Norman Etherington
Biographic Data
| ID | 77376 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Norman Etherington |
| GIVEN NAMES | Norman |
| FAMILY NAME | Etherington |
| SIGNATURE | ETHERINGTON N |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Western Australia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9764-9361 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 73 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 192 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 72 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Writing David Livingstone Back into South African History
Very little of the vast literature on David Livingstone treats his decade as a missionary in South Africa, focusing instead on his later expeditions to central Africa. Described as a failed missionary who gave up evangelism for exploring, he came under fire in the second half of the 20th century for leading European imperialism in Africa. A deeper look into Livingstone’s mission experience from 1841 to 1857 shows that his highly original writing …
Southern Africa
A new general history of southern Africa is a rarity. There are many histories of South Africa but not of southern Africa. In 1957 Eric Walker changed the title of the third edition of his History
Land, Migration and Belonging
Land, Migration and Belonging: A History of the Basotho in Southern Rhodesia, c. 1890s–1960s." Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines, 54(2), pp. 350–351
Race and Redemption
Jane Samson brings together a great deal of important material gathered over twenty-five years of productive research. Her publisher has done her no favours with the title. There is little in this book about race, redemption or missionary encounters with Pacific peoples on the ground. The actual subject is the contribution of British protestant missionaries to the ethnography of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australasia and Oceania. A s…
Putting the Mfecane Controversy into Historiographical Context
Colonial Panics Big and Small in the British Empire (1865–1907)
In memoriam
Patrick Harries passed away in June 2016. This short contribution reviews his contribution to the study of missions and missionaries
Exploration and empire
All empires develop a worldview embracing the horizons of their actual and aspirational power. Exploration generally involved efforts to push these horizons further outwards, sometimes through the enterprising journeys of traders, travelers, and geographers interested in what lay beyond their immediate world, and of the military in search of further conquests. Exploration is a characteristic of the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Asian worlds …
Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal
The Great Treks
The mass migration of the Boer farmers from Cape Colony to escape British domination in 1835-36 - the Great Trek - has always been a potent icon of Africaaner nationalism and identity. For African nationalists, the Mfecane - the vast movement of the Black populations in the interior following the emergence of a new Zulu kingdom as a major military force in the early 19th century - offers an equally powerful symbol of the making of a nation. With …
David M. Gordon. Invisible Agents
In 1991, following the general election that turned out Zambia's long-serving president, Kenneth Kaunda, the incoming administration of Frederick Chiluba dispatched a minister without portfolio and four evangelists to cleanse State House of evil spirits. About the same time Chiluba officially proclaimed Zambia to be a Christian nation. Explaining why a self-consciously modernizing state should engage in such acts means taking unseen spiritual for…
Missions and Empire Revisited
In the five years that have passed since the publication of Missions and Empire a wide range of scholarly reviewers have extensively discussed the book's merits, defects and omissions. Their diverse opinions provide a guide to the state of current research on the topic and suggest new directions for exploration by the next generation of historians
Barbarians Ancient and Modern
TWO NOTEWORTHY HISTORICAL CONTROVERSIES have proceeded in parallel fashion since the early 1980s without the protagonists in either debate being aware of the other. One concerns warfare and migration among early-nineteenth-century African societies and their contribution to the ethnic divisions that flowered under South Africa’s apartheid regime. The other concerns the role of external barbarians and their migrations in the fall of the Western Ro…
Grappling with the Beast
This volume contributes rich, new material to provide insights into indigenous responses to the colonial empires of Great Britain (South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia)) and Germany (Namibia) and explore the complex intellectual, cultural, literary, and political borders and identities that emerged across these spaces. Contributors include distinguished global scholars in the field as well as exciting young scholars. The essays l…
Historians, Archaeologists and the Legacy of the Discredited Short Iron-Age Chronology
Investigation of the history of states and societies in South Africa prior to the seventeenth century has been impeded by the different pathways of research pursued by historians and archaeologists since the late 1970s. While precolonial historical research remained unconsciously in thrall to a short chronology for the establishment of Iron-Age societies south of the Limpopo and concentrated on developments in the eighteenth and early nineteenth …
