Irish settlement and identity in South Africa before 1910

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 (110) ◽  
pp. 134-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donal P. McCracken

Although there has been a continuous Irish presence at the Cape of Good Hope since the late eighteenth century, the chroniclers of the Irish diaspora have until the late 1980s ignored the continent of Africa. This was in part because relatively few Irish migrants ventured to Africa, but it is also the consequence of two other factors. The vast majority of Irish immigrants to Africa in the nineteenth century went to South Africa, a region which, with some exceptions, has been academically isolated for a generation. Then within South Africa there is much still to be learnt about the nature of English-speaking society in the region. While the meticulous analysis of black and Afrikaner history and society, and of related economic history, has dominated South African historiography for some two decades, professional academics have too often left the field of South African English-speaking studies to the amateur historian and the antiquarian. Thus what in Canada or Australia would be regarded as mainline historical research has in South Africa been sidelined in the name of historical relevancy. In fact an analysis of Irish settlement in southern Africa fills an important gap in the general survey of Irish emigration to the empire and reveals a pattern of Irish settlement very different from other regions of Irish migration.

Author(s):  
P De Klerk

Two historians, GD Scholtz and H Giliomee, have written extensively about liberal political thought among Afrikaners during the period 1775-1975. Their interpretations of the influence of liberalism on Afrikaner political thought differ from one another in some respects. Scholtz acknowledges the influence of the political ideas of the Enlightenment on the Cape Patriot movement of the late eighteenth century, but does not regard these ideas as a form of liberalism. He views liberalism as a political ideology alien to the Afrikaners, that was introduced to South Africa in the early 1800s by British officials and missionaries. Since the middle of the nineteenth century the main exponents of liberal political thought in South Africa were British colonists and their descendants. There were always a few Afrikaners with liberal political ideas, but they were strongly influenced by British culture or by English-speaking South Africans. Giliomee, however, is of the opinion that there were already Afrikaners with liberal ideas at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It appears from his study that, although none of the major Afrikaner political leaders from the eighteenth century until the present can be described as a liberal, in the course of two centuries a number of politicians and intellectuals with an Afrikaans background played an important role in various liberal political movements and had a significant influence on the development of Afrikaner political thought. Although Scholtz and Giliomee have both made an important contribution to research on Afrikaner liberal political thought, it is clear that more research should lead to a better understanding of this phenomenon.Keywords: South African Historiography; Afrikaner Political Thought; GD Scholtz; H Giliomee; Liberalism; Democracy; Cape Patriot Movement; Cape Franchise; Segregation; Apartheid Disciplines: Political History; Intellectual History; Political Philosophy


Itinerario ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-129
Author(s):  
A.J.R. Russell-Wood

In this year marking the sexcentenary of the birth of Prince Henry, known erroneously to the English speaking world as ‘the Navigator’, and the 450th anniversary of the Portuguese arrival in Japan, it is fitting to take stock of what has been achieved and what remains concerning research on Portuguese overseas history. In November 1969 a conference was held at the Newberry Library in Chicago to ‘stimulate in the United States scholarly interest in research on Brazil's colonial past’. In November 1978 an International Seminar on Indo-Portuguese History was held in Goa occasioned by ‘an awareness of a relative stagnation in the field of Indo-Portuguese historical studies, especially in India’. This was prompted by the feeling of a dearth of new interpretations, shortage of studies in English, and neglect of political history, biography and social and economic history. Whereas the tone of the Newberry Library meeting was upbeat as to what junior scholars were achieving, and Charles Boxer pointed with pride to scholarly accomplishments since 1950, by 1984 a lecture to mark the occasion of the centennial of the American Historical Association noted grounds for concern regarding studies in the United States on colonial Brazil and this situation has deteriorated further during the decades of the 80s and early 90s. By way of contrast, in 1981 Charles Boxer noted the vitality of the Estado da India in its broadest geographical meaning as a subject for historical research by Portuguese and how ‘after years — I might even say centuries – of neglect by foreigners, the history of the old Estado da India has lately come into its own in the wider world’. This was seconded by M.N. Pearson who noted that ‘Goan historiography seems to be on the verge of a renaissance’.


While South Africa shares some characteristics with other middle-income countries, it has a unique economic history with distinctive characteristics. South Africa is an economic powerhouse with a significant role not only at the southern African regional and continental levels, but also as a member of BRICS. However, the country faces profound developmental challenges, including the ‘triple challenges’ of poverty, inequality and unemployment. There has been a lack of structural transformation and weak economic growth. Ongoing debates around economic policies to address these challenges need to be based on rigorous and robust empirical evidence and in-depth analysis of South African economic issues. This necessitates wide-ranging research, such as that brought together in this handbook. This volume intends to provide original, comprehensive, detailed, state-of-the-art analytical perspectives, that contribute to knowledge while also contributing to well-informed and productive discourse on the South African economy. While concentrating on the more recent economic challenges facing the country, the handbook also provides historical and political context, an in-depth examination of strategic issues in the various critical economic sectors, and assembles diverse analytical perspectives and arguments that have implications for policymaking.


