Peter Henshaw

John Buchan from the "Borders" to the "Berg": Nature, Empire and White South African Identity, 1901-1910 1

John Buchan, most famous today as the author of Prester John and The Thirty-Nine Steps, also played a part in shaping some of the ideological foundations of the Union of South Africa. As a member of Lord Milner’s “Kindergarten”, as a journalist and as a novelist, he helped to promote a new “national” identity for the white population of the country established in 1910 as a self-governing dominion within the British empire. As a life-long enthusiast of empire, it might be thought that he would have encouraged the suppression of Afrikaner and other local cultures, and promoted the predominance of a globe-spanning British identity amongst white Southern Africans. He himself confessed to having “dreamed of a world-wide brotherhood with a background of a common race and creed” (Buchan 1940: 124) Moreover, from 1901 to 1903 he was a senior official in Milner’s administration of the newly conquered “Boer republics” — an administration notorious for its single-minded determination to “denationalise” the Afrikaner population of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, and to swamp them with new British immigrants. It might also be thought that Buchan would have encouraged a national identity designed above all to appeal to an urban and industrial population, since the majority of British settlers in Southern Africa were concentrated in towns and had been drawn there directly or indirectly by the gold-mining industry. Yet Buchan was not in Southern Africa long before he began to articulate a conception of South African nationalism in which rural life and the local natural environment had pre-eminent significance.

Canada and the “South African Disputes” at the United Nations, 1946–1961

AbstractDurant les annees 1940 et 1950, les faiseurs de politiques canadiens ont critique les politiques raciales d Afrique du sud ou l’occupation de la Namibie, justifiee par un rejet de la suprematie blanche; desir de faire respecter les buts et les principes des Nations Unies; determination, intensifiee par les tensions de la guerre froide, pour renforcer le Commonwealth et les liens entre l’occident et les pays se liberant du joug colonial. Mais on a evite une critique plus severe de l’Afrique du sud jusqu’a la fin des anneees 1950, parce que certains autres faiseurs de politiques canadiens preferaient laisser l’Afrique du sud decider de leurs politiques raciales. Ils se recommandaient pour cela a la fois des puissantes conventions de non-ingerence dans les affaires interieures des etats membres du Commonwealth et des Nations Unies et du statut de l’Afrique du sud, allie politique et militaire eprouve et precieux partenaire commercial. En effet, la cooperation avec l’Afrique du sud etait consideree co...

Zimbabwe and Canada: Historical Struggle Meets Historical Vacuum

Abstract This article argues that a poverty of historical understanding of Canada’s relations with Zimbabwe has had a debilitating effect on Canadian government policy in southern Africa in recent years. More particularly, this vacuum of Canadian historical understanding has encouraged a profound scepticism on the part of African governments about the Canadian government’s motives for intervening in Zimbabwean affairs, and has helped to create an atmosphere of mutual incomprehension. The Canadian government’s approach generally fails to put rights-based criticisms in any sort of historical context, and leaves Mugabe’s historically-based propaganda largely unanswered. The article argues that there are structural reasons why Canadian government policy is pursued in an historical vacuum. These relate to the organisation of government and the academy in Canada; as well as to Canadian nationalist and ideological preconceptions, which impede a more clear-sighted understanding of the broader historical and British imperial context of Canada’s engagement with southern Africa.

Humphrey Gibbs, Beleaguered Governor: Southern Rhodesia, 1929-69

List of Plates Introdution R.G.Mugabe Foreword R.Blake Preface Acknowledgements A Note on Place-Names Map of Places Mentioned in the Text Chronology The Early Years Into Africa Farming in Peace and War Politics and Federation Southern Rhodesia in the Late Fifties First Years as Governor The End of Federation Prelude to UDI The Unilateral Declaration of Independence Tensions and Talks A Long Haul A State of Uncertainty Near the End of the Road Retirement at Bonisa Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index