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In 1905 the Campos Rodrigues Observatory (CRO) was founded in Lourenço Marques (nowadays Maputo), the capital of Mozambique, by then part of the Portuguese overseas empire. In this paper the inception and early history of the CRO are analysed in the broader context of the interwoven history of the Portuguese and British empires in Africa, and specifically with respect to the scientific relations between Mozambique and South Africa. The equipment, personnel, practices and networks involved in the inception and early development of the CRO are brought into focus in order to illustrate the problems and strategies that shaped the establishment and functioning of this observatory, which was conceived essentially as a symbol of imperial stamina and colonial prowess. It is suggested that by providing a focal point for the development of scientific relations between Mozambique and South Africa, the CRO served both Portuguese ambitions for recognition as an imperial power and the emergence of South African nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the emergence of modern forms of football in southern Africa during the late nineteenth century. It focuses on Cape Town - 'the birthplace of South African sport as we know it today' 1 - and draws on comparative material from elsewhere in the region and overseas. It also locates events within wider social and political developments at a time when Britain sought to establish its supremacy through a federation of the South African colonies and republics. Central to the investigation is the need to discover more about the existence of a Cape football code and to ascertain the means by which William Milton championed rugby in the course of promoting a broader imperial sporting culture. In exploring the changes which occur, the article will pay attention to the stance of the press and take into account soccer's struggle for recognition; the establishment of parallel black football organisations, and the escalation in Afrikaner support for rugby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of the South African Historical Journal reflects on the state of the field of pre-industrial history at the Cape of Good Hope. It is an opportunity to look back on the previous decade of research, identify accomplishments, and chart future directions. We note a significant historiographical shift from research that focused broadly on colonised peoples, particularly slaves and Khoesan, to emerging literatures that give equally careful attention to colonisers. This shift moves the field toward a more complete picture of colonial society; it accompanies a present period of political uncertainty. The growing body of scholarship on early colonial history is drawing more practitioners. The resulting exploration of new topics and the revision of existing interpretations are producing robust, methodologically diverse work, especially noteworthy for its interdisciplinarity. While this work increasingly situates the Cape in broader regional and global histories, even more intentional efforts are required in order to avoid parochialism. The transition from Dutch to British rule at the Cape also requires further scrutiny. These efforts have the ability to challenge existing periodisations and lead to a re-examination of the continuities before and after the mineral revolutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1843 William Sammons founded the peculiarly named Sam Sly's African Journal (1843-1851) in Cape Town. Claiming to be a 'register of facts, fiction, news, literature, commerce and amusement', the African Journal was a hybrid newspaper and literary and satirical periodical aimed at an Anglophone immigrant readership. Studies of the press have emphasised its role as a discursive agent in forming imagined communities of identity, but this has tended to focus on isolating nations or localities rather than noting the global context. However, recent scholarship on the British Empire has moved beyond nationally focused histories towards examining metropole and colony within the same mutually constitutive frame. This article draws on the conception of the circulation of newspapers as a significant means for negotiating geographies of identity in the empire, but seeks to broaden the focus beyond networks of competing official, humanitarian and settler discourses. This involves examining the materiality of the colonial press - its local and global circulation and readership, and the nature of its diverse content ranging from imaginative literature, to letters and editorials - to shed light on how the African Journal's readers negotiated their identity, cultural attachment and respectability as colonists of British descent poised on the empire's periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the loss of their American colonies and prior to the settlement of the land which became known as Australia, the British Government intended to found a penal settlement in South West Africa at the mouth of the Orange River. The main proposer of this scheme, Edward Thompson, died before the plan was put into action. This article asks the counterfactual question of what might have happened, had Thompson lived to give a very different story of the voyage to 'Das Voltas'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we discuss a census made of the Cape mission stations in 1849. First, we analyse how it came into being, in terms both of the political pressure which led to the decision of the Legislative Council of the Cape Colony to order its compilation, and of the process by which the actual work was done. Second, we present a number of the more salient of the results of the census, which allow for the first time a full compilation of the number of residents at (almost all) the mission stations within the Cape Colony, broken down by sex and to a degree by age. At the same time, we can provide a degree of information on the ways in which the mission inhabitants were integrated into the Cape's labour process, both formal and informal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination of three British colonial regimes that existed in the 19th century in southern Africa that were administered with varying forms of archival governments. The author discusses the role that gathering and preserving knowledge about a people traditionally played in colonial regimes and attempts to show that imperialism was possible without these mechanisms. The author examines how was colonialism was administered in the Cape Colony run by Sir George Grey, in the Natal colony under Sir Theophilus Shepstone and in the territory of the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek with President Paul Kruger.

When the Rhodesian Front Party under Prime Minister lan Smith declared unilateral independence (UDI) from Britain on November 11 1965, the international community responded by imposing economic sanctions against the rebel regime. At the time, the British prime minister, Harold Wilson was convinced that given the smallness and the fragility of the Rhodesian economy, international economic sanctions would quickly bring Rhodesia to its knees. Sanctions did not succeed, in the short run, in bringing the Rhodesian economy to its knees, however, partly because South Africa and Portugal refused to participate in sanctions and helped Rhodesia circumvent sanctions. This study examines South Africa's economic support for Rhodesia in the early years of Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence. It argues that South Africans defied international opinion over the Rhodesian question partly because of the widespread sympathy for their kith and kin across the border that were fighting the same battle against black nationalism as the South African ruling party, but also because of South Africa's need to protect and promote national interests through a demonstration of the inefficacy of international sanctions and boycotts at a time when it was, itself, a possible target for international sanctions because of its apartheid system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the hidden agenda of how to define the nature of the missionary enterprise in its relationship to British colonialism. Focus on a 19th century scandal involving James Read, superintendent of the London Missionary Society (LMS) in South Africa; Read's admission to impregnating a teenager; Moral outrage concerning the approach of the LMS to missions.