_History of South Africa from 1795 to 1872._ By GEORGE MCCALL THEAL,
Litt.D., LL.D. George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., London.
This work is intended to be a general history of South Africa in
detail. It is to be completed as a revised edition in five volumes,
three of which have already appeared. Each volume contains about 500
pages, is neatly printed and substantially bound. The work is well
supplied with maps and charts reflecting the growth and development of
the country.
The author of this history has lived in South Africa and has served as
keeper of the archives of the Cape Colony. The preparation of this
history has occupied his almost undivided attention during the last
fifty years. He says that he has made the closest possible research
among official documents of all kinds. Apparently he has had little
use for secondary material, but his large collection of books on South
Africa has served him as a guide. The author asserts that to the
utmost of human ability he has striven to write without fear, favor or
prejudice, to do equal justice to all with whom he had to deal. For
this reason, he offers his work to the public as "not alone the only
detailed history of South Africa yet prepared, but as a true and
absolutely unbiased narrative." The work shows, however, that it is
written in the attitude of arrogating to himself the privileges of the
superior group, exhibiting occasionally a bit of sympathy for the
inferior, who had to be exterminated to make room for those chosen of
God.
The first volume of the work deals largely with the conquest of the
colony. It is mainly a narrative of the deeds of the conquering
leaders of the colonists, closing with an account of the destruction
of the Bantu tribes. In succession, we read here about the exploits of
James Henry Craig, Earl McCartney, Major General Dundas, Sir George
Younge, Jacob Abraham De Mist, J.W. Janssens, General David Baird, Du
Pré Alexander, Lord Charles Somerset, Sir Rufane Shaw, and General
Richard Bourke.
The second volume adheres in the beginning to the same sort of style,
making the history of the whole colony center largely around the life
of a single man, mentioning such characters as Sir Lowry Cole, Sir
Benjamin D'Urban, Sir George Napier, and Sir Peregrine Maitland. In
the 32d chapter, however, the work becomes more nearly historical in
taking up the emigration from Cape Colony, and the abandonment of that
country by many thousands of substantial burghers, who were intent
upon seeking homes in the wilderness. This movement is further
illuminated by a treatment of the emigrant farmers in Natal, the
republic of Natal, its overthrow, its transitory state, and movements
north of the Orange.
The third volume maintains the standard of the last part of the second
in dealing with the Kaffir Wars, and sketching the conditions leading
up to the grant of a liberal constitution. It returns to the District
of Natal from 1845 to 1857, discusses the creation of the Orange River
Sovereignty, the abandonment of the Sovereignty, and the events north
of the Vaal, in the South African Republic and Orange Free State from
1854 to 1857. In these last chapters the author brings out more
prominently than elsewhere the conflict between the whites and the
blacks, the correlated problems arising therefrom, and measures
brought forward to solve them. The reader easily learns that the
handling of the question in South Africa has not been very different
from the method of attack in the United States. The South African
method has, in some respects, been more cruel than that of the United
States.