By Sean Redding
“A new and exciting interpretation of colonial rule in South Africa revolving around the central importance of taxation in establishing the power of colonial state.”
Jeffrey Brian Peires, author of The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-7
“This study is…both original and hugely thought provoking. It addresses head on a key issue that has often been ducked in South African historiography—how Africans understood the world they lived in—and it elevates the subject of witchcraft, which is now beginning to attract appropriate attention in South African studies, to center stage.”
The American Historical Review
“This richly detailed and long-awaited book joins a corpus of new work on culture and the political imagination in Africa. Based on extensive archival research and written in clear and accessible prose, Redding's work offers insight into how people have understood and contested colonial rule in South Africa.”
Journal of Southern African Studies
Rebellions broke out in many areas of South Africa shortly after the institution of white rule in the late nineteenth century and continued into the next century. However, distrust of the colonial regime reached a new peak in the mid-twentieth century, when revolts erupted across a wide area of rural South Africa. All these uprisings were rooted in grievances over taxes. Rebels frequently invoked supernatural powers for assistance and accused government officials of using witchcraft to enrich themselves and to harm ordinary people.
As Sean Redding observes in Sorcery and Sovereignty, beliefs in witchcraft and supernatural powers were part of the political rhetoric; the system of taxation—with all its prescribed interactions between ruler and ruled—was intimately connected to these supernatural beliefs.
In this fascinating study, Redding examines how black South Africans’ beliefs in supernatural powers, along with both economic and social change in the rural areas, resulted in specific rebellions and how gender relations in black South African rural families changed. Sorcery and Sovereignty explores the intersection of taxation, political attitudes, and supernatural beliefs among black South Africans, shedding light on some of the most significant issues in the history of colonized Africa.
Sean Redding is a professor of history at Amherst College. She is the author of several articles on South African history, particularly on changes in African rural life in the late nineteeth and twentieth centuries. More info →
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Myth of Iron
Shaka in History
By Dan Wylie
Myth of Iron is the first book-length scholarly study of the famous Zulu leader Shaka to be published. It lays out, as far as possible, all the available evidenceu2009—u2009mainly hitherto underutilized Zulu oral testimonies, supported by other documentary sourcesu2009—u2009and decides, item by item, legend by legend, what exactly we can know about Shaka’s reign.
Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa
By Wayne Dooling
Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa examines the rural Cape Colony from the earliest days of Dutch colonial rule in the mid-seventeenth century to the outbreak of the South African War in 1899.For slaves and slave owners alike, incorporation into the British Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century brought fruits that were bittersweet.
African History · Slavery and Slave Trade · 17th century · 18th century · 19th century · South Africa · Khoisan · African Studies
Working Papers in Southern African Studies
Vol. 3
By D. C. Hindson
THE STATE AND AGRICULTURAL LABOUR Zanzibar after Slavery Fred CooperFROM REFUGE TO RESISTANCE Botshabelo, Mafolofolo and Johannes Dinkwanyane: Missionaries and Converts under the Authority of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, 1860-1876.
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Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion
By Sol T. Plaatje
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Introduction by Brian Willan
·
Foreword by Bessie Head
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Essays · Literary Collections | African · African History · South Africa · African Studies
