Page 18 - uct_press_catalogue_201819

16
forthcoming titles
2019
208 pages
Soft cover
Print: 978 1 77582 256 1
Web pdf: 978 1 77582 257 8 South African rights only R300.00
$34.95
£24.95
BISAC: EDU029020, EDU037000, EDU010000
BIC: HBTQ, 1HFMS, 1DDN THEMA: NHH, 1HFMS, 3ML
Patriots or Matadors
Political conflict in Dutch Africa
T Baartman
The Cape of Good Hope was a Dutch settlement from 1652 until 1795. Throughout this period there were tensions between the Dutch East India Company (VOC) administrations and the burghers. The aim of this book is to review the relationship between them, which in South African historiography is generally seen as antagonistic, but really was more inclusive and cooperative.
The author places Cape colonial society in a wider Dutch context and closely examines the relationship between the Cape and United Provinces through comparing the political structures, institutions, and dynamics of the Republic and its overseas settlement. He shows that over time intimate connections came about between Company administrators and burghers, which were fashioned in much the same way as regent families in the Dutch Republic formed political factions. The political conflict that played out at the Cape in the later eighteenth century is used as a case study to test the claim above and will confirm that the conflict was not one between burghers and government per se but rather a fight for power between factions within the ruling elite consisting of both VOC officials and burghers.
This book offers new evidence, new interpretations and a new narrative on well- known events in Cape history.
Recommended for
Scholars of South African History, Dutch History and Colonial History of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean; the interested lay reader.
About the author
Teun Baartman has a PhD in History from the University of Cape Town (Fighting for the spoils: Cape burgerschap and faction disputes in Cape Town in the 1770s), and is a consultant researcher to Outsiders Within (a research project archive of the Evangelical Lutheran Church). He has contributed chapters to several books, including The politics of burgher honour in the Cape Colony, 1770s-1780s, in: P. Russell and N. Worden (eds), Honourable intentions? Violence and virtue in Australian and Cape Colonies, c. 1750 to 1850 (London and New York, Routledge, 2016).