Imagining The Cape Colony History Literature And The South African Nation David Johnson by David Johnson 9780748650873, 0748650873 instant download after payment.

How the Cape Colony was imagined as a political community is examined by considering a variety of writers, from major European literati and intellectuals (Camões, Southey, Rousseau, Adam Smith), to well-known travel writers like François Levaillant and Lady Anne Barnard, to figures on the margins of colonial histories, like settler rebels, slaves and early African nationalists. Complementing the analyses of these primary texts are discussions of the many subsequent literary works and histories of the Cape Colony.

These diverse writings are discussed first in relation to current debates in postcolonial studies about settler nationalism, anti-colonial resistance, and the imprint of eighteenth-century colonial histories on contemporary neo-colonial politics. Secondly, the project of imagining the post-apartheid South African nation functions as a critical lens for reading the eighteenth-century history of the Cape Colony, with the extensive commentaries on literature and history associated with the Thabo Mbeki presidencies given particular attention.