Materials Necessary for the Formation of a Correct Knowledge of the History of Colonialism in South Africa? Reassessing the Historical Productions of Donald Moodie and Their Implications

ABSTRACT

The contribution of the Rev. Dr John Philip and Donald Moodie to South African historiography has received some attention from historians, but the extent and duration of Moodie’s attempts to challenge Philip’s version of South African history have not been quite so fully explored. Nor have Moodie’s subsequent publications. This article examines Moodie’s dispute with Philip and their conflicting conceptions of history, and what Moodie’s less well-known publications reveal about his notions of the history of South Africa. In the process, it rediscovers Moodie’s mysteriously lost only full-length historical narrative and examines what the contestations around the colonial archive in the first half of the nineteenth century reveal about the challenges of the colonial archive and South African historiography today. It suggests that Moodie’s works can be located against a backdrop of conservative British intellectual thought in South Africa and that understanding the influence of Moodie’s publications is important in historicising the development of colonial knowledge systems in South Africa.

KEYWORDS:

• Donald Moodie
• John Philip
• South African historiography
• colonial archive
• Cape Colony
• Natal

Acknowledgements

Appreciation is extended to Rulani Sebopetsa and the librarians of the main reading room, and Melanie Geustyn in the special collections section, of the National Library of South Africa in Cape Town for their friendly and professional assistance in accessing relevant source material. A thank you is also extended to Erika le Roux in the Western Cape Archives Repository for, as always, making research there pleasant and productive. A special word of appreciation is extended to the editor and anonymous reviewers of the journal for helpful comments and insights. The author has no conflict of interest to declare.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 W.J. de Kock and D.W. Krüger, eds, Dictionary of South African Biography, vol. 2 (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1972), 488–491.

2 R. Ross, ‘Donald Moodie and the Origins of South African Historiography’, in R. Ross, Beyond the Pale: Essays on the History of Colonial South Africa (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), 192–211; A. Bank, ‘The Great Debate and the Origins of South African Historiography’, Journal of African History, 38, 2 (1997), 261–281. The phrase ‘racially structured historiography’ is used by Bank.

3 V.C. Malherbe, ‘Donald Moodie: South Africa’s Pioneer Oral Historian’, History in Africa, 25 (1998), 171–197.

4 D. Moodie, The Record; or, a Series of Official Papers Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Native Tribes of South Africa, Parts I, III and V (Cape Town: A.S. Robertson, 1838–1841).

5 D. Moodie, Correspondence between Donald Moodie, Esq., Compiler and Editor of the Cape Records, and the Rev. John Philip, D.D., Author of Researches in South Africa, Relative to the Production for Publication of Alleged ‘Official Authority’ for the Statement that ‘in the Year 1774 the Whole Race of Bushmen or Hottentots Who Had not Submitted to Servitude Was Ordered to be Seized or Extirpated’ (Cape Town: A.S. Robertson, 1841); D. Moodie, The Evidence of the Motives and Objects of the Bushman Wars, 1769–77: Including and Distinguishing the Official Authorities Cited by the Author of ‘Researches in South Africa’, and Recently Restored to the Colonial Archives (Cape Town: A.S. Robertson, 1841); D. Moodie, Specimens of the Authentic Records of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, Relative to the Aboriginal Tribes: To Which Is Prefixed an Inquiry into the Justice and Expediency of Completing the Publication of the Authentic Records of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town: A.S. Robertson, 1841); D. Moodie, Lecture on the Early Visits of Europeans to Natal, ad 1685–1690: Delivered to the Natal Society on the 7th October, 1852 (Pietermaritzburg: May and Davis, 1852); D. Moodie, A Voice from the Kahlamba: Origin of the Bushmen (Pietermaritzburg: May and Davis, n.d. [1855?]); D. Moodie, A Voice from the Kahlamba, No. II: The Natal Kafirs, Intercourse with Natal during the Seventeenth Century, Early Relations of the Dutch with Kafirs There and Elsewhere, Being the Substances of a Lecture Delivered to the Natal Society, on the 23rd of January, 1857 (Pietermaritzburg: May and Davis, n.d. [1857]).

6 D. Moodie, Natal Kafir Question (Pietermaritzburg: May and Davis, 1860).

7 Bank, ‘The Great Debate’, 275.

8 S. Mendelssohn, Mendelssohn’s South African Bibliography, vol. 2 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1910), 45.

