Hierdie reeks van 4 historiese boeke deur P.J. van der Merwe herleef weer deur middel van digitale druk-tegnologie. Die oorpronklike boeke is geskandeer en is nou beskikbaar in druk- en PDFformaat, as 'n stel of individueel.Die ander boeke in die reeks is Die Noordwaartse Beweging van die Boere voor die Groot Trek (1770'1842) en TREK - Studies oor die Mobiliteit van die Pioniersbevolking aan die Kaap (1770'1842).
This book offers an account of this understudied conflict dating from the early stage of European colonialism in Africa, and unpacks the complex regional relationships between different communities in the first half of 19th century.
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.
Based on many years of research with regard to the Anglo-Boer War, this book is essential reading for anyone who would like to know more about the most devastating conflict that has thus far been waged between white people in Southern Africa. However, with due course, this war also involved more and more black, brown and, to some extent, Asian people.
History is a powerful aid to the understanding of the present, and those who are concerned with the escalating crisis in South Africa will find this an invaluable source book. This is the story of the evolution of a society in which race became the dominant characteristic, the primary determinant of status, wealth, and power. Cultural chauvinism of the first European colonists – primarily the Dutch – merged with economic and demographic developments to create a society in which whites relegated all blacks – free blacks, Africans, imported slaves – to a systematic pattern of subordination and oppression that foreshadowed the apartheid of the twentieth century. From the beginning of the nineteenth century the new empire-builders, the British, reinforced the racial order. In the next century and a half the industrialized South Africa would become firmly integrated into the world economy. Published originally in South Africa in 1979 and updated and expanded now, a decade later, this book by twelve South African, British, Canadian, Dutch, and American scholars is the most comprehensive history of the early years of that troubled nation. The authors put South Africa in the comparative context of other colonial systems. Their social, political, and economic history is rich with empirical data and rests on a solid base of archival research. The story they tell is a complex drama of a racial structure that has resisted hostile impulses from without and rebellion from within.
The Attempted Erasure of the Khoekhoe and San delves into the complex issue of problematic coloured identity and the ongoing erasure of the Khoekhoe and San people in South Africa. Despite the end of apartheid, this erasure continues to persist today, starting as far back as 1652. There were two types of erasure that took place - genocide and bureaucratic. While the former is acknowledged by President Thabo Mbeki in his “I Am an African” speech, the latter began in 1828 with Ordinance 50 in the Cape Colony. From this point, the Khoekhoe and San were bureaucratically erased, culminating in the 1950 Population Registration Act. Despite these attempts, the Khoekhoe and San people resisted and fought for their identity, resulting in their continued existence in the present day. This book documents their painful journey, highlighting their struggles against subjugation and erasure since 1652.
"e;Saam met Berigte uit die Dorsland het die historikus se dogter, Margaretha Schaefer, ook Meer oor P.J. van der Merwe saamgestel. Dit vorm as't ware 'n tweeluik. Baie interessant is onder meer koerantberigte oor Van der Merwe se openbare optredes in 1940 terwyl die Tweede Wereldoorlog gewoed het. Hy was toe nog nie 30 jaar oud nie en het pas teruggekeer van Nederland waar hy sy doktorale studies afgehandel het ... In die bundel is verskeie resensies opgeneem wat Van der Merwe oor leidende historici se werk geskryf het. Dit sluit ook in evaluasies van ander historici van sy werk en van die dosente in die Geskiedenis-departement aan die U.S., waarvan hy van 1955 tot 1977 die effektiewe hoof was ... 'n Opstel deur F.A. van Jaarsveld, waarin hy Van der Merwe en sy werk ontleed, is een van die mees uitstaande bydraes van hierdie historikus. Dit is egter die essay getitel Trek, deur die Australiese historikus W.K. Hancock, wat in die tydskrif, The Economic History Review, gepubliseer is, wat beter as alle ander pogings slaag om die unieke bydrae van Van der Merwe tot die Suid-Afrikaanse historiografie te beskryf en te ontleed."e; - Hemann Giliomee
A guide for interpreting the mfecane's role in history Was the mfecane a figment of historians' imagination as Julian Cobbing contends? How large a responsibility do Shaka and the Zulu people bear for the social turbulence in South-central and South-east Africa in the early decades of the 19th century? These are some of the issues explored in this collection, which is designed as a response to the radical critique of Dr. Cobbing and other scholars. The mfecane, suggests Cobbing, must be seen as a myth lying at the root of a set of interlinked assumptions and distortions that have seriously twisted our understanding of the main historical processes of late 18th- and early 19th-century Southern Africa. Contributors to this collection assess the implications of this critique for scholars from a range of disciplines, notably history, anthropology, archaeology, history of art and African languages. But the book is not only about the debate over Cobbing's work; it is also an indicator of the state of current scholarship in Southern Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries and, because it raises questions about the nature of sources and, indeed, about the nature of historical debate itself, it is also about historiography. This book should provide a useful guide for students starting out in this field, as well as a resource for established scholars seeking their way through the textual intricacies of varied editions and secondary texts that become the primary sources for historiographical debate.
