This thesis is an analysis of liberal ideology and its role in South African industrialisation during the period 1886-1948. It looks at the growth of a specifically South African "liberal tradition" out of nineteenth century Cape colonial origins and focuses on the development of liberal welfare and reform orientated organisations and agencies. Using the private papers and correspondence of the individuals involved in establishing this reform tradition, the thesis argues that South African liberals were only partially successful in the years before 1948 in emulating their western counterparts in institutionalising themselves as political mediators between the state apparatus and the burgeoning black working class. Lacking a sound political base in the narrow electoral franchise, liberals were forced increasingly onto the defensive as the old paternalist basis of Cape liberalism became eroded. Though for the period between Uni-on and the second world war able use was made of local level politics, the increase in democratic radicalism by the mid 1940s forced liberals towards reformulating their ideology into one of administrative reform from above on the basis of a model of ethnic pluralism. This theory has remained the basis of South African liberal ideology substantially up to the present.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:527105 |
| Date | January 1980 |
| Creators | Rich, Paul B. |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3953/ |
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