Preface: the birth of the political; 1. Eyewitness engagements; 2. History before tribes; 3. Translations; 4. The incipient order; 5. Mixed people; 6. Twentieth-century tribes.
A history of the politics of South Africa's people from the time of their early settlements in the elevated heartlands to the dawn of apartheid.
Paul Landau is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender, and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom (1995) and co-editor of Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (2002). Professor Landau's work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of African History and the Journal of Religious History.
'Paul Landau's masterful work opens up fresh lines of research by
ambitiously narrating the history of South Africa's southern
Highveld, beginning with its peopling and earliest settlements and
carrying the story through to African social movements in the early
twentieth century. He challenges scholars to rethink how they write
the history of southern Africa.' Robert R. Edgar, Howard
University
'Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400–1948 is
original and thought-provoking. Landau makes the important argument
that the idea of entrenched ethnic identities was a product of the
period of European colonialism and that a very different set of
political assumptions had long animated regional politics. Landau
similarly rethinks the meaning and uses of Christianity in exciting
and innovative ways. Telling gripping and often moving tales, he
demonstrates remarkable erudition, drawing on original sources in
several languages and ranging widely in his research. This is a
terrific book.' Elizabeth Elbourne, McGill University
'Paul Landau uses his linguistic genius to probe the meaning of
ethnicity and tribal affiliations in South Africa. His
investigation revolutionizes our understanding of the past for all
of Africa south of the Zambezi. Textbooks will need rewriting,
starting now.' Norman Etherington, University of Western
Australia
'This is a greatly ambitious and remarkably successful book. Landau
has confronted most of the challenges now facing southern African
historians and proposed resolutions to them. We now see that
'tribe' and 'ethnicity' are constructs dating from no earlier than
the nineteenth century. For the first time Landau asks what forms
of consciousness and organization preceded them. Landau takes his
stand in the Highveld, reaching out both north and south. His book
will have to be taken account of by every southern Africanist.'
Terence Ranger, Oxford University
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