This is a summary of a lecture series that covered historical and global sociology in South Africa. It looked at how South Africa has been affected by our past and by global connections.
SECTION 3
Global and historical sociology
Course overview:
- Historical sociology: how it is that sociologists use historical material to
make sense of the present
- How particular forms of modernity: what they meant and how they have
been interpreted by different scholars
- Look at Anglo-Boer war and how it influenced the formation of Sa as a
county in 1910 and how it influenced the Sa land act
- The sociology of health: use covid pandemic and Spanish flu- how they
influenced contemporary society
- The foundations of social theory- questions of epistemology- use Haitian
revolution.
Objectives of this section:
- Introduce us to historical sociology and global sociology
- Past and present epidemics
- Use national and the global in interrogating the effects of capitalism,
colonialism and racism
- To introduce students to different genres of sociological writing
Lecture 3.1:
Why do history in sociology?
Historical Sociology:
- Look at writings of 2 scholars: Bernard Magubane and the writers of Sol
Plaatjie
Magubane
- Born in KZN
- Parents were tenant labourers on white owner farm in the Colenso
district of KZN
- BA, Hons, MA (UKZN); MA, PhD (UCLA)
- He was a teacher, (historical) sociologist, anti- apatheid activist, lecturer
, - Father to another sociologist at university of Boston
Establishment of the Dutch Refreshment station: 1652
- Cape established as dutch refreshment station by Jan Van Riebeck. Until
then the Cape colony, there isn’t really colonialism in the rest of the
country- just the cape and it immediate surrounds.
Anglo-Dutch Treaty: 1814
- When wars in Europe with neapolean, some of that plays out in other
territories like Southern African.
- In 1814, the Dutch and the British entered a treaty: the Dutch colony of
cape was handed over to British
Slave Emancipation (in the cape) 1834:
- The British abolished slavery- abolishment of slavery in 1814, but slaved
emancipated (set free) in 1834
- A lot of slaves came from east asia and countries along the east coast of
African
- Consequence: many Boer (Afrikaaners) who used slaves began great trek
Great trek: (1836)
- Saw British rules as infringing on their economy, they move to interior of
country- move into transvaal
Diamonds discovered: (1866)
- In Kimberly- sets a huge investment in diamond mining in Kimberly
Gold Discovered: (1886)
- In Witwatersrand
- The discovery of gold on then an Afrikaaner territory, the British wanted
access to that in the same they had access to diamonds
, - The Anglo-Boer war: struggle for British to take possession of gold mines
Magubane’s Historical Sociology:
Why did he write this book in 1996?
- Why feel the need to go back to history of South African and frame it in
a different way? Frame the question of a racist state away from
apartheid and instead that talks about British colonialism
1. Places British policy in South Africa within the context of Global British
Imperialism, which for Magubane, begins with British imperialism of the
Irish (Celts) (+Scots and Welsh)
- He starts that history of British imperialism in United Kingdom
- Its important to understand SA colonial past as it relates to the British, to
British imperialization, colonization of the Irish and Scots and Welsh
- The formation of what we now call a United Kingdom was actually the
formation of a political entity that happened through the conquest of
the Irish
- In particular he pays attention to British imperialism as it relates to the
Celts
- He argues in his introduction that the meaning of race and the use of
racism as an instrument of policy, he wants to refract it away from the
white-black lens and rather focus it on the Irish experience under British
conquest and colonisation because he argues that Anglo-Saxon Racism
that is at the heart of British colonialism was first expressed and was first
an instrument of colonisation in relation to the Irish
- When the British saw the Irish, thy did not see them as equal but rather
as an inferior to be colonised, they were seen as the ‘other’
- Its nb to think abut race and racism not just in how it effects black and
brown people but also in how it has roots in the political and economic
subordination of other white people- like Irish
- You cannot understand class and race in SA if you are not aware of the
formation of class and racism in the colonisation of Ireland and the
comparisons made by the Victorian English between the Irish and the
hotentots
, 2. Provides an economic rationale for unification (NB: supply and flow of
labour; removal of trade tariffs)
- There is an economic reason why SA was colonized
- You also have to understand economic reasons for the racism that
became the justification for colonization
- As a Marxist sociologist as much as race is NB, you cannot separate it
from the economy
- The main object of British imperialism in SA was neither to advance nor
protect human freedoms, but to capture the Transvaal (Gold)
- The war was economic- even though underlying ideology was racist
How does he then prove his theory, this understanding of SA history
- Looks at biographies and writings of specific imperial politicians, what he
calls a “portrait of… colonisers” (pg. 370)
He looks specifically at:
- Certain politicians, not just what they did in Africa and the ideologies
that they tried to embed in the political culture of SA, but also looks at
behaviours when they were governors elsewhere, showing the links
between their behaviour and beliefs in SA with their beliefs, behaviours
and ideologies in other parts of the empire
Henry Bartle frere (29 March 1815- 29 May 1884)
- Governor in Bombay (1862-1867)
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