A Commonwealth of Knowledge. Science, Sensibility and White South Africa 1820-2000

fascinating study of the ways knowledge and science have been used in South Africa to develop national identity
Dubow, Saul
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9781770131194
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A Commonwealth of Knowledge. Science, Sensibility and White South Africa 1820-2000

Author: Saul Dubow
Double Storey Books
Cape Town, 2007
ISBN: 9781770131194
Softcover, 13x23 cm, 320 pages, some bw photos


About this publication:

This is a fascinating study of the ways knowledge and science have been used in South Africa to develop a sense of self-awareness and national identity and have been put to the service of power – mostly white power.

It starts in the early 19th century when knowledge and institutions of knowledge (like the South African Library and the South African Museum) formed part of a drive to establish a middle-class order that laid claim to the rights of British citizens in the Cape Colony.

By the 20th century, particularly under Prime Minister Smuts, himself a philosopher and amateur botanist, science was being used to underpin a sense of South African patriotic achievement within the Commonwealth.

After the National Party came to power, the links between science and nationalism deepened, with the state becoming heavily involved in projects like Sasol, the Verwoerd Dam, Armscor and Pelindaba, both to establish self-sufficiency and security in a hostile world and to develop a sense of pride in national achievement.

In the final chapter the politics of indigenous knowledge in contemporary South Africa are touched upon, with particular reference to President Mbeki’s public attitudes to HIV/AIDS.


Contents:

List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Literary and Scientific Institutions in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony
2. 'Of Special Colonial Interest': The Cape Monthly Magazine and the Circulation of Ideas
3. Colonialism, Imperialism, Constitutionalism
4. Science and South Africanism
5. A Commonwealth of Knowledge
6. Conclusion: The Renadonalization of Knowledge?
Select Bibliography
Index


List of Illustrations:

1. View of the South African Library and Museum
2. View of the interior of the South African Museum, c.1880
3. The Great Meeting Held in Front of the Commercial Hall, CapeTown, on the 4th of July, 1849, in protest against plans to land convicts at the Cape. By Thomas Bowler
4. Statue of Sir George Grey, by Calder Marshall
5. The Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope
6. The 1905 Joint Meeting of the British and South African Associations for the Advancement of Science: geology excursion led by A. W. Rogers
7. Entrance to Johannesburg Art Gallery, designed by Edwin Lutyens
8. Cartoon by Wyndham Robinson of Nationalist politicians F. W. Beyers and D. F. Malan, Cape Times, July 1929
9. Electricity Supply Commission (Escom) House, Johannesburg
10. ViewofHendrikVerwoerd (nowGariep) Dam
11. View of Rand Afrikaans University (now University of Johannesburg), designed by Jan van Wyk


Preface and Acknowledgements:

This study examines the intellectual underpinnings of white South African identity and power by foregrounding scientific and social knowledge in the process of national self-understanding. It develops more or less directly out of previous work.

In Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa (1995) I explored the role of social Darwinism in underwriting ideologies of white supremacy during the age of segregation and apartheid.

While completing that research I became interested in the broader relationship between social and scientific thought, national identity, and political power. A stimulating spell in 1995 as a fellow at the ANU Humanities Research Centre, Canberra (then under the inspiring directorship of lain McCalman), gave me the opportunity to pursue further these still barely formulated questions.

Keith Hancock, the Australian and Commonwealth historian, who also wrote a definitive study of Smuts and whose presence at the Australian National University was still tangible, offered a natural point of entry.

In his historical essay, Australia (1930), Hancock used the striking term 'independent Australian Britons' to characterize the emergence of colonial nationalism — a tradition that he saw as being neither assertively 'nativist' nor imitatively 'English'.

At about the same time I came across Carl Berger's classic study of Canadian nationalism, The Sense of Power (1970). In it Berger showed how Canadian pro-imperial sentiment could be understood as a form of Canadian nationalism, rather than as its negation. This insight seemed novel to someone who had grown up thinking about identity in binary, exclusive terms, and in a society where Afrikaner nationalists laid first claim to 'being South African'.

Historians are used to analysing national identities as constructed, rather than pre-existing phenomena. Many excellent studies have approached the study of Afrikaner and African ethnic groupings in this way. But there has been a tendency to take the country's status as a unitary nation-state for granted and to assume, in the words of the Freedom Charter, that the country 'belongs to all who live in it'.

The story of belonging is of course profoundly historical—as well as political— and raises important subsidiary or prior questions: how did understandings of the term 'South Africa' develop? What were considered to be its defining problems? Who laid claim to membership of the national community, and when?

