The colony of Natal and the management of its Afrikaner subjects in the build-up to the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) (original) (raw)
The Anglo-Boer War, Natal Afrikaners and issues concerning land
Historia, 2006
In post-Apartheid South Africa the question of land is one of the central issues or challenges facing society. One of the regions where farmers, the authorities and claimants have to deal with the land issue, is in Northern KwaZulu-Natal that is the area to the east of the Buffalo ...
2019
Copyright© 2015 Jacob Mckinnon Ivey Dr. Katherine Aaslestad's "War and Society" course my first year at WVU, where I wrote primarily on the white volunteer institutions within the colony of Natal. However, even within that seminar paper, the interaction and perceptions of the white volunteer corps in conjunction with the African military units under the command of the local magistracy presented a fascinating viewpoint in looking at Natal during its formative period. The extensive correspondence and commentary on Natal's defensive institutions I found in the South African archives solidified in my mind the need for a more nuanced examination of such defensive structures. The result is this dissertation. This project could not have been completed without so many individuals who helped shape my arguments, academic abilities, and personal sanity. To begin with, Dr. Katherine Aaslestad's course was not only the catalyst for this project, but she has remained a diligent dissertation committee member and has always given me the confidence to move forward with this topic. Her positivity and support helped me to gain the confidence necessary to complete this PhD, and I am eternally grateful to her. Dr. Robert Maxon has been my gateway to developing a deeper understanding of African history, and remains one of the most respectable academics I have had the pleasure to work with. My other committee members, Dr. Tambo Mbayo and Dr. Tim Stapleton were instrumental in the final stages of this project, and to what I hope is a fruitful beginning to my professional career. I would also like to take a moment to thank Dr. Silvermoon, who was only at WVU for the beginning of this process, but who fundamentally helped to shape my understanding of global history. But I cannot say enough about the role that Dr. Joseph Hodge has played as my committee chair, advisor, mentor, and friend. Dr. Hodge was the primary reason I decided to attend WVU and he has been a constant source of support, constructive criticism, and advice these past five years. I look forward to buying him a pint at the Lamb and Flag the next time we are working at Rhodes House. v I would also like to thank the advisors and researchers who helped me along the path to completing this project. All of the archival staffs in London, Oxford, Edinburgh, and South Africa were very helpful in my research. I would also like to thank in particular the staff at the Killie Campbell Library in Durban and the Pietermaritzburg Depot of the South African National Archives. They were instrumental in assisting with my research, and were very accommodating considering the amount of documents I requested and moved through at what seemed to be lightning speed. I'd also like to thank the other historians who provided advice and assistance during this project, both at home and abroad, including Thom McClendon, Bill Guest, Paul Thompson, and Norman Etherington. A fond thanks goes to T.J. Tallie, who helped with recommendations and research tips for my journey to South Africa. A more somber thanks goes to Dr. Jeff Guy, who sadly passed away the morning of my dissertation defence. This made the defence bitter sweet, knowing he will never be able to read (and rightly critique) my finished work. But his legacy as a historian and teacher, along with the overwhelming contributions he has made to the field, is a gift to everyone who studies the history of South Africa and KwaZulu-Natal. I had the wonderful opportunity to meet some fantastic friends during my time at WVU. Though I had the privilege of interacting with much of the department while acting as the History Department social coordinator, there are several people I would like to thank who made a strong impact on my time in Morgantown. Steve Santelli, Nick Githuku, Joel Christenson, Kat Fichtel, and Karina and Josh Esposito were wonderful pillars of support my first years in the progam, providing sources of humor, insight, and comradery that enriched my experience overall. Jordan Lieser was not only a great workout buddy, but also a boundless source of insight for my field in Latin America. Billy Feeney, who left Morgantown too soon after my arrival, remains a great friend to discuss teaching methods, classroom troubles, and the proper eating of chicken wings. Adam Zucconi, who I dare say vi spent more time in the office than I did, was a great source of encouragement and an enduring presence during my early dissertation writing in the offices of G13 and G14. Nilanjana Paul was another constant, though perhaps more hectic, presence in the office, and remains a true friend. Fabio Capano and his wife Danielle were wonderful friends during my first years in Morgantown, and continue to be so. Jinny Turman, my Appalachian expert, was also a source of great conversations, and a wonderful graduate social coordinator for the department (who I happily replaced once she graduated). Hal Gorby, my West Virginia and Wheeling expert, has