The Cambridge History of South Africa
Coming fifteen years after South Africa's achievement of majority rule, this book takes a critical and searching look at the country's past. It presents South Africa's 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 …
Missions and Empire
The explosive expansion of Christianity in Africa and Asia during the last two centuries constitutes one of the most remarkable cultural transformations in the history of mankind. Because it coincided with the spread of European economic and political hegemony, it tends to be taken for granted that Christian missions went hand in hand with imperialism and colonial conquest. In this book historians survey the relationship between Christian mission…
Missions and Empire (Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series)
Encyclopedia of Mission and Missionaries
286 Book Reviews / Social Sciences and Missions 21 (2008) 279–286 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI 10.1163/187489408X342345 Jonathan J. Bonk (ed.), Encyclopedia of Mission and Missionaries. New York and London: Routledge, 2007, xviii + 473 pp., Hdbk: £95.00/$190.00, ISBN 978-0-415-96948-2. Th e current unprecedented explosion in the production of printed encyclopedias defi es explana- tion. In the internet age how can publishers hope to c…
Is a Reorientation of South African History a Lost Cause
After reflecting on the mixed reception accorded to his book, The Great Treks, the author points to the many obstacles that stand in the way of dismantling the customary perspective from which South African history has been written from the late nineteenth to the turn of the twenty-first century. A fundamental reorientation is still needed to free the next generation of scholars and students from narrative templates that have outlived their usefu…
The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700
Journey into Africa
Journey into Africa: The Life and Death of Keith Johnston, Scottish Cartographer and Explorer." Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 40(3), pp. 123–124
Were There Large States in the Coastal Regions of Southeast Africa Before the Rise of the Zulu Kingdom
The Zulu kingdom holds a special place in both popular culture and historical scholarship. Zulu—a famous name, easy to spell and pronounce—is as recognizably American as gangster rap. The website of the “Universal Zulu Nation” ( www.hiphopcity.com/zulu_nation/ ) explains that as “strong believers in the culture of hiphop, we as Zulus ... will strive to do our best to uplift ourselves first, then show others how to uplift themselves mentally, spir…
A False Emptiness
Long-standing historical debates on the alleged depopulation of parts of south-eastern Africain the period between 1820 and 1835 may well have been affected by the use of pre-1850 maps, publishedbefore scientific surveys of the interior had been conducted. Much of the geographical and demographicinformation inscribed on the early maps was obtained from accounts of missionaries and casual travellersrather than from surveys. All the maps produced d…
A Tempest in a Teapot? Nineteenth-Century Contests for Land in South Africa's Caledon Valley and the Invention of the Mfecane
The unresolved debate on the mfecane in southern African history has been marked by general acceptance of the proposition that large-scale loss of life and disruption of settled society was experienced across the whole region. Attempts to quantify either the violence or mortality have been stymied by a lack of evidence. What apparently reliable evidence does exist describes small districts, most notably the Caledon Valley. In contrast to Julian C…
Missions and Empire
Introduction 1. Prelude: The Christianizing of British America 2. Missionaries and Empire: An Overview 1700-1914 3. Humanitarians and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century 4. Where the Missionary Frontier Ran Ahead of Empire 5. Christian Missions and the Raj 6. New Christians as Evangelists 7. 'Trained to Tell the Truth': Missionaries, Converts, and Narration 8. Women and Cultural Exchanges 9. Language 10. New Religious Movements 11. Anthropol…
Labour Supply and the Genesis of South African Confederation in the 1870s
Lord Carnarvon's scheme for a South African Confederation in the 1870s owed much more than has been generally recognized to influences emanating from Natal. Large employers of African labour recognized in the 1860s that the local population could not provide a cheap stable workforce and that immigrant workers from the African interior would be increasingly important to the prosperity of the colony. Theophilus Shepstone, Natal's Secretary for Nati…
The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700
African Historiography
This is a tribute to Jacob Ade Ajayi, examining the four main areas he has addressed during his career: the importance of oral tradition as a historical source, Yoruba and West African studies, missionaries, and the historian's approach to the subject, focusing on the Ibadan school
Natal's black rape scare of the 1870s
