In colonialism, the concept was helpful too. Germany and Great Britain had many colonies. They would pick an ethnic group and say that this was better than the other groups. This would then lead to an indirect rule in the respective colony. People who conducted African studies in Germany developed a whole system, to make this easier. The Hamitic theory said that the Hamitic people were superior and should rule over the other Negroid people in Sub-Saharan Africa. John Hanning Speke (1827-64) and Charles Gabriel Seligman (1873-1940) were among the most prominent people with this idea. People such Johann Ludwig Krapf, Karl Richard Lepsius, or Carl Meinhof used the study of languages in this context. They said that languages that had a grammatical genus were Hamitic, those that did not were Negroid. Using these criteria to find suitable candidates for indirect rule also led to problems: According to the theory, the Maasai were Hamitic, and should rule in German East Africa. Fortunately, they were unable to make such a system for political and economic reasons. The explanation was that "out of bad luck", the Maasai were a Hamitic people kept at a lower level of social development. In their place, the Swahili were picked, as the "next-higher" people. In German South-West Africa, there was a similar problem: The theory identified the Khoikhoi as Hamitic, but they were too few to rule the country. For this reason, the Ovambo were picked for an indirect rule.