2021 ◽  
pp. 46-65
Author(s):  
Bill Freund ◽  
Vishnu Padayachee

This chapter addresses the unfolding economic history of South Africa in the apartheid era (1948–94). The chapter is organized according to a periodization with 1971–73 as a marker of the break, and along specific thematic lines. These include a discussion of the way in which this history has been studied and through what theoretical lenses, before engaging with the main issues, including the impact of Afrikaner nationalism on economic growth, the way in which the minerals energy sector, which dominated early perspectives of South African economic history and perspectives, is impacted in this era of National Party rule. An analysis of the role of one major corporation (Anglo American Corporation) in shaping this economic history is followed by an assessment of the impact of the global and local crisis after c.1970 on the South African economy. An abiding theme is that of race and economic development and the way in which the impact of this key relationship of apartheid South Africa on economic growth has been studied.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (S349) ◽  
pp. 240-247
Author(s):  
Lerothodi L. Leeuw ◽  
Jarita Holbrook

AbstractThe South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), formerly known as the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, will be 200 years old in 2020. Also, South Africa (SA), formerly a British colony known as the Cape of Good Hope, will celebrate her 100-year anniversary as an International Astronomical Union (IAU) member in 2020, following the IAU centenary in 2019 that this IAU Symposium 349 celebrates. In light of all this, particularly in anticipation of the 200-year anniversary of SAAO in 2020, the SA National Research Foundation (NRF) has developed a Roadmap for the History of Astronomy in South Africa. As part of this we are conducting an oral history of astronomers to complement the historical celebrations of the institutions and science relating to astronomy in SA, supported by the SA NRF. Primarily drawing on literature and setting the scene for this work, here we present a snippet of the on-going oral histories, to glean the role of the IAU in astronomy in South Africa and show the potential of the oral histories to inform and complement written history.


2000 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Cohen

Although a few explorers had reported the finding of fossils in South Africa during the eighteenth century, interested amateurs made the first important collections of fossils during the 1830s. Many new species were discovered and sent back to London, for further study by the newly emerging class there of professional palaeontologists such as Richard Owen (1804-1892) of the British Museum's Natural History Department. As a result of a few pioneers like Andrew Geddes Bain (1797-1864) and William Guybon Atherstone (1814-1898), the study of South African geology and palaeontology was placed on a firm footing by the 1860s. Owen publicly acknowledged their contributions to these new sciences in 1876 in his monumental study of the fossil reptiles of South Africa.1


1997 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-206
Author(s):  
Jona Schellekens

The accepted view is that the eighteenth-century colonial architecture of South Africa has Dutch origins. Jan van der Meulen has challenged this view in this journal. Previous research has looked for the origins of the mostly rural South African colonial architecture in urban Dutch architecture, but, as van der Meulen has noted, with meager results. This note suggests that rural Dutch architecture may be a better field in which to look. Much of the argument presented here is based on a comparison between South African colonial gable design and that in the Zaanstreek, a rural-industrial area north of Amsterdam.


Author(s):  
Richard W. Bailey

Walter S. Avis was so thoroughly a Canadian that it is perhaps necessary to take special note of his contributions to the international community of scholars devoted to the study of English and the English-speaking peoples. Certainly his broad perspective is everywhere revealed in his scholarship. In his study of Canadian eh?, for instance, he speaks of the corpus he collected when his reading was “arbitrarily limited to books in my own library, to newspapers and periodicals that passed normally through my hands, to radio and TV programs, and to such oral examples as I had the opportunity to observe and set down” (1978:174). Yet such “arbitrary limits” encompassed writers and speakers who represent Britain, Canada, the United States, South Africa, and Australia and covered uses from the eighteenth century to the present. With the best of scholars, Avis was meticulous, thorough, wide-ranging, and devoted to the real evidence of real people speaking and writing.


1911 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Stuart Thomson

The following is the first of a series of papers which I intend to issue on South African Alcyonaria. During a lengthened residence at the Cape of Good Hope, I devoted special attention to the Alcyonaria collected on board the Government steam trawler Pieter Faure. Professor Hickson has contributed two papers on Cape Alcyonarians to the volumes Marine Investigations in South Africa; but since then a large number of forms have been dredged, and there still remain in the collection entrusted to me many unidentified and undescribed species. In this first instalment I have confined myself to the Alcyonacea. The present work has been carried on in the Zoological Institute and Museum of Natural History, Berne, and it would be difficult to overstate my indebtedness to Professor Studer, who, besides giving me much valuable advice, stimulus, and encouragement, placed the entire literature of the subject at my disposal.


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