Charles Van Onselen
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 144122 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Charles Van Onselen |
| NOMBRES | Charles |
| APELLIDO | Van Onselen |
| FIRMA | VAN ONSELEN C |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Pretoria |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3903-8052 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 37 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 324 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 37 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1972 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2021 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
The Changing Economic Logic of the Eastern Main Line
The Eastern Main Line was conceived of, and meant to serve, white South African farmers, at a time when the Highveld was dominated by an agricultural economy. But when gold was discovered, the logic behind the railway system switched to serving an industrialising rather than an agricultural economy. This meant that the railway was never designed, or subsequently operated, as a system that catered for passengers, let alone African migrant mine wor…
Colonial Managerial Ideologies
Industrial capitalism everywhere tends to commodify labour as simply one more factor in production. In colonial situations, that process is exacerbated by racism. In such circumstances a paradox arose, the chapter explains. The mine owners wanted labour to be moved efficiently and swiftly in a drive for productivity, but the managers of the rail system saw African workers as mere commodities—as freight—which slowed down transport and reduced the …
Mozambican Labour Regimes and the Eastern Main Line
The South African mining industry profited from the slave- and forced-labour regimes that preceded it in the adjacent Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Many of the earliest migrants were part of a labour force ‘recruited’ through coercion. Black Mozambicans later preferred to work as cheap, indentured migrant labourers rather than face working for no or low wages in their own country. The chapter explains how this helped underpin the illusion that…
Afterword
In the afterword, the author offers a personal account of how, when and where he, as a schoolboy, first became aware of the plight of African migrant mineworkers and how the experience followed him into young adulthood. It offers an understanding of why he came to write the book about the Night Trains.
The Night Trains
The full physical & social cost of South Africa's 20th century mining revolution, based on the exploitation of cheap, commoditised, black, migrant labour, has yet to be fully understood. The success of the system, which contributed to the evolution of the policies of spatial segregation & apartheid, depended, in large measure, on the physical distance between the labourer's home & places of work being successfully bridged by steam locomotives & a…
The Cowboy Capitalist
Who Killed Meyer Hasenfus? Organized Crime, Policing and Informing on the Witwatersrand, 1902-8
Journal Article Who Killed Meyer Hasenfus? Organized Crime, Policing and Informing on the Witwatersrand, 1902–8 Get access Charles van Onselen Charles van Onselen Charles van Onselen's most recent book is The Fox and the Flies: the World of Joseph Silver, Racketeer and Psychopath (London, New York and Johannesburg 2007). Research Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria, he is currently exploring late nineteenth-centur…
Jewish Police Informers in the Atlantic World, 1880–1914
The great migration from the tsarist empire, sparked by the assassination of Alexander II, in 1881, saw two to three million east European Jews re-settling in the great cities of the Atlantic world before the First World War. Often discriminated against in labour markets, and socially marginalized in new environments, Russo-Polish males either persisted in, or resorted to, organized crime centred on the illicit sale of alcohol, professional gambl…
The Modernization of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek
The southern part of the African continent has, for nearly a hundred and fifty years, been witness to a set of epic struggles to create within it a single unified state and, within that, forms of citizenship that are both identifiably “South African” and more or less collectively owned. The never-ending nature of these twinned tasks has echoes in contemporary mantras about the healthiness of “nation-building,” just as surely as the underlying ane…
Jewish Marginality in the Atlantic World
(2000). Jewish Marginality in the Atlantic World: Organised Crime in the Era of the Great Migrations, 1880–1914. South African Historical Journal: Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 96-137
The Seed Is Mine
Singing Away the Hunger
The Seed Is Mine
The reconstruction of a rural life from oral testimony
The Social and Economic Underpinning of Paternalism and Violence on the Maize Farms of the South-Western Transvaal, 1900-1950
All social systems - including highly repressive ones - manifest features of accommodation as well as those of coercion. These are often seen as discrete entities and, in the case of modern South Africa, the pervasiveness of racial oppression has given rise to a literature which fails to explore more accommodatory ideologies and social practices such as paternalism. In this essay it is argued that paternalism and violence are not necessarily excl…
Paternalisme et violence dans les fermes du Transvaal de 1900 à 1950