become a great friend and constant source of insightful conversations on politics, teaching, and sports. I'd also like to thank Drs. Ken and Liz Fones-Wolf, who not only provided advice and guidance, but wonderful support during my time in Morgantown, despite my never taking any of their courses. And a final thanks to Joe Rizzo, Brandon Williams, David Goldberg, and Cara Snider, who made me feel like family at times at Copper Beech. Some of my finest memories in Morgantown are watching football games and planning career goals with Rizzo, playing video games and debating pedagogical perspective with Brandon, discussing (or being lectured on) fashion and teaching methods with Goldberg, or comparing recipes and a mutual fondness for Mark Twain with Cara. Beyond the history department, I cannot thank enough Matt Titolo and Tania De Miguel Magro for their enduring friendship, and providing me a place to stay when I returned to Morgantown for meetings and my dissertation defence, despite our very different fields of study. Thanks also to Lindsey McNellis, who I convinced to move up to Morgantown to become a PhD student in the WVU History Department, but was a dear friend long before, and continues to act as a wonderful source of support for my academic career. Many thanks are also extended to Skip Parrish, who I taught with back at Seminole Community College's Adult High School during my Master's, and who continues to be a great friend. I would also like to thank my dear friend Stephen Ford, who, though in China for the vast majority of this vii process, continued to act as one of my best friends, confidants, and sounding board for ideas, teaching techniques, and random nerd discussions. And finally, I would like to thank the people who were most impactful to my completion of this project: my family. My sister-in-law Catherine Poulin, and her husband Jimmy, while being great friends, were also wonderful in letting me stay with them for a month in London while I finished the last part of me research at the British Library. My inlaws, Liz and Bruce Anderson, were also very supportive of this process, even when it took me away from their daughter for a year or two. My sister Kelly, brother-in-law Brendan, and nieces Hannah and Elise McNeirney, though never acting as research assistants, did provide many moments of much needed respite from the toils of academia. My parents, Chuck and Liane Ivey, were always supportive of my love of history, including family vacations to history museums, historic sites, and battlefields during my youth. They also encouraged me to travel and see the world, and gave me the support necessary to see London for the very first time. Thank you for all you have done in making me the historian and man I am today. And last, but most certainly not least, I would like to thank my wife, Jennifer Ivey. She has been with me throughout this entire process, and knows the full extent of the trial, turmoil, and triumph that comes with the completion of this project. Four states, three continents, and five years have been nothing but a delight as I have spent the vast majority of it with her. She is my best source of confidence, my most diligent critic, my editor, my research assistant, my travel companion, and my best friend. This project would be nothing without her help and I dedicate it in full to her. To everyone who has aided in this project, and all the projects to come, I thank you. viii
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2007
This essay explores Afrikaner immigration into German Southwest Africa during the period of German colonialism, 1884-1914. It focuses on the response of the German colonial authorities in Windhoek and in Berlin to the prospect of large-scale Afrikaner immigration as well as the representation of Afrikaners in German colonial discourse. German justifications of colonial rule were psychologically supported by notions of the imagined cultural and racial differences between the colonisers and the colonised. These underpinned the construction of a polarised self – other, white-black dichotomy and separated the indigenous Africans and Europeans into distinct categories of identification. The presence of settlers whose cultural practices and lifestyle did not match with the norms attributed to the desirable settler threatened to undermine the boundaries of difference between the colonists and colonised. Some elements of the German government and colonial press envisaged Afrikaner immigrants as a potential threat to continued German control over the colony. Others welcomed the immigration of the Afrikaners as colonial pioneers. The categories of black and white were deployed and reconstructed in order to assess the desirability of Afrikaner groups, leading to their assimilation or exclusion from settler society, and underlining the organising power of the schema. Cultural markers and economic considerations were used to differentiate desirable Afrikaner settlers from those deemed undesirable. Undesirable Afrikaner immigrants were representationally blackened through the use of racial rhetoric as well as being politically excluded from access to resources and land, and even physically excluded from the colony. In contrast desirable settlers were welcomed and Germanised. The episode of Afrikaner immigration was illustrative of the constant negotiation of categories of identification and the utilisation of a notion of whiteness in creating an exclusive settler society.
