Initial European contact with the areas which would become German South West Africa came from traders and sailors, starting in January 1486 when Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão, possibly accompanied by Martin Behaim, landed at Cape Cross.

In February 1805, the London Missionary Society established a small mission in Blydeverwacht, but the efforts of this group met with little success.

On 16 November 1882, a German merchant from Bremen, Adolf Lüderitz, requested protection for a station that he planned to build in South West Africa, from Chancellor Bismarck.

Once this was granted, his employee, Heinrich Vogelsang, purchased land from a native chief and established a settlement at Angra Pequena which was renamed Lüderitz.

[4] DKGSWA was granted monopoly rights to exploit mineral deposits, following Bismarck's policy that private rather than public money should be used to develop the colonies.

Additionally, the British settlement at Walvis Bay, a coastal enclave within South West Africa, continued to develop, and many small farmers and missionaries moved into the region.

[7] In July of the same year, as part of the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty between Britain and Germany, the colony grew in size through the acquisition of the Caprivi Strip in the northeast, promising new trade routes into the interior.

[8] Almost simultaneously, between August and September 1892, the South West Africa Company Ltd (SWAC) was established by the German, British, and Cape Colony governments, aided by financiers to raise the capital required to enlarge mineral exploitation (specifically, the Damaraland concession's copper deposit interests).

An additional 14,000 troops, hastened from Germany under Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, crushed the rebellion in the Battle of Waterberg.

Earlier von Trotha issued an ultimatum to the Herero people, denying them the right of being German subjects and ordering them to leave the country or be killed.

To escape, the Herero retreated into the waterless Omaheke region, a western arm of the Kalahari Desert, where many of them died of thirst.

The arid Omaheke [desert] was to complete what the German army had begun: the extermination of the Herero nation.In late 1904, the Nama entered the struggles against the colonial power under their leaders Hendrik Witbooi and Jakobus Morenga, the latter often referred to as "the black Napoleon", despite losing most of his battles.

After the official end of the conflict, the remaining natives, when finally released from detention, were subject to a policy of dispossession, deportation, forced labour, and racial segregation and discrimination in a system that in many ways anticipated apartheid.

[21][22] In May 2021, after five years of negotiations, the German government - recognising the Hottentot Rebellion as a colonial genocide - set up a $1.3 billion compensation fund.

[23] The news about the start of World War I reached German South West Africa on 2 August 1914 via radio telegraphy.

After the start of the war, South African troops opened hostilities with an assault on the Ramansdrift police station on 13 September 1914.

Two members of the Schutztruppe, geography professors Fritz Jaeger and Leo Waibel, are remembered for their explorations of the northern part of German South West Africa, which became the book Contributions to the Geography of South West Africa (Beiträge zur Landeskunde von Südwestafrika).

The few exceptions to the rule included places founded by the Rhenish Missionary Society, generally biblical names, as well as: In 1914 a series of drafts were made for proposed Coat of Arms and Flags for the German Colonies.