Pioneers of the Dorsland
Pioneers of the Dorsland

Author: P.J. van der Merwe

Publisher: AFRICAN SUN MeDIA

Published: 2017-12-15

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 1928314392

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Translated by Margaretha Schaefer, Pioneers of the Dorsland provides a journalistic account of PJ van der Merwe's travels to the Northwest where he interviewed farmers, clergymen, teachers, businessmen, policemen, officials of the magistrate court, divisional council and school board. Van der Merwe introduces the narrative by explaining that it focuses on the peculiar migratory way of life of the region's half-nomadic pioneers. He highlights his efforts as an exhaustive attempt that may prove useful to any future historian interested in the area. Van der Merwe also published other similar works during his time as a researcher, traveller, historian and journalist - Die Noordwaartse Beweging van die Boere voor die Groot Trek, 1770-1842, Die Trekboer in die Geskiedenis van die Kaapkolonie, 1657-1842 and Trek: Studies oor die Mobiliteit van die Pioniersbevolking aan die Kaap. Pioneers of the Dorsland is also available in Afrikaans.

Reports from the Dorsland and other Pioneering Regions
Reports from the Dorsland and other Pioneering Regions

Author: PJ van der Merwe

Publisher: African Sun Media

Published: 2020-07-13

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 0620872721

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‘Shortly after his appointment as lecturer in Stellenbosch, historian PJ van der Merwe turned his attention to the Northwest. In those days the region was mostly unknown to people outside this part of the world. Like today, there was uncertainty then about the boundaries of this region and its sub-regions … Berigte uit die Dorsland, compiled by Van der Merwe’s daughter, Margaretha Schäfer, contains more than 200 of his magazine and newspaper articles. The articles, based on interviews and observations, offer a wealth of important information that he gathered during two extensive visits to the Northwest and surrounding regions … He realised, long before most historians, that a personal interview with someone, who has had a particular experience, was an important historical source. But, it was essential to test the evidence and verify it with that of other people. The articles in Die Burger, Die Huisgenoot, Die Landbouweekblad and Sarie Marais are accompanied by excellent photographs taken by Van der Merwe.’ HERMANN GILIOMEE

Trek: Studies about the Mobility of the Pioneering Population at the Cape
Trek: Studies about the Mobility of the Pioneering Population at the Cape

Author: PJ van der Merwe

Publisher: African Sun Media

Published: 2022-12-20

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1998951154

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This work on the pioneering history of the Boers in the Cape Colony (South Africa) before the Great Trek (1835-1846) is primarily based on research in various archives and libraries. However, the author PJ van der Merwe (1912-1979) found it desirable to personally visit different areas mentioned in the book to get to know the country and the people better and to gather oral tradition and personal information. In carrying out this fieldwork during 1938 and 1939, the author covered 15,000 miles by car and questioned hundreds of people (old pioneers, farmers, teachers, magistrates, school inspectors, livestock inspectors, surveyors and police agents). This investigation not only enabled him to better interpret the sometimes fragmentary data found in the archives and old travel descriptions, but also served to supplement it.

The Migrant Farmer in the History of the Cape Colony, 1657-1842
The Migrant Farmer in the History of the Cape Colony, 1657-1842

Author: Petrus Johannes Van der Merwe

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

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Petrus Johannes Van der Merwe wrote three of the most significant books on the history of South Africa before he was 35 years old. His trilogy, of which The Migrant Farmer is the first volume, has become a classic that no student of Cape colonial history of the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth century can ignore. Van der Merwe was unique among Afrikaner historians in that he focused not on the single event known as the Great Trek, but on the greater migration, nearly three hundred years long, of peoples of Dutch, French and German descent out from the victualling station at Cape Town after their arrival there in 1652. In the process he pioneered new directions in historical writing decades before they became fashionable among other South African historians. Van der Merwe was less interested in politics than in the social, cultural, economic and religious lives of his subjects. He asked questions about such daily concerns as work, food, property owning, private and public worship, leisure activities, fashions, the environment and about the farmers' relations with their neighbors, both white and black. The Migrant Farmer (Die Trekboer in die Geskiedenis van die Kaapkolonie, 1657-1842) was published in Cape Town in Afrikaans in 1938. Beck's English translation will allow scholars worldwide the opportunity to use, or challenge, this pioneering study of South Africa.

