The Griqua people are commonly misunderstood. Today, they do not figure in the South African imagination as other peoples do, nor have they for over a century. This book argues that their comparative invisibility is a result of their place in the national narrative. In this revisionist analysis of South African historiography, the author analyses over a century's worth of historical studies and identifies a number of narrative frameworks that have proven resilient to change over this time. The Griqua, in particular, have fared poorly compared to other peoples. They appear in, and disappear from, this body of work in a number of consistent ways, almost as though scholars have avoided re-imagining their history in ways relevant to the present. This book questions why that might be the case.

With the dawn of democracy in South Africa in 1994, the struggle of the indigenous Griqua people for land has gained new momentum. Having lost most of their ancestral land in the 19th century due to colonialism, the Griqua people are now using new legal opportunities to reclaim land. On their re-obtained land, the Griqua dwell, farm, celebrate indigenous festivals, and create cultural villages for tourists. In doing so, they are currently contributing to the making of 'Ethnicity, Inc.', the double process of commodification of culture and creation of ethnic businesses. (Series: Legal Anthropology and Indigenous Rights - Vol. 2) [Subject: Anthropology, Indigenous Studies, African Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Business]

This local history of Griqua Philippolis (1824-1862) and Afrikaner Orania (1990-2013) gets at the crux of the ever-pertinent land question in South Africa. Identifying the many layers of dispossession definitive of the South African past, the book presents a provocative new argument about land rights and the residues of settler colonialism.

Dr John Philip towered over nineteenth-century South African history, championing the rights of indigenous people against the growing power of white supremacy, but today he is largely forgotten or misremembered. From the time he arrived in South Africa as superintendent of the London Missionary Society in 1819, Philip played a major role in the idealist and humanitarian campaigns of the day, fighting for the emancipation of slaves, protecting the Khoi against injustice, and opposing the dispossession of the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape. A fascinating picture of South Africa and the British Empire during a time of great change, Dr Philip’s Empire documents Philip’s encounters with Dutch colonists, English settlers and indigenous South Africans, his never-ending battles with fellow missionaries and colonial authorities, and his lobbying among the powerful for indigenous people’s civil rights. A controversial and influential figure, Philip was considered an interfering radical subversive by believers in white superiority, but he has been labelled a condescending, hypocritical ‘white liberal’ in a more modern age. This book seeks to revive him from these judgements and to recover the real man and his noble but doomed struggles for justice in the context of his times.