Peter Delius
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 134943 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Peter Delius |
| PRENOMES | Peter |
| SOBRENOME | Delius |
| ASSINATURA | DELIUS P |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of the Witwatersrand |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 37 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 142 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 36 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1982 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Thulamela
Thulamela was the centre of an African kingdom that flourished during the mid-second millennium AD. Research carried out in the 1990s, however, is incomplete and under-reported, and knowledge of the settlement is largely assumed or based on published scraps of information and borrows heavily and uncritically from research at what are thought to be similar state centres. Thulamela remains an enigma. In this paper, we present the story of Thulamela…
Turning South African History Upside Down
A focus on the colonial period has created a foreshortened history of South Africa which has been further blinkered by the reification of national boundaries. This perspective has limited the understanding of deeper and wider historical processes that moulded society’s past and present. It gives pride of place to cultural, economic and political influences that spread northward from the southernmost tip of Africa. But it ignores the reality that …
Segregation in the Reserves
Response to the review by Ben Cousins of Rights to Land
Ben Cousins has written a detailed and fair, if critical, review of our short book and we welcome the invitation from the South African Historical Journal to engage with it.1 Rights to Land dealt w
Chiefly Succession and Democracy in South Africa
This article examines the way in which disputes about the ranking of chiefdoms and succession to high chiefly office have been handled in the democratic era. It focuses particularly on the extent to which these processes have been in alignment with South Africa’s democratic Constitution. It discusses the prevalence of disputes about succession and their crippling impact on local development. It argues that the current rule-based approach to adjud…
The Northeastern Factor in South African History
This article, largely on the basis of in-depth research in archives in Lisbon, provides an account of the trading systems linking Delagoa Bay to its southern hinterland. Within this framework we argue that the role of the slave trade has been previously underestimated. There is evidence that the booming demand for slaves in Brazil and on the Mascarene Islands hit this region with force. The scale of that trade is difficult to establish because it…
Revisiting Bokoni
A Long Way Home
Order, Openness, and Economic Change in Precolonial Southern Africa
The Bokoni settlement in Mpumalanga, South Africa is the largest known terraced site in Africa. The settlement consisted of intensively farmed terraced fields spanning 150 kilometres along the eastern escarpment. It flourished from around 1500 until the 1820s, after which it all but disappeared. This article first sets out to interpret the growing body of primarily archaeological Bokoni evidence from the perspective of economic history. Another, …
The Historical Context and Legacy of the Natives Land Act of 1913
The Natives Land Act of 1913 was a key example of the segregationist and racist legislation that fixed discriminatory foundations in South African law. We argue in this article that the Act did not take land away from African people directly, and that in the short term its impact was limited. Its most immediate effect was to undermine black tenants on white-owned land, but even here the consequences were mixed and slow to materialise. In many way…
Familiengeschichte auf der Missionsstation Mosego, der Farm Mecklenburg und in der Stadt Pietersburg (Südafrika)
In the transgenerational and transcontinental history of the Winter family, conflict and divisions played a major part. J. P . D. Winter, a son of nineteenth-century missionary parents, married twice to establish himself in the Limpopo and Mpumalanga regions. In his first marriage, wealth and regional connection constituted the resources he converted into family wealth. In his second marriage,“whiteness” became the asset he based his family fortu…
The Making and Changing of Migrant Workers' Worlds (1800-2014)
Key words: migrant labourapartheidhistoriographyrural economicsAfrican trade routesbridewealthmigrant women
The King, the Missionary and the Missionary's Daughter
In 1881 the Pedi king Sekhukhune and the German missionary Johannes August Winter were drawn into a close relationship which included a wide-ranging discussion of their beliefs and values. It also involved their families. Indeed, the most startling outcome of their interactions was the planned betrothal of Sekhukhune to the missionary's infant daughter, Anna. Their developing alliance was cut short by tragedy but their brief encounter provides te…
