South Africa is consistently headline news, for positive as well as negative reasons. Its unique history this century has brought the names of its most famous political activists not only to our television sets, but more permanently to names of streets and buildings throughout the West. This book examines the social and economic history underlying the political upheavals, and the establishment and fitful but dramatic dismantling of apartheid. Beginning with the final colonial conquests at the end of the 19th century, it ends with a prognosis for democracy and redistribution of resources in the 1990s.

Twentieth-Century South Africa

History

Beinart, William

Africa

Oxford University Press

This accessible and concise introduction to South Africa's turbulent history this century is the first to emphasize the social and economic history underlying the political upheavals and the establishment and fitful dismantling of apartheid. Beinart, a leading South Africa historian, begins with the final colonial conquests of the late 19th century and ends with a prognosis for democracy and redistribution of resources in the 1990s. Along the way he considers how popular culture and politics help to explain the rise of Afrikaner and African nationalism, and looks at such key topics as patterns of violence, the significance of ethnicity, and the variety of radical politics and religious expression. Written for the student and general reader, this book will serve as a useful guide to this vital period in twentieth-century history.

An innovative examination of the forces-both destructive and dynamic-which have shaped South Africa, this book provides a stimulating introduction to the history of the nation in the twentieth century. It draws on the rich and lively tradition of radical history writing and weaves economic and cultural history into the political narrative.

Twentieth-Century South Africa (New Edition

Environment and Empire (Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series)

European imperialism was extraordinarily far-reaching: a key global historical process of the last 500 years. It locked disparate human societies together over a wider area than any previous imperial expansion; it underpinned the repopulation of the Americas and Australasia; it was the precursor of globalization as we now understand it. Imperialism was inseparable from the history of global environmental change. Metropolitan countries sought raw materials of all kinds, from timber and furs to rubber and oil. They established sugar plantations that transformed island ecologies. Settlers introduced new methods of farming and displaced indigenous peoples. Colonial cities, many of which became great conurbations, fundamentally changed relationships between people and nature. Consumer cultures, the internal combustion engine, and pollution are now ubiquitous. Environmental history deals with the reciprocal interaction between people and other elements in the natural world, and this book illustrates the diverse environmental themes in the history of empire. Initially concentrating on the material factors that shaped empire and environmental change, Environment and Empire discusses the way in which British consumers and manufacturers sucked in resources that were gathered, hunted, fished, mined, and farmed. Yet it is also clear that British settler and colonial states sought to regulate the use of natural resources as well as commodify them. Conservation aimed to preserve resources by exclusion, as in wildlife parks and forests, and to guarantee efficient use of soil and water. Exploring these linked themes of exploitation and conservation, this study concludes with a focus on political reassertions by colonised peoples over natural resources. In a post-imperial age, they have found a new voice, reformulating ideas about nature, landscape, and heritage and challenging, at a local and global level, views of who has the right to regulate nature.

Hughes, Lotte

Europe

The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770-1950

The Rise of Conservation in South Africa is an innovative contribution to the growing comparative field of environmental history. Beinart's major theme is the history of conservationist ideas in South Africa. He focuses largely on the livestock farming districts of the semi-arid Karoo and the neighboring eastern Cape grasslands, conquered and occupied by white settlers before the middle of the nineteenth century. The Cape, like Australia, became a major exporter of wool. Vast numbers of sheep flooded its plains and rapidly transformed its fragile natural pastures. Cattle also remained vital for ox-wagon transport and internal markets. Concerns about environmental degradation reached a crescendo in the early decades of the twentieth century, when a Dust Bowl of kinds was predicted, and formed the basis for far-reaching state intervention aimed at conserving natural resources. Soil erosion, overstocking, and water supplies stood alongside wildlife protection as the central preoccupations of South African conservationists. The book traces debates about environmental degradation in successive eras of South African history. It offers a reinterpretation of South Africa's economic development, and of aspects of the Cape colonial and South African states. It expands the understanding of English-speaking South Africans and their role both as farmers and as protagonists of conservationist ideas. The book is also a contribution to the history of science, exploring the way in which new scientific knowledge shaped environmental understanding and formed a significant element in settler intellectual life. It paints an evocative picture of the post-conquest Karoo, analyzing the impact of self-consciously progressive farmers and officials in their attempts to secure private property, curtail transhumance and kraaling, control animal diseases, enhance water supplies, eradicate jackals, destroy alien weeds such as the prickly pear, and combat drought. It concludes by analyzing conservationist interventions in the African areas, and discussing evidence for a stabilization of environmental conditions over the longer term.

