In 1873 Bismarck told the British Ambassador in Berlin: Colonies would be a source of weakness, because they could only be defended by powerful fleets, and Germany's geographical position does not necessitate her development into a first-class maritime power.