Rethinking South Africa's Past
Bokoni
This article demonstrates that the interdisciplinary research that has been conducted on Bokoni under the auspices of the 500 Year Initiative has had significant outcomes. We have created a more periodised account of the development of the settlements. Narrow and ethnically determined conceptions of identity have been subjected to critique and the notion that specific pottery forms are necessarily markers of specific cultures or linguistic units …
J.A. Winter – Visionary or Mercenary? A Missionary Life in Colonial Context
This article focuses on the life of the missionary J.A. Winter who is best known for his role in the formation of the Lutheran Bapedi Church in 1890. It explores the vital part he played in a range of other important historical processes, including the struggles over the political and economic controls imposed on Pedi society after colonial conquest in 1879, the violent conflicts which took place in the region during the South African War and the…
Reading the Rocks and Reviewing Red Herrings
Stonewalls connect over 10,000 square kilometres of the Mpumalanga highveld into a complex web of homesteads, towns, terraces and roads, that stretches for 150 kilometres in an almost continuous belt. They suggest a substantial population, and speak to the investment of vast amounts of labour in infrastructural development along with extraordinary levels of agricultural innovation and productivity. This network of stone embodies Bokoni, the pre-n…
Recapturing Captives and Conversations with 'Cannibals
The central argument of this article is that the role of captives in African society has been neglected despite there being sufficient evidence to explore the issue in some depth. This omission has limited our understanding of important dimensions of the historical experiences of women and children, and of vital power dynamics in decisive phases of social transformation. This perspective also allows for a re-analysis of the ‘cannibal narratives’,…
Sex, disease and stigma in South Africa
This paper attempts to analyse historically why stigma and denial around HIV/AIDS is so powerful in South Africa, so powerful that ailing family members can be shunned and evicted. For many observers, the answer lies simply in its being a venereal disease, in its connotation with promiscuity and unregulated sexuality. We argue that this is not an adequate explanation. Pre-colonial African societies were relatively open about sexuality. Though pre…
Caught in a Crossfire
Sexual Socialisation in South Africa
The HIV/AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa has focused attention on how children and youth learn about sex. This research has revealed an alarming failure of communication between parents and children on sexual issues. Parents find it very difficult to broach the issue of sex with their children who as a result have little option but to seek information elsewhere -- normally from their peers. There is also now a considerable body of work on sexual …
Aids in Context
In the late 1999 concern over the inadequacies of social research prompted a group of academics and nongovernmental organization (NGO)-based researchers and activists to plan a conference. It was held at the University of the Witwatersrand in April 2001 entitled Aids in Context: Explaining the Social Cultural and Historical Roots of the Epidemic in southern Africa. Key objectives were to cross-fertilize existing work to create new organizational …
Witches and Missionaries in Nineteenth Century Transvaal
This article argues that the published and unpublished records of the Berlin Missionary Society in the Transvaal in the nineteenth century are sufficiently rich to allow for at least a partial reconstruction of perceptions and practices with regard to witchcraft in African societies. It also uses the perspective provided by this material to re-interpret a key episode in the history of the region ‐ the clashes between Christian converts and wider …
Soil Conservation in a Racially Ordered Society
This paper examines the ways in which the formulation and implementation of strategies of soil conservation in South Africa during the period 1930–1970 were powerfully influenced by racist attitudes and by the differential political and economic position of whites and blacks within the systems of segregation and apartheid. The paper traces and compares the evolution of state intervention in pursuit of soil conservation in relation to white farmla…
Historical Research and Policy Making in South Africa
Sexual Socialisation in South Africa
The HIV/AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa has focused attention on how children and youth learn about sex. This research has revealed an alarming failure of communication between parents and children on sexual issues. Parents find it very difficult to broach the issue of sex with their children who as a result have little option but to seek information elsewhere -- normally from their peers. There is also now a considerable body of work on sexual …