Pendant cinq cents ans, le sud de l'Afrique a été le théâtre d'une lutte épique quasi ininterrompue. Une petite minorité d'étrangers d'origine européenne, bénéficiant de tous les avantages que procurent la puissance militaire, l'éducation, l'accès à une technologie supérieure s'est emparée du pays et a cherché à vaincre, déposséder et réduire totalement sous sa domination la majorité des indigènes. Cette lutte de plusieurs siècles pour soumettre …
Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886-1914. 1. New Babylon 2. New Nineveh
Crime and Total Institutions in the Making of Modern South Africa
Modern South Africa's industrial achievements are often pointed to with considerable pride sometimes by outsiders, but more frequently by insiders. Viewed from the commanding heights of our financial institutions there is, no doubt, considerable justification for this sense of achievement. A country which in 1981 had a gross national product of approximately 70,000 million Rand, and a wage bill of close on 35,000 million Rand is indeed, as the Of…
Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886-1914
Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886-1914
The Peculiarities of African Labour and Working-Class History
Richard Sandbrook and Robin Cohen, eds.. The Development of an African Working Class: Studies in Class Formation and Action (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1975) A.T. Nzula, I.I. Potekhim, and A.Z. Zusmanovich, Forced Labour in Colonial Africa (London: Zed Press 1979) Ken Luckhardt and Brenda Wall, Organize or Starve: The History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1980) Robin Cohen, Peter Gutkind, an…
African Labor History
The political economy of tribal animosity
'Faction fights' and urban disturbances have been an almost permanent feature of southern and central African ghetto life since the late 19th century, yet with few exceptions they have never been subjected to detailed scrutiny. The fact that they have been dismissed by a historian as 'brutal inter-tribal riots', or simply ignored by anthropologists and sociologists is clearly far from satisfactory. If 'faction fights' were and are so blatantly 't…
Chibaro
African mine labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1933
Chibaro
Worker consciousness in black miners
It has become accepted by historians and social scientists alike that African workers in Rhodesia were slow to demonstrate resistance in the industrial setting of the economy. This tardiness is attributed to the dominance of the migrant labour system or the achievements of the settler administration. This view is challenged by a detailed study of African responses in the mining industry. Here geological factors led to profitability constraints wh…
The Social and Economic Underpinning of Paternalism and Violence on the Maize Farms of the South-Western Transvaal, 1900-1950
All social systems - including highly repressive ones - manifest features of accommodation as well as those of coercion. These are often seen as discrete entities and, in the case of modern South Africa, the pervasiveness of racial oppression has given rise to a literature which fails to explore more accommodatory ideologies and social practices such as paternalism. In this essay it is argued that paternalism and violence are not necessarily excl…
Reactions to Rinderpest in Southern Africa 1896–97
Rinderpest, a highly contagious cattle disease which swept through southern Africa in 1896–7, has attracted little interest from historians. A more detailed consideration of its effect on a cattle-keeping peasantry within the context of an industrializing economy assists in illuminating some of the socio-economic and political forces operative in the 1890s. The spread of rinderpest was acompanied by widespread suspicion and rumour. Some Europeans…
The political economy of tribal animosity
'Faction fights' and urban disturbances have been an almost permanent feature of southern and central African ghetto life since the late 19th century, yet with few exceptions they have never been subjected to detailed scrutiny. The fact that they have been dismissed by a historian as 'brutal inter-tribal riots', or simply ignored by anthropologists and sociologists is clearly far from satisfactory. If 'faction fights' were and are so blatantly 't…
Chibaro. African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1933
Black workers in central African industry
Settlers are said to have good reason to be proud of their economic development because, 'In passing through this development, the Rhodesians managed to avoid some of the worst evils of labour management that characterized the early stages of industrialization elsewhere.'4 The advocates of this point of view are aware that forced labour was used in the mining industry, that ruthless discipline was not unknown in the mines, and that there was a hi…
The reconstruction of a rural life from oral testimony
Chibaro
The 1912 Wankie Colliery strike
The strike at the Wankie Colliery in 1912 offers the labour historian of central Africa an opportunity to explore in some depth the economic and social context of an African response within a colonial industry. The system of cheap labour at Wankie periodically combined with severe production pressures to produce outbreaks of scurvy amongst the African miners. In normal years, workers alleviated the need for nutritious food by scouring the surroun…
The Role of Collaborators in the Rhodesian Mining Industry 1900–1935
