Tensions inherent in all social interactions are particularly acute in colonial contexts. Struggles over access to land, definitions of race, and the basis of social, economic and political order have permeated South African society throughout the more than 400 years for which there is documentation of multi-cultural exchanges. My research examines colonial interactions in South Africa during the long eighteenth century, exploring questions of land tenure, slavery and other bonded labor, environmental issues, gender, sexuality, and trans-regional networks of exchange.

I am particularly concerned with situating the development of colonial society at the Cape of Good Hope within the broader context of Dutch East India Company exchange networks. Lying at the confluence of two oceans, the Cape was a bridging point between Europe and Asia. Inland, indigenous hunters and herders engaged in both local and long-distance social and economic exchanges across Southern Africa. Thus colonial life emerged from the competing influences of three continents, juxtaposing multiple legal, religious, economic, social, and administrative traditions. These tumultuous circumstances provide fertile terrain for historical inquiry.

My current research examines conditions of agrarian society in the Cedarberg, a region which remained on the frontier of Western Cape colonial settlement for over a century. My work has several goals: 1) to delineate the mechanisms and social meanings of land tenure; 2) to elaborate the dynamics of labor relations in an economy based on coercion; 3) to understand how people situated themselves in the landscape; 4) to explore the theoretical and methodological implications of the confrontation between “historic” and “pre-historic,” working to integrate analysis of independent Khoisan people within a multi-racial, multi-ethnic narrative of the South African past.

As a teacher, I encourage students to confront historical stereotypes and to engage with a variety of representations of the African past.

Other links:
CHSSPMaterials: World History Institute
African History Content for 7th Grade