Sebatakgomo; migrant organization, the ANC and the Sekhukhuneland revolt
In the 1940s and 1950s in reserve and trust area from the Zoutpansberg to the Ciskei bitter battles were fought against first Betterment Schemes and then Bantu Authorities. Communities believed - with good reason - that these state initiatives posed a mortal threat to their residual, but cherished, economic and political autonomy. These episodes are usually treated under the rubric of rural or peasant resistance but the centrality of migrant labo…
The Historical Context and Legacy of the Natives Land Act of 1913
The Natives Land Act of 1913 was a key example of the segregationist and racist legislation that fixed discriminatory foundations in South African law. We argue in this article that the Act did not take land away from African people directly, and that in the short term its impact was limited. Its most immediate effect was to undermine black tenants on white-owned land, but even here the consequences were mixed and slow to materialise. In many way…
Order, Openness, and Economic Change in Precolonial Southern Africa
The Bokoni settlement in Mpumalanga, South Africa is the largest known terraced site in Africa. The settlement consisted of intensively farmed terraced fields spanning 150 kilometres along the eastern escarpment. It flourished from around 1500 until the 1820s, after which it all but disappeared. This article first sets out to interpret the growing body of primarily archaeological Bokoni evidence from the perspective of economic history. Another, …
Recapturing Captives and Conversations with 'Cannibals
The central argument of this article is that the role of captives in African society has been neglected despite there being sufficient evidence to explore the issue in some depth. This omission has limited our understanding of important dimensions of the historical experiences of women and children, and of vital power dynamics in decisive phases of social transformation. This perspective also allows for a re-analysis of the ‘cannibal narratives’,…
Aids in Context
In the late 1999 concern over the inadequacies of social research prompted a group of academics and nongovernmental organization (NGO)-based researchers and activists to plan a conference. It was held at the University of the Witwatersrand in April 2001 entitled Aids in Context: Explaining the Social Cultural and Historical Roots of the Epidemic in southern Africa. Key objectives were to cross-fertilize existing work to create new organizational …
Sebatakgomo and the Zoutpansberg Balemi Association
Sebatakgomo — a migrant worker-based movement – was founded in 1954 and went on to play a central role in the Sekhukhuneland Revolt of 1958. It was launched from within the ANC, and a number of its leaders were also members of the Communist Party. This article explores the roles played by these wider political movements in the formation of Sebatakgomo. It argues that, while ANC networks and individuals within its central leadership made an import…
The Making and Changing of Migrant Workers' Worlds (1800-2014)
Key words: migrant labourapartheidhistoriographyrural economicsAfrican trade routesbridewealthmigrant women
Witches and Missionaries in Nineteenth Century Transvaal
This article argues that the published and unpublished records of the Berlin Missionary Society in the Transvaal in the nineteenth century are sufficiently rich to allow for at least a partial reconstruction of perceptions and practices with regard to witchcraft in African societies. It also uses the perspective provided by this material to re-interpret a key episode in the history of the region ‐ the clashes between Christian converts and wider …
Soil Conservation in a Racially Ordered Society
This paper examines the ways in which the formulation and implementation of strategies of soil conservation in South Africa during the period 1930–1970 were powerfully influenced by racist attitudes and by the differential political and economic position of whites and blacks within the systems of segregation and apartheid. The paper traces and compares the evolution of state intervention in pursuit of soil conservation in relation to white farmla…
The Northeastern Factor in South African History
This article, largely on the basis of in-depth research in archives in Lisbon, provides an account of the trading systems linking Delagoa Bay to its southern hinterland. Within this framework we argue that the role of the slave trade has been previously underestimated. There is evidence that the booming demand for slaves in Brazil and on the Mascarene Islands hit this region with force. The scale of that trade is difficult to establish because it…
Rethinking South Africa's Past
Bokoni
This article demonstrates that the interdisciplinary research that has been conducted on Bokoni under the auspices of the 500 Year Initiative has had significant outcomes. We have created a more periodised account of the development of the settlements. Narrow and ethnically determined conceptions of identity have been subjected to critique and the notion that specific pottery forms are necessarily markers of specific cultures or linguistic units …