Answers to these questions, which have a fresh contemporary political relevance, demand a thorough engagement with the realm of ideas. They need to be posed over a broad time span and ought to be addressed with reference to a wide range of source material.

This in turn raises problems about what to include or exclude. In a field where many of the institutions and personnel may not be familiar to readers, a balance has to be struck between the need to provide detail, and the desire to maintain the momentum of the argument. Where choices have to be made I have tended to favour the latter imperative.

Fortunately, South African history is rich in biography and there are many useful accounts of institutions to be drawn on. Some of this material is narrowly focused and insufficiency critical, a good deal of it is antiquarian, but without such scholarly work it would have been impossible to undertake a project of this scale. I have also drawn freely on, and revised, my own published work, which is listed in the Bibliography.

In respect of chronology I have sought to cover the greater part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each chapter therefore deals with a roughly equivalent period of time. However, the focus of investigation, the approach, and the material chosen to elucidate the arguments varies considerably.

The second half of the last century is dealt with rather more schematically and speculatively than the earlier sections, and the final chapter is therefore designed as an extended post-script. Its intention is to frame the book's central thrust on 'South Africanism’ rather than to explicate Afrikaner and African nationalist views of scientific knowledge in detail.

South Africanism took many forms and resists easy definition. It may be understood as a version of the patriotic colonial or dominion nationalisms that developed in Australia, New Zealand, or Canada. (In Africa, Algerianism offers interesting parallels.)

It was pre-eminently the expression of a developing settler society, and as such marginalized or denied the rights of indigenous African peoples. Given the fact that whites in South Africa were so much more in the minority than in other comparable settler societies, the pathology of denial was all the more acute.

The paradox is clear when one considers that South Africanism steadfastly disavowed the politics of 'racialism' (the 'colour question' was something else entirely): its proponents professed their commitment to ameliorating tensions between Afrikaners and English-speakers by stressing common bonds of patriotism.

The primary focus of South Africanism was on the country's relationship to the Empire/Commonwealth and in this sense it was international. South Africanism was expressed more as a creed or an ethos than an ideology. Indeed, it purported to be non-ideological, and therefore wrapped itself in the apparently neutral virtues of reason, progress, and civilization. This is why knowledge, and specifically scientific and technical knowledge, was so valued by its adherents.

To understand the reasoning of those responsible for creating knowledge-based institutions is to cast light on their motives and to broaden our understanding of the fabric of power and collective self-belief.

Although South Africanism has attracted some scholarly attention in recent years, it has not been given the attention it deserves. As a centrist tradition designed to hold the ring between imperialism and Afrikaner nationalism, it defined itself as much in terms of what it was not than what it was. Its weakness and ultimate political failure has more or less been taken as a given in many teleological readings of modern South African history.

This book advances a somewhat different view. It maintains that South Africanism, while always an ideology of compromise, was a major - even dominant - political force from the moment of Union to the advent of the Nationalists in 1948. It argues, too, that South Africanism developed out of a prior sense of colonial identity, namely, that which developed in the Cape from the early years of British occupation at the turn of the nineteenth century.

We therefore take the story of South Africanism back to the colonial politics of the nineteenth century and trace its deep foundations in the institutions and associational life of Cape colonial culture, intellect, and politics.

The history of ideas in South Africa remains poorly developed, although it is treated with somewhat less suspicion than was the case just a decade ago. Intellectual history is not by its nature democratic or popular, since it tends to focus on the thoughts and concerns of well-educated, articulate men (and some-times women). In this regard the history of ideas is different from much social or cultural history, which proceeds from the experience of 'ordinary' people. And yet, the difference need not be so much as first appears.

Many cultural and social historians, seeking exemplars from the past to illuminate current political issues, are drawn to the lives of extraordinary, if marginalized or forgotten people, whose views and values marked them out as exceptional or extreme.

This study, by contrast, focuses on the thinking of influential intellectuals who may have been part of a minority by virtue of their access to the world of ideas, but who were otherwise often conservative in their outlook, predisposed towards the politics of the middle-ground, and therefore in their own way quite ordinary. Unlike many intellectual historians, I am not much concerned with original and great ideas or with the analysis of foundational texts.

The focus here is on an intelligentsia whose ideas were frequently derived from elsewhere, and the institutions they built to sustain their authority. My interest is in how ideas were selected and adapted to suit local conditions and contexts. Appraisal of their effectiveness and impact invites a re-examination of key political, social, and ideological themes in South African historiography.

As always in the field of ideas-based history, problems of represenrivity and reception are difficult to address: significance is easier to assert than to demonstrate (though this is surely also the case in most non-quantitative forms of historical explanation).

