Land and politics in the Transvaal in the 1880s
| dc.contributor.author | Cornwall, R. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2010-09-03T11:24:52Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2010-09-03T11:24:52Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 1972-04 | |
| dc.description | African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented October, 1972 | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | It is evident that the population of the South African Republic did not constitute a single homogenous group, devoid of variation in wealth, education and life-style. The diversity of Afrikaner society has frequently been overlooked by historians however, and the courses of social differentation completely ignored. The State Archives at Pretoria do contain some enormous collections of largely unused material however, which for all their superficial dullness embody a vast amount of detailed and valuable data relating to this very problem HAD one the time and equipment to analyse in detail the information which is to be found in the land-registers, estates, death notices and wills, there can be no question but that the result would represent a most notable contribution to the social and economic history of South Africa. If in addition it were possible to collect the petitions, ballot papers and voting list, many of them still extant then another dimension could be superimposed. These would however, be projects of vast size, and although they will, hopefully, be attempted in the future, for the present we shall have to be satisfied with a more modest harvest of information. There is no expectation that however complete, the bare bones of statistical data will answer all of our questions. They can only be used to suggest the patterns of life extending beyond the range of the livelier facts called from volksraad minutes, newspapers, petitions, private correspondence and reminiscences. The major part of this paper will be concerned with the social and economic diversity reflected in landownership and in particular with its causes, general and local. No claim is made to completeness in dealing with the origins of the phenomenon, and attention is paid largely to that material which illustrates aspects of the problem which have been previously neglected. Practical considerations obviously restrict the scope of all research, and for the purposes of this paper most of the evidence relates to the district of Wakkerstroom. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10539/8602 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | African Studies Institute;ISS 99 | |
| dc.subject | Right of property. South Africa | en_US |
| dc.subject | Local government. South Africa | en_US |
| dc.subject | Land use. Government policy. South Africa | en_US |
| dc.title | Land and politics in the Transvaal in the 1880s | en_US |
| dc.type | Working Paper | en_US |