9 D. Moodie, Het Record, of, Eene reeks van officiele papieren, betrekkelyk den toestand en de behandeling der naturellen van Zuid Afrika. Deel 1. 1649–1720, No. 1 (Cape Town: A.S. Robertson, 1838). The Fairbridge Collection at the National Library of South Africa has two different editions of Het Record in different typeface and in different format (one printed by the Victoria Press and another printed by C. Moll), but both end abruptly at the same place.

10 Ross, ‘Donald Moodie’, 206. The copy consulted in the National Library of South Africa has been bound with Moodie, Specimens of the Authentic Records.

11 D. Moodie, Colonial Service of Donald Moodie: Cape 1825–1845, Natal 1845–1851 (Pietermaritzburg: May and Davis, 1860).

12 J. Philip, Researches in South Africa, Illustrating the Civil, Moral, and Religious Condition of the Native Tribes, vol. 1 (London: James Duncan, 1828), 2; Bank, ‘The Great Debate’, 263.

13 Philip, Researches in South Africa, 4.

14 Philip, Researches in South Africa, 19.

15 T. Keegan, Dr Philip’s Empire: One Man’s Struggle for Justice in Nineteenth-Century South Africa (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2016), 114.

16 Moodie, The Record, Foreword.

17 Ross, ‘Donald Moodie’, 203.

18 Ross, ‘Donald Moodie’, 204–209. For a discussion of the connection between Moodie’s work in rebutting the evidence upon which Lord Glenelg reversed D’Urban’s establishment of the Province of Queen Adelaide between the Kei and Keiskamma Rivers, see Ross, ‘Donald Moodie’, 194–196.

19 Moodie, The Record, Foreword (affidavit dated 11 May 1838).

20 Moodie, The Record (Letter, Bell to Moodie, 31 May 1838).

21 A. Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001), 66, 130–137; Bank, ‘The Great Debate’, 278–279.

22 Moodie, Specimens of the Authentic Records, 11.

23 D. Moodie, South African Annals, 1652-1795 (Pietermaritzburg: May & Davis, 1855), iii-iv.

24 Moodie, Correspondence, 3 (Letter, Moodie to Philip, 6 May 1841).

25 Moodie, Correspondence, 3 (Letter, Moodie to Philip, 6 May 1841).

26 Moodie, Correspondence, 4 (Letter, Moodie to Philip, 8 May 1841).

27 Moodie, Correspondence, 5 (Letter, Philip to Moodie, 11 May 1841; Letter, Moodie to Philip, 13 May 1841).

28 Moodie, Correspondence, 6–7 (Letter, Philip to Moodie, 18 May 1841). The report referred to by Philip is located in British Parliamentary Papers, Papers Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Native Inhabitants of Southern Africa, Within the Colony and the Cape of Good Hope, or Beyond the Frontiers of that Colony. Part I. Hottentots and Bosejesmen; Caffres; Griquas. Ordered by the House of Commons to be Printed 18 March 1835 (London: House of Commons, 1835); and British Parliamentary Papers, Papers Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Native Inhabitants of Southern Africa, Within the Colony and the Cape of Good Hope, or Beyond the Frontiers of that Colony. Part II. Ordered by the House of Commons to be Printed 1 June 1835 (London: House of Commons 1835). For details of the Commission of Eastern Inquiry at the Cape, see Z. Laidlaw, ‘Investigating Empire: Humanitarians, Reform and the Commission of Eastern Inquiry’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40, 5 (2012), 753, 757.

29 Moodie, Correspondence, 7–8 (Letter, Moodie to Philip, 22 May 1841; Moodie, Correspondence, 8–10 (Letter, Moodie to Philip, 29 May 1841).

