The Griqua Past And The Limits Of South African History 1902 1994

The Griqua people are commonly misunderstood. Today, they do not figure in the South African imagination as other peoples do, nor have they for over a century. This book argues that their comparative invisibility is a result of their place in the national narrative. In this revisionist analysis of South African historiography, the author analyses over a century's worth of historical studies and identifies a number of narrative frameworks that have proven resilient to change over this time. The Griqua, in particular, have fared poorly compared to other peoples. They appear in, and disappear from, this body of work in a number of consistent ways, almost as though scholars have avoided re-imagining their history in ways relevant to the present. This book questions why that might be the case.

This local history of Griqua Philippolis (1824-1862) and Afrikaner Orania (1990-2013) gets at the crux of the ever-pertinent land question in South Africa. Identifying the many layers of dispossession definitive of the South African past, the book presents a provocative new argument about land rights and the residues of settler colonialism.

With the dawn of democracy in South Africa in 1994, the struggle of the indigenous Griqua people for land has gained new momentum. Having lost most of their ancestral land in the 19th century due to colonialism, the Griqua people are now using new legal opportunities to reclaim land. On their re-obtained land, the Griqua dwell, farm, celebrate indigenous festivals, and create cultural villages for tourists. In doing so, they are currently contributing to the making of 'Ethnicity, Inc.', the double process of commodification of culture and creation of ethnic businesses. (Series: Legal Anthropology and Indigenous Rights - Vol. 2) [Subject: Anthropology, Indigenous Studies, African Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Business]

Empire, Kinship and Violence traces the history of three linked imperial families in Britain and across contested colonial borderlands from 1770 to 1842. Elizabeth Elbourne tracks the Haudenosaunee Brants of northeastern North America from the American Revolution to exile in Canada; the Bannisters, a British family of colonial administrators, whistleblowers and entrepreneurs who operated across Australia, Canada and southern Africa; and the Buxtons, a family of British abolitionists who publicized information about what might now be termed genocide towards Indigenous peoples while also pioneering humanitarian colonialism. By recounting the conflicts that these interlinked families were involved in she tells a larger story about the development of British and American settler colonialism and the betrayal of Indigenous peoples. Through an analysis of the changing politics of kinship and violence, Elizabeth Elbourne sheds new light on transnational debates about issues such as Indigenous sovereignty claims, British subjecthood, violence, land rights and cultural assimilation.

Consisting of original scholarship at the intersection of indigenous studies and religious studies, the Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s) includes a programmatic introduction arguing for new ways of conceptualizing the field, numerous case study-based examples, and an Afterword by Thomas Tweed.

The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism examines the global history of settler colonialism as a distinct mode of domination from ancient times to the present day. It explores the ways in which new polities were established in freshly discovered ‘New Worlds’, and covers the history of many countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Japan, South Africa, Liberia, Algeria, Canada, and the USA. Chronologically as well as geographically wide-reaching, this volume focuses on an extensive array of topics and regions ranging from settler colonialism in the Neo-Assyrian and Roman empires, to relationships between indigenes and newcomers in New Spain and the early Mexican republic, to the settler-dominated polities of Africa during the twentieth century. Its twenty-nine inter-disciplinary chapters focus on single colonies or on regional developments that straddle the borders of present-day states, on successful settlements that would go on to become powerful settler nations, on failed settler colonies, and on the historiographies of these experiences. Taking a fundamentally international approach to the topic, this book analyses the varied experiences of settler colonialism in countries around the world. With a synthesizing yet original introduction, this is a landmark contribution to the emerging field of settler colonial studies and will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the global history of imperialism and colonialism.

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. Called the Israelites, they refused to leave their holy village of Ntabelanga, where they had been gathering since early 1919 to await the end of the world. While the Israelites maintained they were there to pray and worship in peace, the white authorities viewed them as illegally squatting on land that was not theirs. After many months of fruitless negotiations, the South African government sent an armed force to Bulhoek, a village in the Eastern Cape, to expel them. In the event that has come to be known as the Bulhoek massacre, police armed with rifles, machine guns, and cannons killed nearly two hundred Israelites wielding knobkerries, swords, and spears. In The Finger of God, Robert Edgar reveals how and why the Bulhoek massacre occurred. Edgar asks: Why did Mgijima prophesize that the end of the world was imminent, and why did he summon his followers to Ntabelanga? Why did the South African government regard the Israelite encampment as a threat? Examining this clash between a government and a millenial movement, Edgar considers the Bulhoek massacre both as a signal event in South African history and as an example of similar conflicts worldwide.

Dr John Philip towered over nineteenth-century South African history, championing the rights of indigenous people against the growing power of white supremacy, but today he is largely forgotten or misremembered. From the time he arrived in South Africa as superintendent of the London Missionary Society in 1819, Philip played a major role in the idealist and humanitarian campaigns of the day, fighting for the emancipation of slaves, protecting the Khoi against injustice, and opposing the dispossession of the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape. A fascinating picture of South Africa and the British Empire during a time of great change, Dr Philip’s Empire documents Philip’s encounters with Dutch colonists, English settlers and indigenous South Africans, his never-ending battles with fellow missionaries and colonial authorities, and his lobbying among the powerful for indigenous people’s civil rights. A controversial and influential figure, Philip was considered an interfering radical subversive by believers in white superiority, but he has been labelled a condescending, hypocritical ‘white liberal’ in a more modern age. This book seeks to revive him from these judgements and to recover the real man and his noble but doomed struggles for justice in the context of his times.