Journal Article THE ROLE OF COLLABORATORS IN THE RHODESIAN MINING INDUSTRY 1900–1935 Get access CHARLES VAN ONSELEN CHARLES VAN ONSELEN Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 72, Issue 289, October 1973, Pages 401–418, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a096411 Published: 01 October 1973
Jewish Marginality in the Atlantic World
(2000). Jewish Marginality in the Atlantic World: Organised Crime in the Era of the Great Migrations, 1880–1914. South African Historical Journal: Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 96-137
Crime and Total Institutions in the Making of Modern South Africa
Modern South Africa's industrial achievements are often pointed to with considerable pride sometimes by outsiders, but more frequently by insiders. Viewed from the commanding heights of our financial institutions there is, no doubt, considerable justification for this sense of achievement. A country which in 1981 had a gross national product of approximately 70,000 million Rand, and a wage bill of close on 35,000 million Rand is indeed, as the Of…
The Night Trains
The full physical & social cost of South Africa's 20th century mining revolution, based on the exploitation of cheap, commoditised, black, migrant labour, has yet to be fully understood. The success of the system, which contributed to the evolution of the policies of spatial segregation & apartheid, depended, in large measure, on the physical distance between the labourer's home & places of work being successfully bridged by steam locomotives & a…
The Regiment of the Hills
Journal Article “THE REGIMENT OF THE HILLS”: SOUTH AFRICA'S LUMPENPROLETARIAN ARMY 1890–1920 Get access Charles van Onselen Charles van Onselen University of London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 80, Issue 1, August 1978, Pages 91–121, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/80.1.91 Published: 01 August 1978
Randlords and Rotgut 1886-1903
In 1903, Thomas Welsh explored what he called "contrasts in African legislationn in an article in the Journal of the African Society.What particularly int~igued Welsh were some of the difTerences in the law governing the sale of alcohol to Africans in various parts of the empire.More specifically, why was it that there should be one law for the thirty years old colony of Lagos and another, radically different, for the recently acquired Transvaal …
The Peculiarities of African Labour and Working-Class History
Richard Sandbrook and Robin Cohen, eds.. The Development of an African Working Class: Studies in Class Formation and Action (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1975) A.T. Nzula, I.I. Potekhim, and A.Z. Zusmanovich, Forced Labour in Colonial Africa (London: Zed Press 1979) Ken Luckhardt and Brenda Wall, Organize or Starve: The History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1980) Robin Cohen, Peter Gutkind, an…
Who Killed Meyer Hasenfus? Organized Crime, Policing and Informing on the Witwatersrand, 1902-8
Journal Article Who Killed Meyer Hasenfus? Organized Crime, Policing and Informing on the Witwatersrand, 1902–8 Get access Charles van Onselen Charles van Onselen Charles van Onselen's most recent book is The Fox and the Flies: the World of Joseph Silver, Racketeer and Psychopath (London, New York and Johannesburg 2007). Research Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria, he is currently exploring late nineteenth-centur…
Jewish Police Informers in the Atlantic World, 1880–1914
The great migration from the tsarist empire, sparked by the assassination of Alexander II, in 1881, saw two to three million east European Jews re-settling in the great cities of the Atlantic world before the First World War. Often discriminated against in labour markets, and socially marginalized in new environments, Russo-Polish males either persisted in, or resorted to, organized crime centred on the illicit sale of alcohol, professional gambl…
The Modernization of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek
The southern part of the African continent has, for nearly a hundred and fifty years, been witness to a set of epic struggles to create within it a single unified state and, within that, forms of citizenship that are both identifiably “South African” and more or less collectively owned. The never-ending nature of these twinned tasks has echoes in contemporary mantras about the healthiness of “nation-building,” just as surely as the underlying ane…
Corporate Power in an African State
Reactions to Rinderpest in Southern Africa 1896–97
Rinderpest, a highly contagious cattle disease which swept through southern Africa in 1896–7, has attracted little interest from historians. A more detailed consideration of its effect on a cattle-keeping peasantry within the context of an industrializing economy assists in illuminating some of the socio-economic and political forces operative in the 1890s. The spread of rinderpest was acompanied by widespread suspicion and rumour. Some Europeans…
Worker consciousness in black miners
It has become accepted by historians and social scientists alike that African workers in Rhodesia were slow to demonstrate resistance in the industrial setting of the economy. This tardiness is attributed to the dominance of the migrant labour system or the achievements of the settler administration. This view is challenged by a detailed study of African responses in the mining industry. Here geological factors led to profitability constraints wh…