Not all readers of this book will be sympathetic to, or convinced of, the value of this enterprise, especially those who consider that this is not the appropriate moment to write about white elites in South Africa. I differ from this viewpoint for a number of reasons.

How would European historiography look, for example, if accounts of the aristocracy or the middle class were declared out of bounds? At the very least I hope that readers of this book will be inclined to view key problems in South African and imperial history—new as well as old—from a fresh perspective.

The support of the Leverhuime Trust, which granted me a Fellowship in 1998-9, allowed this project to get under way. The British Academy, which granted me a two-year Readership in 2004-5, gave me the space and time to reacquaint myself with my research and bring the manuscript to conclusion.

Without the support of these two institutions it is difficult to see how this book could have been completed, and I am indebted to those anonymous reviewers and committee members who decided to back my work. The School of Humanities at Sussex University provided additional research funding which allowed me to collect material for the concluding chapter.

I am profoundly grateful to the individuals — and there are rather a lot of them — who, over the course of almost a decade, commented on parts of the evolving manuscript and advised on sources. My Sussex colleagues, Donald Winch and Brian Young, pointed out fruitful directions of research.

Paul Betts commented on large sections of the manuscript, encouraged me to look beyond the familiar, and provided wise counsel. Brian Austin, Andrew Bank, William Beinart, Vivian Bickford-Smith, Jane Carruthers, Elizabeth Green Musselman, Eduard Fagan, Wieland Gevers, Albert Grundlingh, Patrick Harries, Nancy Jacobs, Alan Lester, Russell Martin, Shula Marks, Lance van Sittert, Peter Vale, and Brian Warner answered queries and commented on specific aspects of the manuscript.

Richard Wilson proved as shrewd a critic as he is a generous friend. In Johannesburg, Neil McCarthy was often the first to hear about new discoveries and to indulge (in) my enthusiasms. He also took some of the photographs. The entire manuscript was read byjeremy Krikler and Andrew Thompson, both of whom devoted enormous care and attention to the task. Their detailed commentary and imaginative criticisms have undoubtedly made this a better book.

Most of the research, and certainly the most pleasurable aspects of it, was conducted in South Africa. The professionalism and efficiency of librarians at Rhodes, Cape Town, and Wits universities, as well as the Killie Campbell Library in Durban, is much appreciated. I am particularly grateful to Margaret Northey (Wits Africana); Lesley Hart (UCT manuscripts). Sue Ogterop and Allegra Louw (UCT Africana), and Laureen Rushby (UCT Govt. Publications) for their help and engagement.

Writing this book has, for the most part, been a selfish pursuit as well as a passion. Bryony Mortimer understood this and did much to facilitate the early phases of my project. Two concentrated years of research leave, subject only to the welcome interruptions of my daughters Talitha and Bethany and the enlivening presence and love of Signe Gossmann, made the latter stages of completion most pleasurable.

This book started in Cape Town, which is where I grew up and where my parents, Neville and Rhona, still live. They have always taken the keenest interest in my academic work. This book is for them.


Index:

Adamson, James 39,41,50,51,77
African National Congress 9,123,277
African nationalism 152, 204, 277; also black
consciousness
African Regional Scientific Conference (1949)
247,249,257
African renaissance 270,271,272
African Research Survey 240-1
African studies 4,96,228
Afrikaner Bond 75, 138, 142, 143, 144-5,
152, 160; Bondist tradition 146, 154,
158,162-3,176
Afrikaner nationalism 11, 135, 137-8, 152,
156, 161, 201; and applied science
179—80; attitudes to evolutionism 220,
256, 268; and 'poor whiteism' 218—19;
also apartheid; poor whiteism; science
agriculture 2, 6, 9, 91, 143, 178-9; agricultural
improvement 178—9, 186—7; department
of 179, 180; agricultural societies 76,77,
190
Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns 254—5, 256,
264
Anderson, Benedict 32—3
Anglicanism 141-2
anglicisation 20-1, 23-4, 25, 43, 159
anthropology 58-9, 175, 214, 215,222, 243;
physical anthropology 208-9, 215, 219,
208-9, 271-2; volkekunde 232, 243, 244,
266-7
anri-convict agitation 62-4,87, 129, 136
apartheid 248, 249-50, 251, 252-3, 255,
258-60; and Africa 249,257,261;
modernisation 260, 267, 268; also
Afrikaner nationalism; science
archaeology 105-8,215,216,256
art 78-80, 81-8, 189, 192-3; arts and crafts
190
Associated Scientific and Technical Societies of
South Africa 203
Associarional life vii, 1-2, 28, 40, 71
Astronomy 169,208, 278; also observatories
Atherstone, William Guybon 77, 100, 101,
103-5,107,114
Austin, Brian 253
Australia 56, 60, 62, 64, 86, 134, 161, 242
Bailey, Abe 163
Bain, Andrew Geddes 100-2
Baines, Thomas 77,103
Baker, Herbert 190, 191, 192, 193, 260
Barber, Mary 95, 106
Barkly, Henry 51-2,79,97-8
Barnard, Christiaan 263
Barrow, John 19,20-1,26,53,94
Basalla, George 15
Basson, Wouter 276
Bayly, Christopher 15, 20, 99
Bayly, T. Butterworth 79-80
Beck,J. H. Meiring 143, 162-3, 166,
176, 190
Bell, Charles 78
Bell.Morag 225
Bell, W. H. Somerset 149
Berger, Carl v
Berry, William Bisset 77, 98
Biesheuvel, Simon 253
black consciousness 268, 269, 276, 277; also
African nationalism
Bleek, Wilhelm 66,98, 109
Board of Trade and Industries 203
Bolus, Harry 77,95,182
botanical gardens: Cape Town 38, 53—5, 67,
68, 77, 94; Durban 95; Grahamstown
95; indigenous flora 182—3; Kirstenbosch
6,183-4,184 fn. 89, 190,195
Botanical Society of South Africa 185, 194
botany 88,94-5,208
Botha, Louis 6, 164, 179, 192
Bovet,Pierre 229,230-1
Bowker, Thomas H. 105—6
Bowler, Thomas 52 caption 53, 78, 86-7
Bozzoli, Belinda 200,201,204
Breuil, Henri 215
British Association for the Advancement
of Science 6, 8, 172; visits South Africa
(1905 and 1929) 173-5;181;
210-14
Broom, Robert 208-9,272
Brown, Alfred ('Gogga') 17, 100 fn. 112, 106
Brown, John Croumbie 95
Buchan.John 188,189,190
Buchanan, James 155
Buckland, William 101
Bunn, David 260
Burgers, Thomas 132,133,155
Burkitt, Miles 216,217
Burrow, John 130
Burrows, H. R. 236
Bushmen [see San)Cabora Bassa scheme 261
Canada 15,50,126,131,161,174,242
Cape Colony 1,18; and British imperialism
19-20,22-4,129,144-5;
history of 76,121-2,134-8;
identity 1-2, 34-5, 132; 184-5, 190-2,
195; influence on South Africa 158,
159-60; institutions 18-19, 25-6, 44-5;
70,71, 119-20, 121-2; parliament 71,
74, 78, 140, 143, 153^; population
24—5, 72; responsible government 123,
129, 140; as source of law 149-52; also
law; liberalism
Cape Dutch people 20-1, 24,45-6, 61, 91,
115-17,133
Cape Law Journal 149-50, 150-2; also law
Cape Monthly Magazine 3-4, 56-7, 69, 71,
73-7, 103, 109
Cape Town 1, 18—19, 26 aesthetic
representations 73, 78, 83, 85—6,
88-90
Carlyle, Thomas 66,130
Carnarvon, Lord 125,129,138
Carnegie Commission Report into Poor
Whiteism 7-8,218,219,225-6
Carnegie Corporation of New York 7, 8, 222,
224-5,233,234
Carnegie, Andrew 224
Carruthers,Jane 188,196,197
Caton-Thompson, Gertrude 215
