Collective Violence and the Agrarian Origins of South African Apartheid, 1900–1948

This book examines violence against the rural African population and Africans in general before apartheid became the justification for the existence of the South African state.

John Higginson (Author)

9781107643413, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 April 2017

409 pages, 17 b/w illus. 3 maps
23 x 15.4 x 2.5 cm, 0.63 kg

'The book provides a fine-grained detail of how the countryside became an arena of struggle and violence between the Afrikaner farmers, the British occupiers, and African smallholders, for about five decades up to the official birth of apartheid in 1948. It demonstrates how official and extralegal collective violence were crucial in securing a boerestad (white homeland), while also transforming the countryside. The book also contributes a fresh and rich detail of African people's agency in dealing with both their threatened land-based livelihoods and the violence they were confronted with … researchers on land reform, current service delivery protests in South Africa, peace research, as well as policy-makers, should find this book very useful. The preface and the introductory chapter of the book begin with the present and familiar, to set the scene for understanding and appreciating the detail that follows in subsequent chapters.' Thembela Kepe, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies

This book examines the dark odyssey of official and private collective violence against the rural African population and Africans in general during the two generations before apartheid became the primary justification for the existence of the South African state. John Higginson discusses how Africans fought back against the entire spectrum of violence ranged against them, demonstrating just how contingent apartheid was on the struggle to hijack the future of the African majority.

Part I. The Ashes of Defeat: 1. Introduction
2. The etiology of guerrilla organization in the western Transvaal, July 1900 to December 1902
3. Peonage or empire?: the reconstruction of white supremacy
4. Milnerism, the Chinese labor experiment, and the advent of Het Volk
Part II. Sidestepping the King's Writ: 5. Ministering to the dry bones of white supremacy: from union and the 1913 Natives Land Act to the 1914 rebellion
6. A glass brimming over: the failed 1914 rebellion in Rustenburg and Marico
7. Turbulent cities, smoldering countryside, 1914–22
8. After the rebellion, before the pact, 1919–24
Part III. A Hoofdliere or Boere Republic?: 9. The pact, the depression, and the stillborn republic, 1924–33
10. A thousand little Hoofdlier, 1934–48
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], African history [HBJH]