History of South Africa

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History 322.0 South Africa.

A major focus and concern of this course is the evolution and development of the apartheid state after 1947. However, the search for the roots of apartheid must begin almost from the founding of white settlement in 1652. With the defeat of fascist states in World War 2, the apartheid state became increasingly anomalous in the second half of the 20th century. Yet, we witnessed the unraveling of apartheid only in the 1990s.

South Africa is also a microcosm of many of the 20th century world’s greatest problems: (1) extreme nationalism; (2) racism and colour problems; (3) the effects of rapid industrialisation of agrarian-pastoral peoples; (4) building a state and nation from a heterogeneous population with different languages, cultures, religions, etc.; (5) rapid population growth as a consequence of poverty. Thus, the study of South African history is one way of addressing the effects and difficulties of these problems which affect a number of areas in the world at the begining of the 21st century.

Listed below are lectures and readings for the course. You may download and print them off. Please remember that all this material is copyrighted, and if you use any of it in essays etc., you must give proper credit as you would any other research material from books or articles.

The numbered items are lectures. The indented items are readings especially appropriate for the particular lecture; the readings are in pdf format. The numbers following the reading entries give the size of the files.

1 The Peoples of South Africa

2 The Dutch East India Company period

3 The British Invasion and after

4 African Societies before white intrusion

W. G. Mills “Missionaries, Xhosa Clergy and the suppression of traditional customs.”. 68K

5 The Zulu State and the Mfecane

6 The Great Trek

Piet Retief's Manifesto. 12K

7 Xhosa Reactions to White intrusion

J. B. Peires, “The Late Great Plot” 92K
J. B. Peires, “The Central Beliefs of the Xhosa Cattle-killing” 168K
J. B. Peires, “Soft Believers and Hard Unbelievers in the Xhosa Cattle-killing” 1M
J. B. Peires, “Nxele, Ntsikana and the Origins of the Xhosa Religious Reaction” 112K
W. G. Mills, “The Taylor Revival of 1866” 56K

8 The Cape Liberal Tradition

W. G. Mills, “Millennial Christianity, British Imperialism and African Nationalism” 144K
W. G. Mills, “The Roots of African Nationalism: Temperance, 1866-98” 168K
W. G. Mills, “The Fork in the Road” 156K