Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 086486308X ISBN 13: 9780864863089

Synopsis

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About this title

Synopsis

In this work of synthesis and reinterpretation, Timothy Keegan looks anew at the relatively neglected period of South African history before the mineral age - in particular the years of British rule up to the 1850s. For whereas a previous generation of historians saw the twentieth-century racial state emerging from the forces unleashed by the mineral revolution, Keegan argues that the roots lie in an earlier period, when the Cape was first integrated into the British empire of free trade of the early nineteenth century. Keegan's canvas is wide, his grasp of the historical literature magisterial, and his narrative is both eminently readable and skilful in handling a story that is complex and many-stranded. It is a story too that is strong in notable events - slave emancipation, the arrival of the 1820 British settlers, a series of frontier wars, the Great Trek of Boer emigrants - as well as in striking personalities, among them Dr John Philip, Andries Stockenstrom, John Fairbairn, Moshoeshoe and Sir Harry Smith. In Keegan's pages these familiar historical landmarks and characters emerge in entirely novel ways, the subject of fresh interpretation and original insights.

About the Author

Dr. Timothy Keegan is the author of Rural Transformations in Industrialising South Africa (London, 1986) and Facing the Storm: Portraits of Black Lives in Rural South Africa (Cape Town and London, 1988). He is an associate of the Institute for Historical Research at the University of the Western Cape.

Edition details

• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 086486308X
• ISBN 13: 9780864863089
• Binding: Paperback