For about four years at the end of the 1860s the white population of Natal was gripped by fear of black rape. The fear does not appear to have been engendered by any specific event, nor did it result in a marked increase of prosecutions for rape in the colonial courts. It ended as abruptly and mysteriously as it had begun. Stanley Cohen's theory of 'moral panics' does not offer a particularly appropriate explanation for this rape scare, but it do…
Theories of Imperialism
A Tempest in a Teapot? Nineteenth-Century Contests for Land in South Africa's Caledon Valley and the Invention of the Mfecane
The unresolved debate on the mfecane in southern African history has been marked by general acceptance of the proposition that large-scale loss of life and disruption of settled society was experienced across the whole region. Attempts to quantify either the violence or mortality have been stymied by a lack of evidence. What apparently reliable evidence does exist describes small districts, most notably the Caledon Valley. In contrast to Julian C…
Recent trends in the historiography of Christianity in Southern Africa
During the last decade there has been a notable upsurge in publications about religion in African history. The trend is also noticeable in writing specifically concerned with Southern Africa though it is not spread evenly across regions and disciplines. Male writers with religious connections still predominate. There have been some important studies of mission Christianity and African evangelism, although inordinate attention is still paid to nin…
Missionaries and the Intellectual History of Africa
Historical studies of Christian missionaries in Africa have not prospered in recent years. The Journal of African History , which printed six articles on missionaries during the first ten years of its existence, has only printed two articles on the subject in the course of the last ten years. Only one book on missionaries has been published by a major university press in Britain or America since 1972. Very occasionally articles about missionaries…
A False Emptiness
Long-standing historical debates on the alleged depopulation of parts of south-eastern Africain the period between 1820 and 1835 may well have been affected by the use of pre-1850 maps, publishedbefore scientific surveys of the interior had been conducted. Much of the geographical and demographicinformation inscribed on the early maps was obtained from accounts of missionaries and casual travellersrather than from surveys. All the maps produced d…
The Great Trek in Relation to the Mfecane
(1991). The Great Trek in Relation to the Mfecane: A Reassessment. South African Historical Journal: Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 3-21
The capitalist theory of capitalist imperialism
Research Article| March 01 1983 The capitalist theory of capitalist imperialism Norman Etherington Norman Etherington 1 Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1983) 15 (1): 38–62. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-15-1-38 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Norman Etherington; The capitalist theory of capitalist imperialism. History of P…
Social Theory and the Study of Christian Missions in Africa
Opening ParagraphChristian missions in Africa have produced mountains of publications which, despite their collective mass often escape notice in the wider landscape of African studies. Some of the reasons for scholarly neglect are readily apparent. A secular age is inclined to under-rate the impact of religious forces born in another era; an anti-imperialist generation of scholars is repulsed by the generally unabashed cultural imperialism of ni…
The Great Treks
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Outward and Visible Signs of Conversion in Nineteenth-Century Kwazulu-Natal
The article argues that the perpetually vexing question of identifying and verifying religious conversion in mission history can be approached by taking outward texts and signs more seriously. The examples chosen for study are the various missions active in KwaZulu-Natal in the period 1835-1885. Over time African evangelists and churchgoers responded to missionary injunctions to value the materiality of printed texts and to 'put on the raiment of…
Missionary Doctors and African Healers in Mid-Victorian South Africa
Reconsidering Theories of Imperialism
A decade ago Eric Stokes argued persuasively that to test theories of economic by close historical study of colonial expansion in late nineteenth century was a fundamental mistake.1 Lenin's theory, in particular, explicitly excluded period before 1900. Along with fellow Marxists Nikolai Bukharin and Rudolf Hilferding, Lenin was concerned primarily to analyze economic forces that underlay Great Power rivalries and warfare in twentieth century. Thi…
The Historical Sociology of Independent Churches in South East Africa
THE HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY OF INDEPENDENT CHURCHES IN SOUTH EAST AFRICA BY N. A. ETHERINGTON (University of Adelaide, Australia) Three decades ago Bengt Sundkler produced the standard work on independent churches in South Africa. More refined work has since been done on similar movements elsewhere in Africa, but in South Africa Sundkler has only been bettered by Sundkler. 1 This essay examines Sundkler's classifications of "Ethiopian" and "Zionist"…
Historians, Archaeologists and the Legacy of the Discredited Short Iron-Age Chronology