Celliers,JanF.E. 181
Chamberlain, Joseph 160,173
Changuion,A.N.E. 39,74
Chanock, Martin 147
Chase, J.C. 135, 136-7
citizenship 9, 178, 230, 231, 236-7, 274, 278
civil society 3,34-5,39,55,277
Clarke.F.W. 218,224,229,230
Coertze,P.J. 232,243
Coenze,R.D. 232,243
CoetzeeJ.M. 82-3
Cole, Alfred Whaley 74,75,77,148
Cole, George Lowry 38
Colenso, Bishop 66, 132, 138, 141
Colley, Linda 12
colonial nationalism v, 3, 4, 28, 62, 117,
130, 159-60; and anti-convict
movement 62; colonialism 4,118,139,
144-5, 153-6; and loyalism 139,145,
159, 160; 184-5; association with
naturalists 14, 100; also imperialism;
Cape Colony
Commercial Exchange building 36
commonwealth 7, 159, 162, 202, 205, 158;
and white politics 206,211,214
concrete 260, 265
confederation {see Union)
constitution 64, 145, 149; constitutionalism
122, 128, 152; suspension of in Cape
159-60
Cook, P. A. W. 224,225
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
(CSIR) 242,243,244,245-6,253^,
267,273
culture: colonial 30, 63, 71-2, 73^, 76;
South African 163^4
Curtis, Lionel 176,177
D'Urban, Benjamin 43
Dale, Langham 51, 77, 98-9, 115
dams 258-9,260-1
Dart, Raymond 209,215-16,272
Darwin, Charles 37-8,42, 83, 104, 209
Darwin, George 181
Darwinism 97—8; social Darwinism 110—13,
134, 136; also evolutionism; racism
Davenport, T. R. H. 160
De Kiewiet, C. K. 11
De la Beche,H. 99,102
De Smidt, Abraham 78,80
DeVilliers,J. H. 77, 117, 142, 146-7, 148-9,
190, 198
DeWaalH.L. 258
DeWaal, Frederic 160
De Zuid-Afrikaan 27,45,46,116
Deweyjohn 223,229
Dilke, Charles 126
Dooling, Wayne 23
Doyle, Arthur Conan 177
Drayton, Richard 15-16,53
DuTok,Andre 47,62
DuToit,H.S. 179-80,223
DuToit.S.J. 135,137,156
Duncan, Patrick 177,226
Dunn,E.J. 17,108
Dutch Reformed Church 30, 36, 46, 139, 143,
220,226
Eastern Province Monthly Magazine 102, 103,
111
Ebden, John Bardwell 62
economy 24-5,60-1,139,203-4
Edgerton, David 241
Edinburgh Review 32,75,118
Eiselen,Werner 232,253
Electricity Supply Commission (Escom, later
Eskom) 204,238^0,251,271
Ensor, Beatrice 229,230
eugenics 157, 176-7, 188, 225; also Darwin,
racism
Eustace, J.T. 155
evolutionism 96,98-9, 101, 104-5, 108, 119,
209—10; Afrikaner nationalist resistance to
220, 268
Fairbairn,John 27, 30^i, 36,43, 75, 136
institutional links 40, 41,44, 51; politics
28,48,62
Fairbridge, Charles Aken 55,56,185
Fairbridge, Dorothea 184—5
Fallows, Fearon 26, 38
Faure, Abraham 31, 33, 39, 46
Fick,M.L. 229
first world war 7, 13, 164, 187, 202, 203-4,
223,245
FitzPatrick, Percy 186-7, 201, 258
fossils 101, 104,271-2
Foster, Jeremy 181-2
Franklin, Benjamin 32—3
FrereSirBartle 112-13, 132, 133, 138, 141,
154,159
Froude,J.A. 4,66, 115, 134, 156, 177; visits
South Africa 125—6; views on South
Africa 126-31
Fuller, Thomas 84-6
Gamble, J.S. 182
geodetic survey 171,172,196
Geological Society of London 96,101
geology 96,99-100, 101-4, 106, 118-19,208
Giliomee, Hermann 45-6,47, 144
Gill, David 26, 169, 171-3
Gitay, Yehoshua 275
Goldblatt, David 260
Goodwin,A.J.H. 216,217
Grahamstown 27, 55, 101, 122, 139
Greig,John 27,31,44-5
Greswell, William 156
Grey Sir George 43, 55, 57, 64-70, 112, 122
Gunning,}. W. B. 168, 197
Haddon, Alfred Court 58,175,208
Haggard, Henry Rider 125, 133
Harvey, William 95
Hawthorne, Peter 263
heart transplantation 263, 264
Herscheljohn 41,42-3, 50, 56, 102
Herschel, Margaret 41,43
Henzog,J. B. M. 7, 199, 201, 210; and South
Africanism 205
HIV/AIDS 273,274-5
Hofmeyr,Jan 212, 213, 220, 231, and
National Research Council 234, 235, 238
HofmeyrJ. H. ('Onzejan') 8,74, 142, 143,
144,160
Holland, Thomas 211,213-14
Hoodia gordonii 272
Human Sciences Research Council 244
Huxley, T. H. 101,104
imperialism 121, 158-60, 174, 187, 189 and
colonialism 122, 139, 153, 161-2
India 248,258
Industrial Development Corporation 237
industrialisation 204, 213, 223, 228; and
