Nicholas Southey

'A Volksvreemde Historian': J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton and the Production of History in an Alien Environment

Extracted from text ... 1. J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton, The Native Policy of the Voortrekkers: An Essay in the History of the Interior of South Africa, 1836-1858 (Cape Town, 1928); J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton, The Road to the North: South Africa 1852-1886 (London, New York and Toronto, 1937). 2. J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton, South Africa (London, 1934). 3. J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton, A Transvaal Jubilee, Being a History of the Church of the Province of South Africa in the Transvaal (London, 1928). 4. J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton, The South African Protectorates (London, 1929). 5. J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton, Crisis in the Desert, May-July 1942 (Cape Town, London and New York, 1952) and J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton, The Sidi ..

J.L. McCracken, 1914–2008

687 Professor J.L. McCracken, historian of eighteenth-century Ireland and nineteenth-century South Africa, died in March 2008 at the age of 93 in Durban, where he had lived in very active retirement for some 20 years. Leslie McCracken was born in Co Down in Ireland in 1914 – on 14 August, ten days after the outbreak of the First World War – and was educated there. After graduating in History from Queen’s University, Belfast, in 1936, he taught history and was vice-principal of Wallace High School in Lisburn until 1945. He then accepted a lectureship in History at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he taught with J.S. Marais, Arthur Keppel-Jones and Phyllis Lewsen.

The Poliomyelitis Epidemic in Johannesburg in 1918: Medical and Public Responses

ABSTRACT This article traces the appearance of poliomyelitis in Johannesburg during the first recognised epidemic in South Africa in the early months of 1918. The course of the epidemic is examined by reviewing available statistics and investigating the problems that the epidemic imposed on medical and health authorities, both locally and within higher echelons of power. The response of the Johannesburg community to the disease is explored, as are the treatments available to polio patients at a time when the disease was regarded as ‘a mystery’. The place of the 1918 epidemic in the wider history of polio in South Africa is also explored.

Viewing the Past: African History on Film

Abstract Although the genre of ‘film and history’ is often seen as a junior branch of the wider historical discipline, recent studies in various contexts have stressed commonalities in approach between historians of film and the visual and those of the written word and more conventional written sources. This review singles out commonalities in methodology and the challenge these pose to conceptions of history and how the discipline is created and constructed. History Goes to the Movies: Studying History on Film. By MARNIE HUGHESWARRINGTON. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. xi + 218 pp., figures, notes, glossary, filmography, index, ISBN 9-780415-32828-9 (paperback). History on Film/Film on History. By ROBERT A. ROSENSTONE. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2006. xiii + 182 pp., guide to key reading, bibliography, index, ISBN 9-780582-50584-4 (paperback). Black and White in Colour: African History on Screen. Edited by VIVIAN BICKFORDSMITH and RICHARD MENDELSOHN. Oxford, Athens, OH and Cape Town: James Currey, Ohio University Press and Double Storey, 2007. ix + 374 pp., endnotes, index, ISBN 978-1-77013-057-9 (Double Storey paperback). Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism. By KENNETH W. HARROW. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007. xv + 268 pp., endnotes, filmography, bibliography, index, ISBN 978-0-253- 21914--5 (paperback). Encountering Modernity: Twentieth Century South African Cinemas. By KEYAN G. TOMASELLI. Amsterdam and Pretoria: Rozenberg and Unisa Press, 2006. xx + 183 pp., list of acronyms, glossary, filmography, bibliography, index, ISBN 9-789051-70886-8 (paperback). Marginal Lives & Painful Pasts: South African Cinema after Apartheid. Compiled by MARTIN BOTHA. Parklands: Genugtig! Publishers, 2007. 386 pp., list of features, references, index, ISBN 978-0-9584880-9-9 (paperback). South African National Cinema. By JACQUELINE MAINGARD. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. xii + 220 pp., figures, notes, bibliography, index, ISBN 978- 0-415-21680-7 (paperback).