Investigation of the history of states and societies in South Africa prior to the seventeenth century has been impeded by the different pathways of research pursued by historians and archaeologists since the late 1970s. While precolonial historical research remained unconsciously in thrall to a short chronology for the establishment of Iron-Age societies south of the Limpopo and concentrated on developments in the eighteenth and early nineteenth …
Were There Large States in the Coastal Regions of Southeast Africa Before the Rise of the Zulu Kingdom
The Zulu kingdom holds a special place in both popular culture and historical scholarship. Zulu—a famous name, easy to spell and pronounce—is as recognizably American as gangster rap. The website of the “Universal Zulu Nation” ( www.hiphopcity.com/zulu_nation/ ) explains that as “strong believers in the culture of hiphop, we as Zulus ... will strive to do our best to uplift ourselves first, then show others how to uplift themselves mentally, spir…
The Aftermath of the Aftermath
African Economic Experiments in Colonial Natal 1845-1880
Recent investigations of African economic life in the nineteenth-century Cape Colony have opened the way for the destruction of much conventional wisdom concerning the course of South African development.1 The emerging story of the rise and fall of black peasant communities challenges the deeply entrenched belief that Africans were hide-bound traditionalists slow to adapt to a dynamic settler economy which they neither liked nor understood--that …
Mission Station Melting Pots as a Factor in the Rise of South African Black Nationalism
Since the publication of Roland Oliver's The Missionary Factor in East Africa in 1952, secular historians have built up an impressive library of case studies on the impact of Christianity in Africa, a literature which pays tribute not only to the richness of missionary sources but also to their special usefulness. Insofar as the social history of Africa before 1900 can be written at all from documents, it must be based largely on the missionary r…
Missions and Empire Revisited
In the five years that have passed since the publication of Missions and Empire a wide range of scholarly reviewers have extensively discussed the book's merits, defects and omissions. Their diverse opinions provide a guide to the state of current research on the topic and suggest new directions for exploration by the next generation of historians
Is a Reorientation of South African History a Lost Cause
After reflecting on the mixed reception accorded to his book, The Great Treks, the author points to the many obstacles that stand in the way of dismantling the customary perspective from which South African history has been written from the late nineteenth to the turn of the twenty-first century. A fundamental reorientation is still needed to free the next generation of scholars and students from narrative templates that have outlived their usefu…
An American Errand into the South African Wilderness
The flowering of foreign missions in nineteenth-century America owed so much to evangelical Protestantism in Europe, that historians looking for uniquely American features in missionary enterprises have had very little to go on. Historians who have attempted to identify the uniqueness of American missions have generally seized upon the links between the missionary spirit and ideas of manifest destiny. Ralph Gabriel taught a generation of historia…
Theories of Empire and Modern American Imperialism
Mission Station Melting Pots as a Factor in the Rise of South African Black Nationalism
Since the publication of Roland Oliver's The Missionary Factor in East Africa in 1952, secular historians have built up an impressive library of case studies on the impact of Christianity in Africa, a literature which pays tribute not only to the richness of missionary sources but also to their special usefulness. Insofar as the social history of Africa before 1900 can be written at all from documents, it must be based largely on the missionary r…
Social Theory and the Study of Christian Missions in Africa
Opening ParagraphChristian missions in Africa have produced mountains of publications which, despite their collective mass often escape notice in the wider landscape of African studies. Some of the reasons for scholarly neglect are readily apparent. A secular age is inclined to under-rate the impact of religious forces born in another era; an anti-imperialist generation of scholars is repulsed by the generally unabashed cultural imperialism of ni…
African Economic Experiments in Colonial Natal 1845-1880
Recent investigations of African economic life in the nineteenth-century Cape Colony have opened the way for the destruction of much conventional wisdom concerning the course of South African development.1 The emerging story of the rise and fall of black peasant communities challenges the deeply entrenched belief that Africans were hide-bound traditionalists slow to adapt to a dynamic settler economy which they neither liked nor understood--that …
African History
Preachers, Peasants and Politics in Southeast Africa, 1835-1880. African Christian Communities in Natal, Pondoland and Zululand
This study focuses on the response to Christianity in southeast Africa - which witnessed the greatest missionary activity -and seeks to answer a few simple questions. Why did some Africans choose Christianity? Why did most Africans reject it? What kinds of people went to live at mission stations? How did life in African Christian communities differ from life in heathen communities? These and other issues are addressed through a comparative biogra…
