This work on the pioneering history of the Boers in the Cape Colony (South Africa) before the Great Trek (1835-1846) is primarily based on research in various archives and libraries. However, the author PJ van der Merwe (1912-1979) found it desirable to personally visit different areas mentioned in the book to get to know the country and the people better and to gather oral tradition and personal information. In carrying out this fieldwork during 1938 and 1939, the author covered 15,000 miles by car and questioned hundreds of people (old pioneers, farmers, teachers, magistrates, school inspectors, livestock inspectors, surveyors and police agents). This investigation not only enabled him to better interpret the sometimes fragmentary data found in the archives and old travel descriptions, but also served to supplement it.

The Lower !Garib, or Orange River, flows through the historical Namaqualand and since 1990 has formed the international border between Namibia and South Africa. The contributors to this volume focus on this hardly discussed stretch of the Orange River to understand the region's social history, geography, and economy. This book brings together scholars from Namibia, South Africa, and overseas, as well as the knowledge and analysis from people living in the region. In concise chapters and short portraits, they discuss the region's past and present from a variety of perspectives.

Translated by Margaretha Sch„fer, Pioneers of the Dorsland provides a journalistic account of PJ van der Merwe?s travels to the Northwest where he interviewed farmers, clergymen, teachers, businessmen, policemen, officials of the magistrate court, divisional council and school board. Van der Merwe introduces the narrative by explaining that it focuses on the peculiar migratory way of life of the region?s half-nomadic pioneers. He highlights his efforts as an exhaustive attempt that may prove useful to any future historian interested in the area. Van der Merwe also published other similar works during his time as a researcher, traveller, historian and journalist ? Die Noordwaartse Beweging van die Boere voor die Groot Trek, 1770?1842, Die Trekboer in die Geskiedenis van die Kaapkolonie, 1657?1842 and Trek: Studies oor die Mobiliteit van die Pioniersbevolking aan die Kaap. Pioneers of the Dorsland is also available in Afrikaans.

"e;Saam met Berigte uit die Dorsland het die historikus se dogter, Margaretha Schaefer, ook Meer oor P.J. van der Merwe saamgestel. Dit vorm as't ware 'n tweeluik. Baie interessant is onder meer koerantberigte oor Van der Merwe se openbare optredes in 1940 terwyl die Tweede Wereldoorlog gewoed het. Hy was toe nog nie 30 jaar oud nie en het pas teruggekeer van Nederland waar hy sy doktorale studies afgehandel het ... In die bundel is verskeie resensies opgeneem wat Van der Merwe oor leidende historici se werk geskryf het. Dit sluit ook in evaluasies van ander historici van sy werk en van die dosente in die Geskiedenis-departement aan die U.S., waarvan hy van 1955 tot 1977 die effektiewe hoof was ... 'n Opstel deur F.A. van Jaarsveld, waarin hy Van der Merwe en sy werk ontleed, is een van die mees uitstaande bydraes van hierdie historikus. Dit is egter die essay getitel Trek, deur die Australiese historikus W.K. Hancock, wat in die tydskrif, The Economic History Review, gepubliseer is, wat beter as alle ander pogings slaag om die unieke bydrae van Van der Merwe tot die Suid-Afrikaanse historiografie te beskryf en te ontleed."e; - Hemann Giliomee

Petrus Johannes Van der Merwe wrote three of the most significant books on the history of South Africa before he was 35 years old. His trilogy, of which The Migrant Farmer is the first volume, has become a classic that no student of Cape colonial history of the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth century can ignore. Van der Merwe was unique among Afrikaner historians in that he focused not on the single event known as the Great Trek, but on the greater migration, nearly three hundred years long, of peoples of Dutch, French and German descent out from the victualling station at Cape Town after their arrival there in 1652. In the process he pioneered new directions in historical writing decades before they became fashionable among other South African historians. Van der Merwe was less interested in politics than in the social, cultural, economic and religious lives of his subjects. He asked questions about such daily concerns as work, food, property owning, private and public worship, leisure activities, fashions, the environment and about the farmers' relations with their neighbors, both white and black. The Migrant Farmer (Die Trekboer in die Geskiedenis van die Kaapkolonie, 1657-1842) was published in Cape Town in Afrikaans in 1938. Beck's English translation will allow scholars worldwide the opportunity to use, or challenge, this pioneering study of South Africa.

The end of the Anglo-Boer War in May 1902 left the Boers (Afrikaners) defeated and bitter in a ravaged land. Poverty and disillusionment spurred many to leave the post-war British-administered South Africa. This book studies one group of emigres who trekked northward to German East Africa and British East Africa. The author relies heavily on primary sources written in both Dutch and Afrikaans to describe the experiences of the Boers in East Africa. The literature dealing with the Afrikaners documents a people known for their independent insistence upon their language and culture, for their territorial sovereignty established in southern Africa, and for their characteristic religiosity and reliance on Old Testament-based Calvinism. Large numbers of Boers would not or could not adjust to living under an administration with whom they had been at war, and those who tried did not receive much support. As one eyewitness wrote, Not much was needed to stimulate the desire to trek. And so the Afrikaner Diaspora began.

The establishment of a settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in the seventeenth century and an expansion of the sphere of colonial influence in the eighteenth century made South Africa the only part of sub-Saharan Africa where Europeans could travel with relative ease deep into the interior. As a result individuals with scientific interests in Africa came to the Cape. This book examines writings and drawings of scientifically educated travellers, particularly in the field of ethnography, against the background of commercial and administrative discourses on the Cape. It is argued that the scientific travellers benefited more from their relationship with the colonial order than the other way around.

An examination of migration as an important cause of change in the genetic and demographic structure of human populations.