The Cambridge History of South Africa [Hardcover]

An important reassessment of South Africa's history and a significant new tool for students and academics of African history worldwide.Reflecting on South Africa's achievement of majority rule, this book takes a critical and searching look at the countrys past. The books chapters, by ten of the best historians of South Africa, represent a reassessment of the major historical events, developments, and records of South Africa and will be an important new tool for students and professors of African history worldwide.Reflecting on South Africa's achievement of majority rule, this book takes a critical and searching look at the countrys past. The books chapters, by ten of the best historians of South Africa, represent a reassessment of the major historical events, developments, and records of South Africa and will be an important new tool for students and professors of African history worldwide.Reflecting on South Africa's achievement of majority rule, this book takes a critical and searching look at the countrys past. It presents South Africas past in an objective, clear, and refreshing manner. With chapters contributed by ten of the best historians of the country, the book elaborately weaves together new data, interpretations, and perspectives on the South African past, from the Early Iron Age to the eve of the mineral revolution on the Rand. Its findings incorporate new sources, methods, and concepts, for example providing new data on the relations between Africans and colonial invaders and rethinking crucial issues of identity and consciousness. This book represents an important reassessment of all the major historical events, developments, and records of South Africa  written, oral, and archaeological  and will be an important new tool for students and professors of African history worldwide.Introduction Robert Ross, Carolyn Hamilton and Bernard Mbenga; 1. Food production in Southern Africa 1000 to 2000 years ago John Parkington and Simon Hall; 2. Farming colÓ&