Reading the Rocks and Reviewing Red Herrings
Stonewalls connect over 10,000 square kilometres of the Mpumalanga highveld into a complex web of homesteads, towns, terraces and roads, that stretches for 150 kilometres in an almost continuous belt. They suggest a substantial population, and speak to the investment of vast amounts of labour in infrastructural development along with extraordinary levels of agricultural innovation and productivity. This network of stone embodies Bokoni, the pre-n…
Historical Research and Policy Making in South Africa
Inboekselings and Oorlams
In the thirty years between 1840 and 1870 a new underclass came into being on the highveld of South Africa. The members of this class were known to the Boer society of what became the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) as Inboekselings, the unfree servants of the white households in the interior. Inboekselings were children and to a much lesser extent young women formally apprenticed ingeboek to Boer settlers and they were acquired by these househ…
J.A. Winter – Visionary or Mercenary? A Missionary Life in Colonial Context
This article focuses on the life of the missionary J.A. Winter who is best known for his role in the formation of the Lutheran Bapedi Church in 1890. It explores the vital part he played in a range of other important historical processes, including the struggles over the political and economic controls imposed on Pedi society after colonial conquest in 1879, the violent conflicts which took place in the region during the South African War and the…
The Land Belongs to Us
Inboekselings and Oorlams
In the thirty years between 1840 and 1870 a new underclass came into being on the highveld of South Africa. The members of this class were known to the Boer society of what became the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) as Inboekselings, the unfree servants of the white households in the interior. Inboekselings were children and to a much lesser extent young women formally apprenticed ingeboek to Boer settlers and they were acquired by these househ…
The Land Belongs to Us
The Land Belongs to Us
Putting a Plough to the Ground
The Conversion
Sebatakgomo; migrant organization, the ANC and the Sekhukhuneland revolt
In the 1940s and 1950s in reserve and trust area from the Zoutpansberg to the Ciskei bitter battles were fought against first Betterment Schemes and then Bantu Authorities. Communities believed - with good reason - that these state initiatives posed a mortal threat to their residual, but cherished, economic and political autonomy. These episodes are usually treated under the rubric of rural or peasant resistance but the centrality of migrant labo…
Sebatakgomo and the Zoutpansberg Balemi Association
Sebatakgomo — a migrant worker-based movement – was founded in 1954 and went on to play a central role in the Sekhukhuneland Revolt of 1958. It was launched from within the ANC, and a number of its leaders were also members of the Communist Party. This article explores the roles played by these wider political movements in the formation of Sebatakgomo. It argues that, while ANC networks and individuals within its central leadership made an import…
The end of the Strecknitz asylum at Lübeck - a contribution to the social history of psychiatry during National Socialism
At a first place the NS-policy of psychiatry is outlined -its global planning as well as its excecution. The picture is supplemented by and contrasted with its local implementation exemplified by the Strecknitz asylum at Lübeck. It becomes clear how much the global concept of the extermination of patients was interwoven with pragmatic plans of local authorities. At Lübeck only the partial identity of these interests led to the deportation of more…
A Lion Amongst the Cattle
The author draws on interviews to tell the story of the bitter and protracted struggles sparked off in the formidable Pedi Kingdom by the shifting policies and practices of conservation, segregation and apartheid. At the heart of the book are the two revolts of 1958 and 1986. Also charted is the changing relationship of the Communist Party and the ANC to the countryside, and the importance of migrant workers in the political cross-fertilization w…
Going for Gold
Apartheid's Genesis, 1935-1962
When are they going to fight? - Tsotsis, youth politics and the pac, Clive Glaser First win the war, then clear the slums - the genesis of the western areas removal scheme, 1940-1949, Deon van Tonder Verwoerd versus the Visionaries - the South Africa Bureau of Racial Affairs (SABRA) and apartheid, 1948-1961 John Lazar A destruction coming - Bantu education as a response to social crisis, John Hyslop African political organizations in Brakpan in t…
History from South Africa
Soil Conservation in a Racially Ordered Society
