This study examines representations of the ‘enemy’ found in the published and unpublished military narratives of the 6th, 7th and 8th Frontier Wars which took place in the Eastern Cape between 1834 and 1853. The Xhosa were most frequently represented as the ‘enemy’, however, there were also references to the Khoikhoi ‘rebels’ in the 8th Frontier War. It will be argued in this thesis that an elaborated discussion of military narratives could assist in an analysis of the complicated process of colonization and the establishment of British control at the Cape. The study pays attention to the accretion of representations of the Xhosa in the military narratives and it focuses on the formative military ideas which underpinned the delineation of the Xhosa and how writers adopted these ideas to describe the conditions of frontier warfare. The thesis does not focus only on the conflict it also asks how the regular army presented itself as a ‘knowledge-based’ institution. Further questions relate to what soldiers did besides fight and whether their ‘knowledge’ led to the power to enunciate on and control South Africa’s indigenous inhabitants. Some narratives, such as Harriet Ward’s and Edward Napier’s, were deeply tendentious especially in their opposition to contemporary ‘philanthropic’ ideas; these polemical interventions also will be traced. Furthermore, the study will argue that representations of the Xhosa were mobile and commentary on the frontier wars fed into the metropolitan publication circuit. The substance of the military narratives was heterogeneous and the publications included passages which conveyed evidence of pronounced forms of colonial violence and a distinctly racialized vocabulary. However, concomitantly, colonial, guerrilla warfare threw up reciprocities and borrowings in that both the Xhosa and the regular army exhibited flexibility in their tactics. This meant that the insights of soldiers in the narratives were often ambivalent: regular army protagonists asserted a sense of cultural superiority but intimations of vulnerability and alienation were also revealed in the texts. Keywords: Eastern Cape, frontier wars, representation, enemy, narrative, the Xhosa.

Thesis (DPhil (History))--University of Stellenbosch, 1946. / 409 leaves printed on single pages, preliminary pages i- ix and numbered pages 1-445. Includes bibliography. / Digitized at 330 dpi black and white PDF format (OCR), using KODAK i 1220 PLUS scanner. / No abstract available

M.A. (History) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Newspaper article: "Fearless woman remembered. A beautiful monument in Grahamstown, shown in this picture above, was erected to commemorate an act of outstanding bravery by a woman during the battle of Grahamstown in 1819. She was Elizabeth Margaret Salt who, with her husband Sergeant Salt, was among those besieged in Fort England, which was surrounded by hordes of Kafirs.”

James Brownlee was born in April 1824. He was the second of three sons (and five daughters) born to the missionary John Brownlee, and his colonial born wife Catharine. The importance of James as an historical character is obscured by that of his father and elder brother Charles. James had a varied career which was cut short by his untimely death in March 1851 at the youthful age of twenty-six years and eleven months. We are fortunate that he has left a vivid account of several aspects of the seventh Frontier War in a diary which he kept from April to September 1846. The diary also points to the significance of his family in the history of the Eastern Cape. Thesis, p. 1.

[From Introduction]. The name of John Fairbairn is remembered with honour in South Africa for the part he played in the achievement of a freer press in the Cape Colony, in the campaign to prevent Britain from establishing a convict station on Cape soil, and in the movement which resulted in the establishment of a form of representative government in the Cape in 1853. More controversial is his share, as the editor of the first modern newspaper in the Colony, in a campaign to secure just treatment for the natives both inside and outside of the Colony. It is with his treatment of the conflicts, both small and great, between the Colony and the AmaXhosa tribes on its Eastern Frontier that this study is concerned.

In the investigation of the Diary and its validity as evidence, the origin and structure of the treaty System, and the functioning of the treaties, in both their original form and subsequent modification, has been examined, with special reference to Stretch and the Gaika tribes.

The "Reminiscences" of Thomas Stubbs are one of several such compositions which have survived from the 1820 Settlers. The manuscript offers one of the fullest and most lively accounts of frontier life, and the experiences of the Settlers as seen through the eyes of Thomas Stubbs. The object of this thesis has been to reconstruct the life of Thomas Stubbs which has proved an arduous yet absorbing task and to comment upon and evaluate some of the views Stubbs expressed when he wrote the "Reminiscences" between 1874 and 1875, as well as to test, where possible, the validity of the opinions and sentiments formed during a half-century's acquaintance with the Eastern frontier of the Cape of Good Hope.

Preface: William Shaw was undoubtedly one of the greatest of the missionary pioneers to work in southern Africa and it is strange that up until now there has been no major research into his time spent in the Cape Colony and beyond. Apart from his own work, The Story of My Mission, and the Memoir of the Rev. William Shaw by William Boyce, published in 1874, there was nothing devoted exclusively to Shaw until Mrs Celia Sadler published extracts from his letters and journals in Never a Young Man, in 1967. Scholars have examined aspects of Shaw's career in a number of theses, articles and books, but, unlike the attention paid to Dr John Philip, William Shaw has never been the subject of close historical scrutiny. This has, most probably, been attributable to the unfortunate gap in the Shaw correspondence from the late 1830's to the 1850's, but, despite this, I have felt that so important a figure in southern African historiography - both ecclesiastical and secular - should be examined regardless of the lacunae which there might be. When - and if - the missing pieces ever come to light, then the time for the definitive study will have arrived, but until such time there is, most decidedly, a need for what we do have access to, to be sifted and placed in historical context. This is what this thesis has attempted to do with specific reference to his work in the Eastern Cape. As General Superintendent of Wesleyan mission work in "South Eastern Africa", Shaw also had oversight of work in the Bechuana country, but that lies outside the scope of this thesis and requires independent examination. Shaw wrote of the work of the missionary - with his own work firmly in mind, " ... I am fully satisfied ... that wherever there is a British colony in juxtaposition with heathen tribes, or natives, it will be our wisdom to provide for the spiritual wants of the Colonists, while at the same time we ought not to neglect taking earnest measures for the conversion of the heathen."¹ Such an approach made Wesleyan endeavours almost unique in mission history. The proponent of such uniqueness requires a sympathetic yet not hagiographical appraisal. This thesis seeks to accomplish just that. ¹ The Story of My Mission p. 213.

Present day Thembuland is situated roughly between the Mthatha and Kei rivers. It lies within the south-western portion of the political unit which has been known since 1976 as the Republic of Transkei. It comprises the territories formerly known as Emigrant Thembuland (now the districts of Cala and Cofimvaba) and Thembuland Proper, i.e. the districts of Mqanduli, Umtata, Engcobo and Bomvanaland. We have evidence that Thembu people had already settled in Thembu land Proper, at the Mbashe river, by the beginning of the 17th century. Pioneering clans many have entered the territory at a much earlier date. In the 1830's some clans broke away from the Mbashe settlement, and moved to the region of present day Queenstown. In 1853 their lands were included in the so-called Tambookie Location, which in 1871 became the district of Glen Grey. Emigrant Thembuland came into existence in 1865 when four chiefs from Glen Grey accepted Sir Philip Wodehouse's offer to settle on the lands across the White Kei whence the Xhosa chief Sarhili had been expelled in 1857. This thesis deals with the history of the people who lived in these territories between 1850 and 1900.