Legassick: The Politics of a South African Frontie

The Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the Missionaries, 1780�1840

Chatfield Legassick

• Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9783905758146
• eBook ISBN: 9783905758559
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

This book publishes Martin Legassick's influential doctoral thesis on the preindustrial South African frontier zone of Transorangia. The impressive formation of the Griqua states in the first half of the nineteenth century outside the borders of the Cape Colony and their relations with Sotho-Tswana polities, frontiersmen, missionaries and the British administration of the Cape take centre stage in the analysis. The Griqua, of mixed settler and indigenous descent, secured hegemony in a frontier of complex partnerships and power struggles. The author's subsequent critique of the "frontier tradition" in South African historiography drew on the insights he had gained in writing this dissertation. It served to initiate the debate about the importance of the precolonial frontier situation in South Africa for the establishment of ideas of race, the development of racial prejudice and, implicitly, the creation of segregationist and apartheid systems. Today, the constructed histories of "Griqua" and other categories of indigeneity have re emerged in South Africa as influential tools of political mobilisation and claims on resources.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Preface
• Note on this Edition
• Martin Legassick, The Griqua and South Africa’s historiographical revival: an appreciation
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The Sotho-Tswana Peoples before 1800
• 2. The Evolution of a Frontier Society, 1700 – 1775
• 3. The Frontier Zone and Colonial Policy, c. 1770 – 1815
• 4. The Development of the Griqua State, 1800 – 1820
• 5. The Frontier Zone in Transorangia, 1800 – 1820
• 6. The Griqua and the Colonial Government, 1815 – 1826
• 7. Dislocation in Transorangia, 1820 – 1826
• 8. The New Balance of Power, 1826 – 1832
• 9. John Philip, Robert Moffat, and the Griqua, 1819 – 1832
• 10. Griqua Expansionism, I: Andries Waterboer in Transorangia, 1832 – 1836
• 11. Griqua Expansionism, II: Church and State at Griquatown and Philippolis, 1836 – 1842
• 12. The Decline of Griqua Hegemony
• 13. Conclusion
• Lists of Maps and Tables
• Appendix: Maps and Tables
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back cover