This volume of Le Vaillant’s Travels continues the narrative of his journey, begun in Volume 1, from the time of his arrival at Kok’s Kraal on the banks of the Great Fish River, where he pitched camp and remained from 12 October until 4 December 1782. This sojourn of two months was the longest time that Le Vaillant remained in any one place during the entirety of his journey
This study is a critical edition of a section of the journals of the Reverend James Laing of the Glasgow Missionary Society. The first scholarly study of the Laing journals, this thesis seeks to contribute towards a new understanding of the early days of transcultural interchange on the Eastern Cape frontier. The only previous published work on Laing is William Govan's hagiographical Memorials of the Missionary Career of the Rev. James Laing, Missionary of the Free Church of Scotland in Kaffraria published in Glasgow by David Bryce and Son in 1875. This study attempts to make Laing's text as accessible to today's readers as possible. To this end, the text is a faithful transcription of the original, augmented by a contextual introduction, detailed footnotes and a comprehensive index
By 1752, the lands beyond Mossel Bay were officially unknown. The Beutler expedition, was tasked by Governor Rijk Tulbagh to obtain a thorough knowledge of the hitherto unknown condition of these interior lands. The reader of the Journal will meet the fauna and flora of the region, as well as the indigenous peoples of the Eastern Cape.
Thomas Pringle (1789–1834) is remembered as ‘the father of English poetry’ in this country, as leader of the only Scottish settler party in 1820 and as a champion of the freedom of the press. He had an earlier career as founding editor of Blackwood’s Magazine in Edinburgh and a later one as man of letters in London and secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society. The abolition of slavery in the British Empire came into force in August 1834 but, crippled since infancy and suffering from tuberculosis, he died in December 1834, aged only 45. In South Africa he worked for the relief of the hard-pressed settlers, the emancipation of the Khoisan and protection of the Xhosa on the frontier from retaliatory commando raids. In Cape Town he ran the South African Public Library, edited, with his friend John Fairbairn, the Cape’s first independent newspaper and the bi-monthly South African Journal, and established a successful ‘classical and commercial academy’ until all were brought down by the hostility of the Governor, Lord Charles Somerset. He fought back but, financially ruined, returned to his final career in Britain. His papers, sent to Cape Town by his widow Margaret, were lost but surviving letters in other collections here bring to life the character, outlook and South African career of a notable figure in our history.
Isaac Williams Wauchope (1852-1917) was a prominent member of the Eastern Cape African elite in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a Congregational minister, political activist, historian, poet and, ultimately, legendary hero in the Mendi disaster. A Lovedale student, he was instrumental in founding one of the first political organisations for Africans, an enthusiastic campaigner for the establishment of the University of Fort Hare. This volume assembles a selection of these writings, in English and in Xhosa, reflecting Isaac Wauchope's momentous and turbulent life.
In 1780 the young Francois Vaillant set out from Holland for the Cape to collect specimens of birds and animals. His account of his travels, which was published widely during the revolutionary period, became an influential piece of writing about South Africa, popular throughout Europe and reflected many Enlightenment attitudes.I t was the first highly critical account of Dutch colonialism and the brutality of settler expansion.
The four missionary texts which make up this volume reveal the little-known range of Moravian missionary work in the Eastern Cape, from its inception in 1828 to 1928. Vivid and subjective in character, they illuminate this field of Moravian mission activity in South Africa, which extended to the Xhosa the pioneering work done at Genadendal and its family of stations in the Western Cape. The narratives paint a graphic picture of the commitment of the missionaries and their families, the success and failure of their evangelical mission work and also provide rare insights into the thinking and conduct of those who converted to Christianity. As such, they offer a window onto cultural and social interaction in South Africa's longest-enduring and most volatile frontier zone, adding richly to an understanding of how this process played out on the ground at both a personal and institutional level.
The 15-year-old 'French boy' was wrecked on he Ciskei coast in 1687, and spent a year living in the household of a Xhosa chief. The worlds of the Huguenot diaspora, the great days of Indian Ocean trading, the Cape's pivotal position in the struggle for mastery, and the awakening interest of the Dutch in the 'Terra de Natal' form a many-layered basis to this first full account of the Xhosa and their way of life since European settlement in South Africa began.
Major John North Crealock (1837-1895) fought in a number of colonial wars, including the Indian Mutiny and the Anglo-Zulu War. This volume is a detailed account of the warfare conducted against the Xhosa in the last phases of the frontier war of 1877-1878. Opinionated and inefficient, Crealock nevertheless gives a sober account of the military situation.
Carl Peter Thunberg (1743), a Swede and disciple of the renowned botanist, Linnaeus the elder, was the first university graduate to travel extensively in the Cape interior, preceding the expedition of his compatriot, Anders Sparrman. Apart from recounting his three journeys - two to the Eastern Cape as far as the Sundays River, and one to the Roggeveld - he spent some time in the vicinity of Cape Town, describing the social life and customs of the inhabitants, colonial, slave and indigene.