planning 237-8,245-6
Innes, James Rose 39, 142, 145, 146, 150-1,
162
Innes, R.T.A. 196
intellectuals 14-15,76-7,134-5,163^
Iron and Steel Corporation (Iscor) 204, 251
Jameson, L. S. 159, 160, 187
Jansen, Jonathan D. 269
Jardine, Alexander Johnstone 44, 45,49
Jebb, Richard 161-2
Jock of the BushveU 186, 211
Johannesburg Art Gallery 192
Jones, J. D. Rheinallt 164,228
Juta.J.C. 162
Karoo 61,92-3, 102, 115, 181-2; also veld;
landscape
Keegan, Timothy 27—8
Keiskammahoek Rural Survey 243
Keppel, Frederick 224-5, 226, 234
Kerr, Philip 163-4,181
Kew Gardens 54, 183
Kidd, Dudley 178
Kipling, Rudyard 176,191
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden see
botanical gardens
Knowledge: about Africans 4, 37, 58, 135-6,
112, 231,232; circulation of 15,16,
71-2, 99-100, 117-18; colonial 4,
12-14, 99-100, 112, 117-19; imperial
14, 112-13, \75-A, 225; indigenous 14,
270-1, 272; and nationalism 264-7; and
power 10-14, 113, 229, 269; and South
Africanism 228, 233,234; state-funded
204, 222, 227-8, 235-6, 238; universality
of 17, 231; [also science, universities)
Kotze J.G. 74,150
Kruger National Park 6,187
Kruger, Paul 137, 150, 168, 192
Lagden, Godfrey 175
landscape 82, 89, 91^4; north and south
contrasted 184-8; railways 181-2 also
Karoo; veld
Lane, Hugh 192
Langalibalele 125, 132
Langenhoven, C. J. 201,221
language 82, 98, 104, 253; Afrikaans 116,
117, 254, 255, 256; also philology
law 3, 24, 75; Roman-Dutch ('Cape') law
122, 145-52; circuit courts 148
Layard, Edgar Leopold 55,56-7,197
Lehfeldt,R.A. 203
Leipoldt, Louis 231
Lester,Alan 16,27
Leyds,W.J. 168
liberalism 9-10, 23, 27, 62, 193, 277; Cape
liberalism 27-8, 34-5, 122, 129, 139,
142-3; 154; defence of franchise 163; and
humanitarians 27,137
Lloyd, Lucy 109
Loram,C.T. 225
loyalism (see colonial nationalism)
Lubbock,John 106
Lyell, Charles 101
Maclear, Thomas 26, 41, 42, 56, 68, 169
Macmillan, W. M. 11, 138
MacOwen, Peter 182
Maeterlinck, Maurice 217
Makgoba, Malegapuru 274
Malan.D.F. 214 fig. 8, 247, 248, 254
Malan,RS. 163,164,226
Malherbe, E. G. 218-19, 222-3, 224, 227,
250, 253; and Bureau of Education 222;
poor white commission 225; educational
and social research 231, 232, 233
Marais, Eugene 217
Marloth, Rudolph 182,183,190
Marquard, Leo 251
Martin, ED. 57,107
Mbeki, Thabo 270, 273, 274-5, 277, 278
McKenzie, Kirsten 16, 31, 64
mechanics' institutes 49 fn.124, 50, 74, 97
Medical Research Institute 194,243
medical societies 165,166—7,194
Merriman, John X. 129, 142, 146, 160, 164,
190; castigates Froude 130;
opposes Milner 159; on national
university 198
Merrington, Peter 164
Michaelis, Max 192-3
middle class 34-5, 36, 48, 53, 60,73, 91 also
respectability
militarism 258, 262-3, 276
Millikan, R. A. 238
Millin, Sarah Gertrude 186
Milner, Alfred 20, 173, 187; as 'British race
patriot' 176;'kindergarten' 161,163,
176, 177, 181, 188, 190; attempts to
suspend Cape parliament 153,159
Molteno, John Charles 129, 130, 132, 153,
159; conflictwith Frere 113, 140
Montagu, John 61
Mosimege, Mogege 270
Murchison, Roderick 99
Murray, Rev. J. 115-16
museums 167—8,195(a&oSouthAfrican
Museum)
Musselman, Elizabeth Green 42
National Bureau of Education 222
National Bureau of Educational and Social
Research 27-8,231-2,233
National Council for Social Research 206, 243,
244,253
National Institute of Personnel Research 237
National Research Council and Board 8, 9,
234,235-6,243
National Society for Preservation of Objects of
Historical Interest 185
'native question 134, 164, 176, 177-8,
219-20
natural theology 96, 97
Naude, Stefan Meiring 253^, 257
New Education Fellowship 228—31
New Zealand 65, 66, 134, 161, 242
newspapers 72, 75
Noble, John 74-5,77,135
Noble, Roderick 74, 97, 107, 109, 146
nuclear energy 251, 261-2; atomic bomb
245-6
observatories 25-6,41,44, 174, 195-6