Business & Money

Economics

The Rise of Conservation in South Africa is an innovative contribution to the growing comparative field of environmental history. Beinart's major theme is the history of conservationist ideas in South Africa. He focuses largely on the livestock farming districts of the semi-arid Karoo and the neighboring eastern Cape grasslands, conquered and occupied by white settlers before the middle of the nineteenth century. The Cape, like Australia, became a major exporter of wool. Vast numbers of sheep flooded its plains and rapidly transformed its fragile natural pastures. Cattle also remained vital for ox-wagon transport and internal markets. Concerns about environmental degradation reached a crescendo in the early decades of the twentieth century, when a Dust Bowl of kinds was predicted, and formed the basis for far-reaching state intervention aimed at conserving natural resources. Soil erosion, overstocking, and water supplies stood alongside wildlife protection as the central preoccupations of South African conservationists. The book traces debates about environmental degradation in successive eras of South African history. It offers a reinterpretation of South Africa's economic development, and of aspects of the Cape colonial and South African states. It expands the understanding of English-speaking South Africans and their role both as farmers and as protagonists of conservationist ideas. The book is also a contribution to the history of science, exploring the way in which new scientific knowledge shaped environmental understanding and formed a significant element in settler intellectual life. It paints an evocative picture of the post-conquest Karoo, analyzing the impact of self-consciously progressive farmers and officials in their attempts to secure private property, curtail transhumance and kraaling, control animal diseases, enhance water supplies, eradicate jackals, destroy alien weeds such as the prickly pear,

Oxford University Press, USA

European imperialism was extraordinarily far-reaching: a key global historical process of the last 500 years. It locked disparate human societies together over a wider area than any previous imperial expansion; it underpinned the repopulation of the Americas and Australasia; it was the precursor of globalization as we now understand it. Imperialism was inseparable from the history of global environmental change. Metropolitan countries sought raw materials of all kinds, from timber and furs to rubber and oil. They established sugar plantations that transformed island ecologies. Settlers introduced new methods of farming and displaced indigenous peoples. Colonial cities, many of which became great conurbations, fundamentally changed relationships between people and nature. Consumer cultures, the internal combustion engine, and pollution are now ubiquitous. Environmental history deals with the reciprocal interaction between people and other elements in the natural world, and this book illustrates the diverse environmental themes in the history of empire. Initially concentrating on the material factors that shaped empire and environmental change, Environment and Empire discusses the way in which British consumers and manufacturers sucked in resources that were gathered, hunted, fished, mined, and farmed. Yet it is also clear that British settler and colonial states sought to regulate the use of natural resources as well as commodify them. Conservation aimed to preserve resources by exclusion, as in wildlife parks and forests, and to guarantee efficient use of soil and water. Exploring these linked themes of exploitation and conservation, this study concludes with a focus on political reassertions by colonised peoples over natural resources. In a post-imperial age, they have found a new voice, reformulating ideas about nature, landscape, and heritage and challenging, at a local and global level, views of who has the right

Terence Ranger described ths book as a '...landmark in the historiography of southern Africa.' The book is an exercise in historical retrieval, focussed on a series of forgotten episodes in South Africa's history that were neglected in subsequent historical writing. North America: University of California Press

Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa: Politics and Popular Movements in the Transkei & Eastern Cape, 1890-1930 (Perspectives on Southern Africa)

Bundy, Colin

Asia

Univ. Of California Pr.

Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa: Politics and Popular Movements in the Transkei and Eastern Cape, 1890-1930 (Perspectives on Southern Africa)

University of California Press

The explosion of interest in African environmental history has stimulated research and writing on a wide range of issues facing many African nations. This collection represents some of the finest studies to date. The general topics include African environmental ideas and practices; colonial science, the state and African responses; and settlers and Africans' culture and nature. The contributors are Emmanuel Kreike, Karen Middleton, Innocent Pikirayi, Terence Ranger, JoAnn McGregor, Helen Tilley, Grace Garswell, John McCracken, Ingrid Yngstrom, David Bunn, Sandra Swart, Robert J. Gordon, and Jane Carruthers.

Social History and African Environments (Ecology & History)

Ohio University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Beinart, William. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Beinart, William

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Beinart, William. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Twentieth-Century South Africa

Twentieth-Century South Africa

Twentieth-Century South Africa (New Edition

Environment and Empire (Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series)

The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770-1950

The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770-1950

Environment and Empire (Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series)

Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa: Politics and Popular Movements in the Transkei & Eastern Cape, 1890-1930 (Perspectives on Southern Africa)

Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa: Politics and Popular Movements in the Transkei and Eastern Cape, 1890-1930 (Perspectives on Southern Africa)

Social History and African Environments (Ecology & History)