Department of History

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Browsing Department of History by browse.metadata.advisor "Fourie, Johan, 1982-"

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    Contours of confrontation : factors that mobilised the Cape rebels in the South African War, 1896–1902
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Coetzee, Lauren; Fourie, Johan, 1982-; Wehner, Joachim
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : Heroes, traitors, and social outcasts – the Cape Rebels of the South African War, 1899–1902, have been cast in several roles throughout history. Not only do they continue to capture the interests of social historians, but with the incorporation of quantitative history methods, their histories have been revisited in new ways. Using a combination of archival sources and methods like GIS, this thesis presents a study of the social, economic and political circumstances of this group to analyse why they mobilised. With honour, security and livelihoods at stake, the question is raised why these rebels chose to abandon their homes and families at the high cost of hope elsewhere for a better future. Several theories of mobilisation were tested and found wanting. This thesis has used GIS to combine archival research with mapping software to show a visual representation of the historical context of the rebels. The most prevalent theories cited in the literature on the Cape Rebels were mapped and analysed to evaluate the conditions and influences on mobilisation levels in the Cape Colony before the war. The most popular theory, the rinderpest epidemic, was shown to have some correlation with rebel mobilisation rates. However, this was mostly relegated to the districts with heavier cattle losses in the north of the Cape. Proximity to the republics and differences in lifestyle and culture on the frontier were also evaluated in terms of whether this influenced people to side with those more similar to them, demonstrating that ideas, attitudes and ideologies were free-flowing in these regions. This was shown using education levels, the establishment of schools and distances to the borders. The differentiation between frontier regions and republics was proven to be political rather than physical, meaning many rebels in the area were closer to republican communication networks than that of the Cape. Some rebels were motivated by their personal convictions to aid the republics whose sovereignty was threatened. Moreover, the pre-eminent political conditions spurred people to seek alternative leadership after repeated political blunders had compounded the political and ideological vulnerabilities of potential rebels. Finally, the appeal of strong, charismatic leadership has been shown to be a powerful tool in mobilising groups. This was done through mapping the route taken by General Jan Smuts as a proxy for quantifying charismatic leadership. Ultimately, rebels mobilised in the Cape because they shared common goals and interests with the Boer republics.
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    Making useful men and women of our children : investigating the medical inspection of schools in the Cape Province, 1918-1938.
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Lemon, Kelsey; Fourie, Johan, 1982-; Sapire, Hilary; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The history of school medical services is an underrepresented area in the South African historiography, either of education, childhood, or medicine. Little is known about the ideological or legislative origins of inspections, nor how these programmes operated, and what effect they had on social meanings of childhood and the state of child health. The thesis addresses this gap by examining the pioneering years of the Cape school medical service, (1918-1938). The Cape Province in the interwar, segregation era offers a unique case given its size and history of liberalism. In the twentieth century, the state claimed greater responsibility for the welfare of some of its citizens; ameliorating white poverty while entrenching systems to segregate those who were black, coloured, or Indian. Beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing through the twentieth, childhood was progressively regulated through state intervention, compulsory education, and child welfare work. Nevertheless, one’s class, gender, and especially race mediated the extent to which this idealised (western, middle-class) vision of childhood was a possibility for all children. The thesis applies traditional qualitative techniques and quantitative analysis to a range of sources, chief among them being the annual reports of the school medical inspectors. It is found that those promoting school medical inspections touted the service as a best means for alleviating white poverty and securing a healthy, productive white population. The thesis thus uncovers the political origins of school medical inspections and contributes to understanding how child health was leveraged in discussions of the “poor white problem”. When inspections began in 1918, inspectors were restricted to visiting school board schools which were predominantly (but not exclusively) white. In examining the operation of school medical inspections, it is found that, while the service’s value was widely perceived, financial insufficiency limited what the inspectors were ultimately able to achieve. A failure to provide medical treatment for indigent children also restricted the service’s impact. The thesis argues that demands for state involvement in the provision of free treatment offer a window on this early period in South Africa’s social welfare history and societal notions about the state's responsibility to its youngest citizens. By applying a mixed-methods approach to the annual school medical inspection reports, the thesis explores the impact of the Cape school medical service. To do this, the statistical returns of the inspection reports were transcribed which (recognising bias and subjectivity inherent in the data) constitutes a new dataset for examining historical child health outcomes in the Cape. The thesis finds, through their annual reports, the inspectors constructed an image of child health. This image comprised subjective meanings of healthiness and the contemporaneous state of child health. By measuring public and parental compliance with inspections, the thesis finds that school medical inspections contributed to the medicalisation of childhood, education, and parenting. Through their everyday interaction with children, lectures to teachers, meetings with parents and publication of official reports, the Cape school medical service altered societal perceptions of the ideal childhood.
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    The runaways : a study of enslaved, apprenticed and indentured labour flight at the Cape in the emancipation era, 1830-42
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Bergemann, Karl Jason; Fourie, Johan; Fourie, Johan, 1982-; Ekama, Kate; Mitchell, Laura; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Desertion at the Cape is a “tradition” that spanned centuries and encompassed scores of runaways from different social strata. This thesis uncovers the lived experiences of enslaved, apprenticed and indentured labourers in one of the colony’s most crucial defining moments: the emancipations of the enslaved in the 1830s. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods to tell their stories, it creates a further nuanced landscape of desertion by placing these actors at the centre of the study and showing both individual and collective biographies of labourers at the very lowest end of the hierarchical scale. Using two primary sources, the Government Gazette, the mouthpiece of the colonial government, and De Zuid Afrikaan, the first Dutch colonial newspaper in the colony, runaway advertisements have been extracted and collated into two unique datasets. From these advertisements a collection of variables has been deduced and grouped to provide investigations of broad themes within runaway advertisement. These offer insight into themes of demography and personal description; sightings, advertiser supposition and runaway skillsets; information about whereabouts and possible avenues of pursuit; flight cycles, advertising trends and advertorial lag; and finally, information on advertisers themselves, including the locations from where runaways escaped, the rewards offered for their recapture and the masters who advertised for their return. The thesis frames an investigation into the motivations of escape as well as the mechanisms that allowed escapees to create new lives on the run, suggesting a new mode of flight in the form of “assimilation marronage”, where, unlike runaways in earlier periods of the colony’s history, escapees lived within the framework of colonial society rather than escaped it outright. Further questions concerning who the runaways were, when they chose to run, where they ran to and from, what they did while on the run, as well as who placed the advertisements and what rewards were offered were asked of the sources. Overall, the thesis adds to a global narrative of disaffection and reformulation of social existence, positing that runaways at the Cape took necessary steps to alleviate their social deaths and showed that life in the colony was more porous in this state of legal transition than it had ever been before.