Olivier, Henry 260, 261
Onderstepoort Veterinary Research Institute
180,243,254
Orange River Project 259-60; see also dams
ornithology 194, 196, 196-7
Orpen, Joseph M. 17, 109
Owen, Richard 55,99, 101
paleontology 100,104,118-19,208-9
Pappe, Ludwig 54,56,94,95
parliament see Cape Colony
Pearson, Harold 183
Peringuey Louis 59,208
Philip, John 27,41,42
Phillips, Florence 189,190,192
Phillips, Lionel 163, 189-90
philology 108— 9; also language
physical anthropology see anthropology
Piers, Henry 103, 107
Pirn, Howard 176
PocockJ.G.A. 16
Pole-Evans, I. B. 195,236
political parties 139, 143, 205; National Party
205, 249; South African Party 160,205;
United Party 205,206,230,241
poorwhheism 164, 218-19, 222, 226-7
Porter, William 47-8, 51, 64, 77, 98, 146
Posel, Deborah 267-8
Preller, Gustav 217
Priestley, Joseph 70
Pringle, Thomas 27,29-30,31^, 136, 188;
poet 29, 81,93; and public bodies 41,49
progress 24, 29, 66; colonial 60, 70, 71; as
ideology 73, 117,178-9
progressivism 145, 159-60, 165, 185-6; in
Transvaal 187; in United States 179
racism 108,110-11,112-13,216,248,256;
towards'boers' 21, 104, 113-17, 128,
176-7; towards blacks 111-12, 229; also
eugenics
railways see transport
rand revolt 204
regionalism 6, 73, 155, 161; eastern Cape
103, 126, 136, 139, 140; north and south
193-200; separatism 152
Reitz.Deneys 187
Reitz,F.W. 138,167
republics (boer) 123, 126, 149, 150-1;
republicanism 153, 167—8
Research Grants Board 204, 228, 232, 233,
234,244
respectability 2, 12, 48, 63—^ also middle class
Reunert, Theodore 168
Rhodes Trust 163,210
Rhodes, Cecil John 138, 143-4, 159, 160,
185,191-2
Robb,Lindsay 243
Roberts, Austin 216
Robins, Steven 274
Robinson, Hercules 153
rock art 106, 109-10
Ross, Louisa Grace 87—90
Ross,W.H. 77,90
Roux, A. J. A. (Ample) 255, 262
Royal Society 112,250
Royal Society of South Africa 112, 119-20,
168,169-70,175
Rubidge, R. N. 77, 100, 102
Rutherford, Ernest 211
San 59,106, 109-10,112,270,272-3
Sauer.J.W. 143,144,146,190
Schonland, Basil 241-2, 245-6, 247, 250,
256; and Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research (CSIR) 253^
Schonland, Selmar 182
Schreiner, Olive 11, 65, 157, 177 fn. 62
Schreiner,W. P. 74, 143, 145, 162, 163
science 13, 34, 75, 94, 96; Afrikaner
nationalism and 9, 253, 254—5, 264; and
apartheid 255, 256, 257-63; applied
179-81, 201, 228, 242; imperial 30, 42,
113, 240-1; institutions 3, 25, 38,40, 44,
278; and planning 9,236-7,240,241,
244—5; race 59, 176; scientific exploration
36-7,42; scientific reform 43, 170;
societies 2, 33-4, 165, 168; 194, 203;
'South Africanisation' of 8, 13, 212; state-
sponsorship of 7, 8, 233^, 237, 240; as
unifying agency 170,173-4,219;
universalism of 6, 8, 178, 248; western
14, 15, 99, 249, 275; also African
renaissance; racism; asunder individual
disciplines—e.g. astronomy
Scientific Council for Africa South of the Sahara
257
Scots 29-30,45,188-9
Scott, Walter 29, 188
second world war 9, 12, 235, 237, 241, 242,
245
Seeley,J.R. 126
segregation 163, 176, 177, 178, 210; in
education 230
Selbome Memorandum (1907) 176, 181
Sharpeville massacre 258
Simons, H.J. 258-9
slavery 25,42,88
Smith, Andrew 36-7, 38-9, 56, 57
Smith, Harry 51,64,72
Smuts, J. C. 7, 8, 145, 164, 187; and South
Africanism 205, 213,228, 247; as
champion of science 207-10, 238, 240,
241; and industrial planning 250; post-
war legacy 248,250
Social and Economic Planning Council 237
social sciences 7, 8, 221—2, 266—7 see also
anthropology, sociology
sociology 221, 222, 225, 226, 240 see also
anthropology, social sciences
Soga, Tiyo 111
Solomon, J.M. 193
Solomon, Saul 129-30,131,142,143
Somerset, Charles 22-3,31,33,35
South African Association for the Advancement
of Science (S2A3) 6, 8, 168-70; 210, 256;
addressed by Smuts 207—9; and second
world war 237
South African Bureau of Standards 237