The Lower !Garib - Orange River
The Lower !Garib - Orange River

Author: Luregn Lenggenhager

Publisher: transcript Verlag

Published: 2023-06-30

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 3839466393

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The Lower !Garib, or Orange River, flows through the historical Namaqualand and since 1990 has formed the international border between Namibia and South Africa. The contributors to this volume focus on this hardly discussed stretch of the Orange River to understand the region's social history, geography, and economy. This book brings together scholars from Namibia, South Africa, and overseas, as well as the knowledge and analysis from people living in the region. In concise chapters and short portraits, they discuss the region's past and present from a variety of perspectives.

Assegais, Drums & Dragoons
Assegais, Drums & Dragoons

Author: Willem Steenkamp

Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers

Published: 2012-03-22

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 1868424804

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What motivated a small multiracial force of Cape-born soldiers - whites, coloureds and Malays - to put up such stiff resistance at the Battle of Blaauwberg in 1806, in spite of odds so overwhelming that even some long-serving professional soldiers broke rank and ran? This was the intriguing question that launched author Willem Steenkamp's research. It was an investigation which eventually took him back to 150 years before Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape in 1652, and involved examining the social as well as the military history of the Cape. What Steenkamp discovered differs from what most South Africans think about that period, and he corrects a number of serious misconceptions not only about the soldiers of 1510-1806 but about the social and political development of the Cape. For students of the Napoleonic Wars, the book provides new information about a forgotten aspect of that conflict; for the ordinary reader here is a story no-one has ever told before in its entirety. Assegais, Drums and Dragoons: A Military and Social History of the Cape is a well-researched and fascinating account that now illuminates a previously lightless corner of South African military history Descended from a 1690s-era solider, Willem Steenkamp is a writer, journalist and specialist tour guide who has also been a solider, a security advisor and a director of military tattoos and other spectacles, among several other things. Since childhood he has been absorbing the Cape's history from family stories (one of his ancestors was a hero of the Battle of Blaauwberg) and voluminous reading. And yes, he actually has fired flintlock muskets and muzzle-loading cannon. Willem lives in Cape Town.

Until We Meet Again
Until We Meet Again

Author: Stephan Swart

Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers

Published: 2023-03-03

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 139848637X

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This is an African story of a young black caretaker and the white twin boys in his care and the circumstances and courage that took them to hell and back. Unlike many other books covering the South African Angolan Bush War, the novel Until We Meet Again is the story of April and the twin boys Mark and Andy. The novel will take them on an adventure of survival and courage that will test their love and camaraderie for one another during a time when the divide between black and white in South Africa was controlled by dark forces. The novel is about the everyday lives of the two South African families during the 1960s and 70s when the country was under attack from the Pan African Congress’s Poqo army. April would soon find him in a struggle between his own prospects for a better life for himself and his family, but cannot relinquish his responsibilities to care for the two siblings, which left him with difficult decisions to make which would test his courage to its limits. April became a seasoned freedom fighter and one of the most wanted terrorists in South Africa, while the twins innocently landed themselves in an adventure that had turned into a life-threatening situation that they never dreamed of before. The story will take the reader from the tranquil mountains and rivers of the Eastern Cape to the war-torn Angolan desert where one of the most controversial cold war armed conflicts fuelled by the Americans and Russians would play off and end in a stalemate.

The Boers in East Africa
The Boers in East Africa

Author: Brian M. du Toit

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 1998-10-28

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0313034249

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The end of the Anglo-Boer War in May 1902 left the Boers (Afrikaners) defeated and bitter in a ravaged land. Poverty and disillusionment spurred many to leave the post-war British-administered South Africa. This book studies one group of emigres who trekked northward to German East Africa and British East Africa. The author relies heavily on primary sources written in both Dutch and Afrikaans to describe the experiences of the Boers in East Africa. The literature dealing with the Afrikaners documents a people known for their independent insistence upon their language and culture, for their territorial sovereignty established in southern Africa, and for their characteristic religiosity and reliance on Old Testament-based Calvinism. Large numbers of Boers would not or could not adjust to living under an administration with whom they had been at war, and those who tried did not receive much support. As one eyewitness wrote, Not much was needed to stimulate the desire to trek. And so the Afrikaner Diaspora began.