Bøker i Reconsiderations in Southern African History-serien

What was it like to be a slave in colonial South Africa? What difference did freedom make? John Edwin Mason presents complex answers after delving into the slaves' experience within the slaveholding patriarchal household, primarily during the period from 1820 to 1850.

"Originally published in 2017 by Jonathan Ball Publishers, South Africa, a division of Media24 (Pty) Ltd."

On the morning of May 24, 1921, a force of eight hundred white policemen and soldiers confronted an African prophet, Enoch Mgijima, and some three thousand of his followers. In the event that has come to be known as the Bulhoek massacre, police killed nearly two hundred of these `Israelites'. In The Finger of God, Robert Edgar reveals how and why the Bulhoek massacre occurred.

Diverging from the studies of southern African migrant labor that focus on particular workplaces and points of origin, Bound for Work looks at the multitude of forms and locales of migrant labor that individuals - under more or less coercive circumstances - engaged in over the course of their lives.

The Natal Midlands in South Africa was ravaged by conflict in the 1980s and 1990s between supporters of the United Democratic Front and Inkatha. Mxolisi Mchunu provides a historical study of the origins, causes, and nature of political violence in the rural community of KwaShange in the Vulindlela district.

Based on documents from a long-lost and unexplored colonial archive, Slavery by Any Other Name tells the story of how Portugal privatized part of its empire to the Mozambique Company. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the company governed central Mozambique under a royal charter and built a vast forced labor regime camouflaged by the rhetoric of the civilizing mission. Oral testimonies from more than one hundred Mozambican elders provide a vital counterpoint to the perspectives of colonial officials detailed in the archival records of the Mozambique Company. Putting elders' voices into dialogue with officials' reports, Eric Allina reconstructs this modern form of slavery, explains the impact this coercive labor system had on Africans' lives, and describes strategies they used to mitigate or deflect its burdens. In analyzing Africans' responses to colonial oppression, Allina documents how some Africans succeeded in recovering degrees of sovereignty, not through resistance, but by placing increasing burdens on fellow Africans-a dynamic that paralleled developments throughout much of the continent.This volume also traces the international debate on slavery, labor, and colonialism that ebbed and flowed during the first several decades of the twentieth century, exploring a conversation that extended from the backwoods of the Mozambique-Zimbabwe borderlands to ministerial offices in Lisbon and London. Slavery by Any Other Name situates this history of forced labor in colonial Africa within the broader and deeper history of empire, slavery, and abolition, showing how colonial rule in Africa simultaneously continued and transformed past forms of bondage.

Using archival sources from three continents written in multiple languages, this book offers a new appreciation for the deep historicity of language and ethnic identity in South Africa, while reconstructing the ways in which colonial forces generate and impose ethnic divides with long-lasting and lethal consequences for indigenous populations.

<p><p>While the story of modern South Africa has long captured global attention, the story of one of its key forefathers has been eclipsed by those of more iconic political figures. In <i>Sol Plaatje: A Life,</i> Brian Willan restores to history the importance of a remarkable man whose contributions as an intellectual, politician, teacher, linguist, and journalist expanded and advanced the vision of a common South Africa. </p><p>Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources reflecting decades of archival and field work, Willan animates Plaatjes personal and professional fortunes in the context of the tumultuous changes that overtook South Africa during his lifetime, spanning the countrys industrialization and the rise of African nationalism in the early twentieth century. A pioneer in the history of the black press and a literary luminary, Plaatje translated Shakespeare into his native tongue, Setswana, the first such into any African language. Plaatje was a founder of the African National Congress in 1912 and led its campaign against the notorious Natives Land Act of 1913, efforts resonant more than a century later as the ANC today seeks to salvage its legacy from the stain of twenty-first-century corruption. This richly woven biography is essential reading for anyone interested in the generation of black leaders who came before Mandela.</p><p>For sale in the US only.</p></p>

From the beginning of the nineteenth century through to 1960, Protestant missionaries were the most important intermediaries between South Africa's ruling white minority and its black majority. The Equality of Believers reconfigures the narrative of race in South Africa by exploring the pivotal role played by these missionaries and their teachings in shaping that nation's history.The missionaries articulated a universalist and egalitarian ideology derived from New Testament teachings that rebuked the racial hierarchies endemic to South African society. Yet white settlers, the churches closely tied to them, and even many missionaries evaded or subverted these ideas. In the early years of settlement, the white minority justified its supremacy by equating Christianity with white racial identity. Later, they adopted segregated churches for blacks and whites, followed by segregationist laws blocking blacks' access to prosperity and citizenship-and, eventually, by the ambitious plan of social engineering that was apartheid.Providing historical context reaching back to 1652, Elphick concentrates on the era of industrialization, segregation, and the beginnings of apartheid in the first half of the twentieth century. The most ambitious work yet from this renowned historian, Elphick's book reveals the deep religious roots of racial ideas and initiatives that have so profoundly shaped the history of South Africa.