My dissertation illustrates how the escalating militarization and internationalization of political conflicts in the Caprivi Strip (today Zambezi and Kawango-East Region in north-eastern Namibia) became increasingly interwoven with projects of nature conservation and ecology as well as with narratives of economic development from the 1950s onwards. Such interdependencies offer a novel angle from which to view the history of a region, which has hitherto barely entered the focus of historical research. They also highlight the importance of the supposedly peripheral Caprivi – and its military, scientific and environmental histories in particular – for understanding the ways in which apartheid South Africa exerted state power. The dissertation reveals how the South African government legitimized its occupation of Namibia with reference to narratives of economic development devised to ensure the loyalty of the Namibia population and to justify the military occupation to a South African and international public. In the Caprivi, starting from the 1960s onwards, such narratives increasingly invoked projects in the fields of forestry, fishery and, later, wildlife conservation. I further discuss more recent nature conservation initiatives, which impact the region today, such as communal conservancies and transfrontier conservation areas (Peace Parks), and show how these are also often characterized by economic development discourse, ecological research and, increasingly, militarization and violence. My dissertation contributed to two important theoretical debates. The first concerns the place of development discourse in South African policy at the supposed peripheries of the apartheid state, including in the homelands and in Namibia. The second tackles the extent to which military practices, nature conservation, and the production of ecological knowledge served Pretoria as mutually reinforcing means to exert its control over these supposedly remote regions. One of the major conclusions of this dissertation is therefore, that the imperatives of nature conservation, militarization and development have been intricately entwined in the in the Caprivi and beyond. This entanglement stems from their interlinked past, a history which continues to show its impact on the region today. I showed how, during military occupation, research on local nature as well as the exploitation and conservation of the natural environment became central means for apartheid South Africa to expand its power over northern Namibia. Finally, this dissertation offers an argument against conceptual confines, whether in the form of rigid analytical boundaries between supposedly separate spheres of politics, such as economic development, nature conservation and military power; nor in the form of circumscribed historical eras, like the apartheid and post-apartheid periods; nor in the form of neatly defined political-geographical-historiographical entities, such as Namibia and South Africa. To understand past and present nature conservation initiatives and policies in the Caprivi – or, indeed, more generally in Southern Africa – the dissertation thus calls for reappraising the relevance of conceptual boundaries and emphasizes the search for continuities and entanglements across different concepts and paradigms.