The case of the first genocide of the 20th century, committed by German colonial troops against Ovaherero and Nama peoples in what is today Namibia, poses a significant ethical and political challenge not only in practice but also for International Relations theory and theorising. We develop our critical analysis by building on postcolonial critiques of eurocentrism in IR and world politics, and on critical historiographies of the discipline. In particular, we show how the bedrock of dominant international institutional arrangements in the early 20th century rests on a normative inversion, which can be explicated clearly in the context of the Ovaherero and Nama experiences. The normative inversion is manifested in the claims to supreme moral authority for continued European colonial rule in the aftermath of genocidal violence. While the League of Nations (LoN), and the legacies of imperialism have increasingly been addressed in historiographies of IR, neither this normative inversion, nor its political implications have been explicated in the way we pursue this here. Through the lens of our case, we argue that how IR and IR theory conventionally conceive of the international political order is not plausible or justifiable in light of the normative inversion. The struggles for justice and restorative relations by Ovaherero and Nama peoples draw attention to necessary shifts in political practices. The case signals the need for a more fundamental rethinking of premises in international political theory, and of global public political history. This can be meaningfully addressed by acknowledging and explicitly processing the implications of the normative inversion, its antecedent conditions, and its continuing presence in world ordering.

德国殖民军在今天的纳米比亚对奥瓦列罗和纳马人民实施的20世纪第一次种族灭绝一案，不仅在实践中而且在国际关系理论和理论上都构成了重大的伦理和政治挑战。我们通过基于IR和世界政治中的欧洲中心主义的后殖民批评以及该学科的重要史学来发展我们的批评分析。特别是，我们展示了20世纪初期占主导地位的国际制度安排的基石如何基于规范性的倒置，在Ovaherero和Nama的经验中可以清楚地说明这一点。在种族灭绝暴力之后，对欧洲继续殖民统治的最高道德权威的主张中体现了规范的颠倒。虽然国际联盟的历史学越来越多地讨论了国际联盟（LoN）和帝国主义的遗产，但是在我们追求这一点的过程中，这种规范性的倒置及其政治含义都没有得到阐述。从本案的角度出发，我们认为，鉴于规范性倒置，投资者关系和投资者关系理论传统上对国际政治秩序的构想是不合理或不合理的。奥瓦列罗和纳马人民为争取正义和恢复关系而进行的斗争提请人们注意政治做法的必要转变。此案表明，需要对国际政治理论和全球公共政治历史的前提进行更根本的重新思考。可以通过承认并明确处理规范反演的含义来有意义地解决这一问题，