Political and social theories of Transkeian administrators in the late nineteenth century

This study sets out to examine the order of categories and values, structuring men's thought and perception at a fundamental level although not systematically formulated, in terms of which the Transkeian magistrates viewed the African communities under their governance. It is thus an essay in colonial administration, but the critical focus has been narrowed and is centred primarily upon the ideas and assumptions the magistrates used in the business of administration to explain society, government and law. At the same time, a major concern of this work has been to place the particular problem with which it deals - the elucidation of magisterial ideas and attitudes - within a wider framework of contemporary social and political thought, to fit them into the matrix of Victorian culture as it conditioned and shaped the administrators' perceptions and responses touching the indigenous black population. A methodological pitfall opens here, of assimilating individual or local currents of ideas to more general patterns - the 'climate of opinion' or what Matthew Arnold called the 'main movement of mind' of the age; of trying to press disparate, multifarious and often carelessly formulated ideas and assumptions into a conceptual framework or theoretical construct that was independently arrived at and presented as given. The mode of procedure followed was one that allowed the source material to suggest broader patterns and larger perspectives according to which it could be most intelligibly and satisfyingly ordered; one also that wove together various logically independent concepts and general propositions, derived from general studies of the topic and period, and brought them to bear on the Transkeian situation. In this way it is hoped that the main features and contours of the magisterial mind have been rendered with as much precision of detail and emphasis as the demands of analytical depth and conceptual rigour would permit.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Historical Studies

Year dc:date.issued

1978

Author dc:creator

• Martin, Samuel John Russell

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Saunders, Christopher
• Webb, Colin

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/18085

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/18085