Preindustrial southern Africa in the nineteenth century

2019 ◽  
pp. 289-307
Author(s):  
Kevin Shillington
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Africa

Firearms in Southern Africa: A survey

1971 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shula Marks ◽  
Anthony Atmore
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Settler Population ◽  
White Settlement

The relationships of the peoples of southern Africa after the establishment and expansion of the white settlement in the mid-seventeenth century can be seen in terms of both conflict and interdependence, both resistance and collaboration. The conflict often split over into warfare, not only between black and white, but also within both groups. As time passed, firearms came to be used by ever-widening circles of the combatants, often as much the result of the increased collaboration and interdependence between peoples as of the increased conflict. As Inez Sutton has pointed out, ‘in contrast to most of the rest of [sub-Saharan] Africa, the presence of a settler population ensured that the supply of arms was the most modern rather than the most obsolete’, and on the whole non-whites were acutely aware of changes in the manufacture of firearms in the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Proletarian Politics Today: On the Perils and Possibilities of Historical Analogy

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Urban Populations ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Analogy

AbstractWhen contemporary dispossessed urban classes are figured as a “proletariat,” a potent historical analogy is activated in which the well-documented experience of the burgeoning industrial working classes of nineteenth-century Europe provides an implicit template for interpreting events and processes far removed in time and space. Yet Karl Marx's own deployment of the figure of the proletariat, which often provides the inspiration and model for such analogic moves, was itself in its own time already a complex historical analogy, invoking the social hierarchies of ancient Rome. Rethinking this doubly analogical intellectual history provides an occasion both for considering the uses and abuses of historical analogy, and for using a reflection on the original (Roman) proletarians as a conceptual lever for prying apart some outdated assumptions about the contemporary politics of certain propertyless urban populations, in southern Africa and beyond.

Anti-Sinicism: Roots in Pre-industrial Colonial Southern Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Yellow Peril ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Negative Feelings

Abstract With the Chinese presence on the African continent being perceived and portrayed as a new global phenomenon there has been a concomitant, albeit sporadic and nuanced, emergence of an aversion to things Chinese, gradually permeating popular consciousness. In a postcolonial world these anti-Sinitic or Sino-phobic sentiments are crudely reminiscent of the late nineteenth century colonial cries of the “yellow peril”, which culminated in acts of exclusion and extreme prohibition that singled out and targeted the Chinese in the various colonies across the Atlantic and Pacific including South Africa. This article, however, proposes to trace the genesis of some of anti-Sinicism to a pre-industrial period by considering developments in colonial Southern Africa. It will show how in the early Dutch settler and British colonial periods at the Cape, when the number of Chinese present in the region was miniscule, negative feelings towards the Chinese as the “other” were already apparent and evident in the reactions to them prior to the arrival of the large numbers which came to America, Australasia and Africa from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.

Bibles and Beads: Missionaries as Traders in Southern Africa in the Early Nineteenth Century

1989 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger B. Beck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
The South ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Metal Tools ◽  
London Missionary Society

Trade across the Cape frontier in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, and government attempts to regulate that trade, cannot be understood without first considering the role of Protestant missionaries as traders and bearers of European manufactured goods in the South African interior. From their arrival in 1799, missionaries of the London Missionary Society carried on a daily trade beyond the northern and eastern boundaries of the Cape Colony that was forbidden by law to the colonists. When missionaries of the Methodist Missionary Society arrived in the mid-1810s they too carried beads as well as Bibles to their mission stations outside the colony. Most missionaries were initially troubled by having to mix commercial activities with their religious duties. They were forced, however, to rely on trade in order to support themselves and their families because of the meagre material and monetary assistance they received from their societies. They introduced European goods among African societies beyond the Cape frontiers earlier and in greater quantities than any other enterprise until the commencement of the Fort Willshire fairs in 1824. Most importantly, they helped to bring about a transition from trade in beads, buttons and other traditional exchange items to a desire among many of the peoples with whom they came into contact for blankets, European clothing and metal tools and utensils, thus creating a growing dependency on European material goods that would eventually bring about a total transformation of these African societies.

scholarly journals ‘The Character and Objects of Chaka’: A Reconsideration of the Making of Shaka as ‘Mfecane’ Motor

1992 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Anne Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come

An important aspect of Julian Cobbing's radical critique of the ‘mfecane’ as the pivotal concept of the history of southern Africa in the nineteenth century is the claim that the image of Shaka-as-monster was an ‘alibi’ invented by Europeans in the 1820s to mask their slaving activities. Reconsideration of this claim reveals that it is based on the misuse of evidence and inadequate periodisation of the earliest representations of Shaka. Examination of the image of Shaka promoted by the Port Natal traders in the 1820s reveals that, with two highly specific exceptions which were not influential at the time, the traders' presentation of Shaka was that of a benign patron. It was only in 1829, after the Zulu king's death, that European representations began to include a range of ‘atrocity’ stories regarding Shaka. These were not invented by whites but drew on images of Shaka already in place amongst the African communities of southern Africa. These contemporary African views of Shaka and the ways in which they gave shape to the European versions are ignored by Cobbing, and this contributes to his failure to come to grips with past myth-making processes in their fullest complexity.

Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 541-554
Author(s):  
Adriaan C. Neele
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Vested Interest ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Missionary Societies

Jonathan Edwards’s attention to Africa cannot go unnoticed, as articulated in his A History of the Work of Redemption. Less attention, however, has been given to the reception of Edwards’s works in Africa. This absence in Edwardsean research is remarkable, as many of his works have been reprinted, translated, and published from the eighteenth century onwards, particularly by those who had a vested interest in missionary movements and societies labouring throughout Africa. In fact, the reception of Edwards’s thought in Africa is primarily through the work of nineteenth-century missionaries and missionary societies—willing or unwilling participants of the colonial European expansion in Africa. Several of his works translated into Arabic, Dutch, English, French, and German found their way from Cairo to Cape Town. This chapter, then, is a preliminary overview from North Africa to Southern Africa of the distribution, use, and appropriation of some of Edwards’s works throughout the continent.

Reconstructing the Past Using the British Parliamentary Papers: The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Joye Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Valuable Source ◽  
Vast Amount ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Precise Sense ◽  
The Government ◽  
Source Of Information

The British Parliamentary Papers continue to be a valuable source of information for historians of the African past. A vast amount of material on African affairs involving British interests can be found in these Papers. This essay deals with the way that the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 was presented in the Parliamentary Papers, specifically volume 13 of the Irish University Reprint Series entitled Colonies—Africa: Southern Africa General, 1878-80. It examines the kind of information presented, as well as the kind of material not presented. It analyzes the function of these Papers in their own time and in secondary sources on the Anglo-Zulu War. Finally, it considers the kinds of questions historians must ask in order to make these documents as useful as possible.The term “Parliamentary Papers” used in the broadest sense refers to all of the official published records of the British Parliament. This includes the record of its proceedings and various debates; the reports of Parliamentary Committees and non-Parliamentary Committees; and the official documents of various departments that discuss routine business. In a narrower and more precise sense, the term “Parliamentary Papers refers to specific sets of papers that came before the House of Commons, were printed for Parliament's use, and were part of a numbered series of papers.” The papers in this narrower group are considered “Sessional Papers,” popularly called “Blue Books,” a name given them in the nineteenth century because the government printers bound the majority of the papers in blue covers.

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