The Role of Collaborators in the Rhodesian Mining Industry 1900–1935
Journal Article THE ROLE OF COLLABORATORS IN THE RHODESIAN MINING INDUSTRY 1900–1935 Get access CHARLES VAN ONSELEN CHARLES VAN ONSELEN Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 72, Issue 289, October 1973, Pages 401–418, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a096411 Published: 01 October 1973
The 1912 Wankie Colliery strike
The strike at the Wankie Colliery in 1912 offers the labour historian of central Africa an opportunity to explore in some depth the economic and social context of an African response within a colonial industry. The system of cheap labour at Wankie periodically combined with severe production pressures to produce outbreaks of scurvy amongst the African miners. In normal years, workers alleviated the need for nutritious food by scouring the surroun…
Black workers in central African industry
Settlers are said to have good reason to be proud of their economic development because, 'In passing through this development, the Rhodesians managed to avoid some of the worst evils of labour management that characterized the early stages of industrialization elsewhere.'4 The advocates of this point of view are aware that forced labour was used in the mining industry, that ruthless discipline was not unknown in the mines, and that there was a hi…
Chibaro
Randlords and Rotgut 1886-1903
In 1903, Thomas Welsh explored what he called "contrasts in African legislationn in an article in the Journal of the African Society.What particularly int~igued Welsh were some of the difTerences in the law governing the sale of alcohol to Africans in various parts of the empire.More specifically, why was it that there should be one law for the thirty years old colony of Lagos and another, radically different, for the recently acquired Transvaal …
Chibaro
Chibaro. African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1933
Chibaro
Corporate Power in an African State
The Regiment of the Hills
Journal Article “THE REGIMENT OF THE HILLS”: SOUTH AFRICA'S LUMPENPROLETARIAN ARMY 1890–1920 Get access Charles van Onselen Charles van Onselen University of London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 80, Issue 1, August 1978, Pages 91–121, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/80.1.91 Published: 01 August 1978
Chibaro
The political economy of tribal animosity
'Faction fights' and urban disturbances have been an almost permanent feature of southern and central African ghetto life since the late 19th century, yet with few exceptions they have never been subjected to detailed scrutiny. The fact that they have been dismissed by a historian as 'brutal inter-tribal riots', or simply ignored by anthropologists and sociologists is clearly far from satisfactory. If 'faction fights' were and are so blatantly 't…
The Peculiarities of African Labour and Working-Class History
Richard Sandbrook and Robin Cohen, eds.. The Development of an African Working Class: Studies in Class Formation and Action (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1975) A.T. Nzula, I.I. Potekhim, and A.Z. Zusmanovich, Forced Labour in Colonial Africa (London: Zed Press 1979) Ken Luckhardt and Brenda Wall, Organize or Starve: The History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1980) Robin Cohen, Peter Gutkind, an…
African Labor History
Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886-1914
Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886-1914
Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886-1914. 1. New Babylon 2. New Nineveh
Crime and Total Institutions in the Making of Modern South Africa
Modern South Africa's industrial achievements are often pointed to with considerable pride sometimes by outsiders, but more frequently by insiders. Viewed from the commanding heights of our financial institutions there is, no doubt, considerable justification for this sense of achievement. A country which in 1981 had a gross national product of approximately 70,000 million Rand, and a wage bill of close on 35,000 million Rand is indeed, as the Of…
The Social and Economic Underpinning of Paternalism and Violence on the Maize Farms of the South-Western Transvaal, 1900-1950
All social systems - including highly repressive ones - manifest features of accommodation as well as those of coercion. These are often seen as discrete entities and, in the case of modern South Africa, the pervasiveness of racial oppression has given rise to a literature which fails to explore more accommodatory ideologies and social practices such as paternalism. In this essay it is argued that paternalism and violence are not necessarily excl…
Paternalisme et violence dans les fermes du Transvaal de 1900 à 1950
Pendant cinq cents ans, le sud de l'Afrique a été le théâtre d'une lutte épique quasi ininterrompue. Une petite minorité d'étrangers d'origine européenne, bénéficiant de tous les avantages que procurent la puissance militaire, l'éducation, l'accès à une technologie supérieure s'est emparée du pays et a cherché à vaincre, déposséder et réduire totalement sous sa domination la majorité des indigènes. Cette lutte de plusieurs siècles pour soumettre …
The reconstruction of a rural life from oral testimony
The Seed Is Mine
The Seed Is Mine
African history and culture studies (27 obras) · Political science (23 obras) · History (20 obras) · Sociology (18 obras) · South African History and Culture (16 obras) · History (15 obras) · Economics (12 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Geography (8 obras)