South African College 39,44, 55, 56, 74
South African Commercial Advertiser 27, 30—1,
36,39
South African Council for Educational and
Social Research 227 fn. 88, 234, 243 also
National Council of Educational and
Social Research
South African Fine Arts Association also South
African National Gallery
South African Historical Society 164, 165,
266
South African Institute of Race Relations 228
South African Institution 38,41, 44
South African Journal 31, 33,44, 76
South African Library 35-6, 44-5,47-52,
66-7, 77, 98; reading 71-3
South African Literary and Scientific Institution
37,40-1
South African Literary Society 34, 35, 39-40
South African Medical Association see medical
societies
South African Medical Journal 166
South African Museum 3, 36-7, 38, 44,
55-60, 67, 77, 103 (also museums)
South African National Gallery 78-80, 193
South African Philosophical Society (see Royal
Society of South Africa)
South African Quarterly 164
South African Quarterly Institution 38
South African Union 190
South African War 4,7, 12, 153, 158-9,
187-8
South Africanism vi-viii, 5-6, 7, 11-12, 95,
124, 157; and architecture 190-1; British
192, 201; concept of South Africa 119,
122-4; and closer union 162-5, 193^;
firstusesof 155, 162; as response to South
African War 158-62; as response to first
world war 205; rooted in soil 188-90;
internationalism 230, 248; nationhood
and 183^, 200-1; also colonialism;
knowledge; technology
Soweto uprising 268
Sprigg,J.G. 140, 159
state 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 158; centralisation of
203-4; church and 142, 143, 264-5;
colonial 43, 63, 147, 148; corporations
249, 251, 262, 271; planning 235-8
Statham, F. R. 135, 138-9, 142, 154
statistics 203,221,222,228
Stevenson-Hamilton, James 187-8
Stow, George W. 77, 100, 109 fn. 153
Table Mountain 6, 19, 84-6, 88, 89, 95; and
Union 183,185
technology 9, 178, 180-2, 201, 223, 241, 270;
also science
The State 163-4
Theal, G. M. 77,123, 135-6,165
theatre 18,40,46
Theiler, Arnold 180
Thompson, Andrew 139,161
time 26, 114, 172; geological 96,99, 104,
105-8
Tobias, Phillip 271,272
transport 46, 60-1, 91-2, 93; railways 180-2;
roads 61,91,101,194
Transvaal 127, 142, 185-6, 190, 195, 196-7;
annexation of 121, 124, 125, 133, 137,
138; law in 149, 150,156,
Transvaal Museum 168,197,216
Trimen, Roland 57
Trollope Anthony 4, 65, 89; views on South
Africa 131-4
Truter, Johannes Andries (Sir John) 39, 41,
146
Union 170, 193, 194, 198, 200; closer union
161,162-3,164,176,177,180;
confederation 67, 125, 126-7, 129, 144,
150
United States of America 179, 183, 201, 238,
242; internationalism 223, 224, 225,
230,
universities 7-8,9; 198-200,206,211-12,221,
264-6; Cape of Good Hope (later South
Africa) 71,77,98 fn. 103,197-9,233;
Cape Town (see also South African College)
39,199, 211-12,263, 264; Stellenbosch
180,222,227,232,238,250,267;
Witwatersrand 228,241, 254,264; Port
Elizabeth 265; Rand Afrikaans 265-6
Van der Biji, Hendrik 204, 228, 237-40, 250
Van der Lingen, G. W. A. 46
VanEck.H.J. 237,240,250-2,261
Van Hoepen, E. C. N. 196,217,255
VanJaarsveld,EA. 137
VanRiebeeck,Jan 67,185,255-6
Van Riet Lowe, Clarence (Peter) 216, 217
Vanderbijipark 240
veld 186, 188; also landscape. Karoo
Vereniging vir Wetenskap and Wysbegeerte
255
Verreaux,Jules 37,38
Verwoerd, H. E 227, 232, 251, 258, 267; dam
259
veterinary science 167, 179, 180, 201, 213; also
Onderstepoort
Villet,C.M. 37
virodene 273
volkekunde see anthropology
Von Dessin, Nicholas 36,55,67,78
Von Ludwig, Carl 37, 39, 54-5
Vorster, B. J. 259, 261, 262-3
Walker, E. A. 60, 149, 165, 199-200
Warner, Brian 169
Wegener hypothesis 207—8
Wilmot, Alexander 135,136-7,138
Witz, Leslie 256
women 52,53,80,90,95,114,158
Wynne, Arnold 164
Xhosa 42,121,135, 140
Young, R.B. 234
Zulu War (1879) 112,121,129,142