This paper examines the ways in which the formulation and implementation of strategies of soil conservation in South Africa during the period 1930–1970 were powerfully influenced by racist attitudes and by the differential political and economic position of whites and blacks within the systems of segregation and apartheid. The paper traces and compares the evolution of state intervention in pursuit of soil conservation in relation to white farmla…
Historical Research and Policy Making in South Africa
Witches and Missionaries in Nineteenth Century Transvaal
This article argues that the published and unpublished records of the Berlin Missionary Society in the Transvaal in the nineteenth century are sufficiently rich to allow for at least a partial reconstruction of perceptions and practices with regard to witchcraft in African societies. It also uses the perspective provided by this material to re-interpret a key episode in the history of the region ‐ the clashes between Christian converts and wider …
Caught in a Crossfire
Sexual Socialisation in South Africa
The HIV/AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa has focused attention on how children and youth learn about sex. This research has revealed an alarming failure of communication between parents and children on sexual issues. Parents find it very difficult to broach the issue of sex with their children who as a result have little option but to seek information elsewhere -- normally from their peers. There is also now a considerable body of work on sexual …
Aids in Context
In the late 1999 concern over the inadequacies of social research prompted a group of academics and nongovernmental organization (NGO)-based researchers and activists to plan a conference. It was held at the University of the Witwatersrand in April 2001 entitled Aids in Context: Explaining the Social Cultural and Historical Roots of the Epidemic in southern Africa. Key objectives were to cross-fertilize existing work to create new organizational …
Sex, disease and stigma in South Africa
This paper attempts to analyse historically why stigma and denial around HIV/AIDS is so powerful in South Africa, so powerful that ailing family members can be shunned and evicted. For many observers, the answer lies simply in its being a venereal disease, in its connotation with promiscuity and unregulated sexuality. We argue that this is not an adequate explanation. Pre-colonial African societies were relatively open about sexuality. Though pre…
J.A. Winter – Visionary or Mercenary? A Missionary Life in Colonial Context
This article focuses on the life of the missionary J.A. Winter who is best known for his role in the formation of the Lutheran Bapedi Church in 1890. It explores the vital part he played in a range of other important historical processes, including the struggles over the political and economic controls imposed on Pedi society after colonial conquest in 1879, the violent conflicts which took place in the region during the South African War and the…
Reading the Rocks and Reviewing Red Herrings
Stonewalls connect over 10,000 square kilometres of the Mpumalanga highveld into a complex web of homesteads, towns, terraces and roads, that stretches for 150 kilometres in an almost continuous belt. They suggest a substantial population, and speak to the investment of vast amounts of labour in infrastructural development along with extraordinary levels of agricultural innovation and productivity. This network of stone embodies Bokoni, the pre-n…
Recapturing Captives and Conversations with 'Cannibals
The central argument of this article is that the role of captives in African society has been neglected despite there being sufficient evidence to explore the issue in some depth. This omission has limited our understanding of important dimensions of the historical experiences of women and children, and of vital power dynamics in decisive phases of social transformation. This perspective also allows for a re-analysis of the ‘cannibal narratives’,…
Rethinking South Africa's Past
Bokoni
This article demonstrates that the interdisciplinary research that has been conducted on Bokoni under the auspices of the 500 Year Initiative has had significant outcomes. We have created a more periodised account of the development of the settlements. Narrow and ethnically determined conceptions of identity have been subjected to critique and the notion that specific pottery forms are necessarily markers of specific cultures or linguistic units …
The King, the Missionary and the Missionary's Daughter
In 1881 the Pedi king Sekhukhune and the German missionary Johannes August Winter were drawn into a close relationship which included a wide-ranging discussion of their beliefs and values. It also involved their families. Indeed, the most startling outcome of their interactions was the planned betrothal of Sekhukhune to the missionary's infant daughter, Anna. Their developing alliance was cut short by tragedy but their brief encounter provides te…
History (25 obras) · Political science (24 obras) · Sociology (23 obras) · South African History and Culture (22 obras) · Archaeology (15 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Geography (13 obras) · History (13 obras) · Politics (10 obras) · African history and culture studies (9 obras)