Labour Supply and the Genesis of South African Confederation in the 1870s
Lord Carnarvon's scheme for a South African Confederation in the 1870s owed much more than has been generally recognized to influences emanating from Natal. Large employers of African labour recognized in the 1860s that the local population could not provide a cheap stable workforce and that immigrant workers from the African interior would be increasingly important to the prosperity of the colony. Theophilus Shepstone, Natal's Secretary for Nati…
The Historical Sociology of Independent Churches in South East Africa
THE HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY OF INDEPENDENT CHURCHES IN SOUTH EAST AFRICA BY N. A. ETHERINGTON (University of Adelaide, Australia) Three decades ago Bengt Sundkler produced the standard work on independent churches in South Africa. More refined work has since been done on similar movements elsewhere in Africa, but in South Africa Sundkler has only been bettered by Sundkler. 1 This essay examines Sundkler's classifications of "Ethiopian" and "Zionist"…
Frederic Elton and the South African factor in the making of Britain's East African empire
Preachers, Peasants and Politics in Southeast Africa, 1835-1880
Reconsidering Theories of Imperialism
A decade ago Eric Stokes argued persuasively that to test theories of economic by close historical study of colonial expansion in late nineteenth century was a fundamental mistake.1 Lenin's theory, in particular, explicitly excluded period before 1900. Along with fellow Marxists Nikolai Bukharin and Rudolf Hilferding, Lenin was concerned primarily to analyze economic forces that underlay Great Power rivalries and warfare in twentieth century. Thi…
Missionaries and the Intellectual History of Africa
Historical studies of Christian missionaries in Africa have not prospered in recent years. The Journal of African History , which printed six articles on missionaries during the first ten years of its existence, has only printed two articles on the subject in the course of the last ten years. Only one book on missionaries has been published by a major university press in Britain or America since 1972. Very occasionally articles about missionaries…
The capitalist theory of capitalist imperialism
Research Article| March 01 1983 The capitalist theory of capitalist imperialism Norman Etherington Norman Etherington 1 Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1983) 15 (1): 38–62. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-15-1-38 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Norman Etherington; The capitalist theory of capitalist imperialism. History of P…
Books reviewed
J. B. Peires, The House of Phalo (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1981 and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. x+281; J. B. Peires (ed.), Before and After Shaka: Papers in Nguni History (Grahamstown: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, 1981), pp. vi+267. Charles van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886–1914: 1 New Babylon, 2 New Nineveh (Johannesburg: Ravan Press; Lond…
The Political Economy of Pondoland 1860–1930
Journal Article The Political Economy of Pondoland 1860–1930 Get access The Political Economy of Pondoland 1860–1930, by William Beinart, Cambridge University Press, 1982. 218 pp. £20.00. NORMAN ETHERINGTON NORMAN ETHERINGTON University of AdelaideSouth Australia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 83, Issue 330, January 1984, Pages 128–129, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.…
Theories of Imperialism
The Land Belongs to Us
Journal Article The Land Belongs to Us: The Pedi Polity, the Boers and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Transvaal Get access The Land Belongs to Us: The Pedi Polity, the Boers and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Transvaal, by Peter Delius. Heinemann, London, 1984. xiv + 278pp. £16.50. NORMAN ETHERINGTON NORMAN ETHERINGTON University of Adelaide Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Vo…
Missionary Doctors and African Healers in Mid-Victorian South Africa
Natal's black rape scare of the 1870s
For about four years at the end of the 1860s the white population of Natal was gripped by fear of black rape. The fear does not appear to have been engendered by any specific event, nor did it result in a marked increase of prosecutions for rape in the colonial courts. It ended as abruptly and mysteriously as it had begun. Stanley Cohen's theory of 'moral panics' does not offer a particularly appropriate explanation for this rape scare, but it do…
The Conversion
A Proper Degree of Terror
Genesis of Apartheid
The Aftermath of the Aftermath
The Great Trek in Relation to the Mfecane
(1991). The Great Trek in Relation to the Mfecane: A Reassessment. South African Historical Journal: Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 3-21
History (60 works) · Political science (35 works) · History (32 works) · South African History and Culture (32 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Ancient history (27 works) · Archaeology (24 works) · Philosophy (22 works) · African history and culture studies (21 works) · Law (21 works)