South African Historical Journal, 2015
In spite of historians' sophisticated understanding of how Africans shaped colonial administration in Natal, in many accounts the European side of native administration remains highly personalised. In this article I challenge the widely held assumption that Theophilus Shepstone was the central colonial figure responsible for the establishment of indirect rule in Natal. I advance two interrelated arguments. The first is that Shepstone was just one of half a dozen imperial officials, located variously in Natal, the Cape and London, who together made key decisions that laid down the basic framework of native administration in the 1840s. This basic framework I take to be the establishment of Natal's first locations and the official recognition of chiefly rule and native law, all of which had been formalised by 1849. The second argument is that these officials specifically drew from their close experience of the eastern Cape frontierand in particular the administrative policies trialled in Queen Adelaide Province from 1835 to 1836 and British Kaffraria in 1847in devising a model for governing Natal's Africans in the 1840s. I suggest that it is the Queen Adelaide Province experiment, along with the early government of British Kaffraria the following decade, that provided colonial officials with a distinct template for native administration in Natal.
The Afrikadeutschen of Kroondal 1849 - 1949
2013
Chapter 1. A German Diaspora Chapter 2. Literature Review Chapter 3. Heimat and Deutschtum Chapter 4. Demut und Treue-"Humility and Devotion" Chapter 5. Das Heimatrecht zu Erwerben-"Earning the right to belong" Chapter 6. Gedenke das du in Deutscher bist! 102-"Remember that you are a German!" Conclusion-From Afrikadeutsche to Deutsch-Afrikaner 122 Bibliography 126 Summary The history of the Afrikadeutschen of Kroondal that began with the formation of the Hermannsburg Mission Society in 1849 and that grew to encompass a century of German nationalism over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, provides an important dimension to the greater story of German immigration and settlement in South Africa. It is a narrative in which the position of the community's growing association with their adopted landscape or Heimat serves to create the inevitable counterpoint to their ideological identity as Germans and thereby too, its reconciliation in the name Afrikadeutsche (African-Germans). Situated in the NorthWest province of South Africa, the community of Kroondal displays a unique collection of archival and literary source material that along with the this dissertation's use of the specifically German descriptors Heimat and Deutschtum (Germanness) then serve as the basis for its investigation into its African-German identity.
The paper aims to demonstrate how the colonial state, ostensibly engaged in a project designed to promote 'civilisation' and 'development', often struggled to contain serious disagreements about the nature of the colonial project among members of the white settler community. The 19 th century is touched upon to demonstrate a state of affairs sharply at odds with recollections about the period by Europeans. The focus on the German colonial period (1884-1915) points to certain advances and innovations that the South African Administration, it is claimed, either ignored or terminated. The first phase of South African rule, 1920-1950, is a record of ideological conflicts in intra-and intergroup contexts. The post-1950 period demonstrates how South Africa constructed a form of colonial domination that amounted to establishing Afrikaner hegemony over the public sector in particular. From a German point of view, this amounted to a case of de facto internal colonisation.
Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien
2017
German colonial warfare in then South West Africa between 1904 and 1908 meets the definition of genocide. In this article, the nature and consequences of the war for the mainly affected communities of the Ovaherero and Nama are summarized, followed by the history and meaning of the notion of genocide. But the genocide in the German colony became only since the mid-1960s a matter of scholarly interest. The research results initially remained largely ignored and without major repercussions until the turn of the century. The discourse on genocide and its introduction into a wider German public is presented, leading to developments finally resulting in the official admission of the genocide by the German government in 2015. The subsequent bilateral Namibian-German negotiations over how to come to terms with this shared history are critically assessed. The conclusion seeks to position the efforts of a scholarly engagement with Germany's colonial past in its relevance for today.