30 Moodie, Correspondence, 10–11 (Letter, Moodie to Secretary to Government, 7 June 1841).

31 Moodie, Correspondence, 16–30 (Letter, Moodie to Philip, 6 July 1841).

32 Moodie, Correspondence, 30–32 (Letter, Moodie to Secretary to Government, 6 July 1841).

33 Moodie, Correspondence, 33–34 (Letter, Philip to Secretary to Government, 9 July 1841).

34 Moodie, Correspondence, 41 (Letter, Faure to Secretary to Government, 9 July 1841).

35 Moodie, Correspondence, 34–35 (Letter, Moodie to Secretary to Government, 13 July 1841).

36 Moodie, Correspondence, 62–75 (Letter, Moodie to Secretary to Government, 22 September 1841).

37 Moodie, Correspondence, 42 (Letter, Faure to Moodie, 16 August 1841).

38 Moodie, Correspondence, 52–53 (Letter, Moodie to Von Buchenroder, 30 July 1841).

39 Moodie, Correspondence, 53–54 (Letter, Von Buchenroder to Moodie, 13 August 1841).

40 Ross, ‘Donald Moodie’, 208. See Moodie, The Record, Part III, 70–71 (Extract of Resolution of Council, 5 June 1777).

41 M. Adhikari, ‘A Total Extinction Confidently Hoped For: The Destruction of Cape San Society under Dutch Colonial Rule, 1700–1795’, Journal of Genocide Research, 21, 1–2 (2010), 19–44; N. Penn, ‘The British and the “Bushmen”: The Massacre of the Cape San, 1799–1828’, Journal of Genocide Research, 15, 2 (2013), 183–200.

42 Penn, ‘The British and the “Bushmen”’, 197–198.

43 Moodie, The Evidence of the Motives and Objects.

44 Ross, ‘Donald Moodie’, 211.

45 Moodie, Colonial Service of Donald Moodie, 32 (Extract Letter, Moodie to Governor and High Commissioner, 29 October 1855).

46 Moodie intended to publish a historical work of his own. Ross, ‘Donald Moodie’, 211. His South African Annals appear to be a stalled attempt at this. Mendelssohn, Mendelssohn’s South African Bibliography, vol. 2, 47–48.

47 Moodie, Voice from the Kahlamba II: Natal Kafirs, 10, 13.

48 Moodie, Correspondence, 55 (Letter, Moodie to Von Buchenroder, 4 September 1841).

49 Moodie, Voice from the Kahlamba: Origin of the Bushmen, 18.

50 Moodie, Voice from the Kahlamba II: Natal Kafirs, 5.

51 Moodie, Voice from the Kahlamba II: Natal Kafirs, 6–7.

52 D. Moodie, A Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, in Reference to the Following Words in the No. for July 1854, ‘Mr. Maynier Witnessed the Distribution of 30,000 Head of Cattle’, and ‘The Dutch Found the Kafirs as far West as the Gamtoos’, and Notes on the Cape Boundaries, 1652–1798, in Reference to the Information Obtained by the Select Committee of Aborigines in 1836, to which is Added, Precepts and Practice, or the Realities of Industrial Training, 1688 to 1795 (Pietermaritzburg: May & Davis, 1859).

53 Moodie, A Letter to the Editor, 1.

54 Bank, ‘The Great Debate’, 275.

55 Malherbe, ‘Donald Moodie’, 175–176.

56 Ross, ‘Donald Moodie’, 204–205.

57 Malherbe, ‘Donald Moodie’, 175–176.

58 A.F. Hattersley, The British Settlement of Natal: A Study in Imperial Migration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 71.

59 Malherbe, ‘Donald Moodie’, 275–276.

60 J. Guy, Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2013), 65.

61 Guy, Theophilus Shepstone, 153–154.

62 Guy, Theophilus Shepstone, 154.

63 Moodie, Colonial Service of Donald Moodie, 29 (Extract Letter, Lieutenant Governor to Moodie, 26 August 1853); Moodie, Colonial Service of Donald Moodie, 30 (Extract Letter, Lieutenant Governor to Moodie, 1 October 1852).

64 Natal Witness, Editorial, 4 January 1861; Natal Witness, Obituary, 30 August 1861.

65 Publication of the book was advertised in the Natal Witness on 20 April 1860. It continued to be advertised until August as ‘just published’.

66 Moodie claimed to have been ridiculed for being an ‘antiquated philanthropist’ (Moodie, Natal Question, 5).

67 Moodie, Natal Kafir Question, 13–15.

68 Moodie, Natal Kafir Question, 41.

69 Moodie, Natal Kafir Question, 24.

70 Moodie, Natal Kafir Question, 44.

71 Mendelssohn, Mendelssohn’s South African Bibliography, vol. 2, 48. Mendelssohn apparently consulted the book in the British Museum.

72 The historians are L. Young, ‘Policy of Benjamin Pine in Natal, 1850–55’, Archives Year Book for South African History, 1951, vol. 2 (Cape Town: Cape Times, 1951), 286; and P. Harries, ‘Plantations, Passes and Proletarians: Labour and the Colonial State in Nineteenth Century Natal’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 13, 3 (1987), 375 n. 3. The Africana book specialists are Mendelssohn, Mendelssohn’s South African Bibliography, vol. 2, 48; F. Bradlow, ‘Sixty-Seven Years Later in Africana’, Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Library, 37, 3 (1982), 206–209; and A.C.G. Lloyd in the South African Quarterly of September 1915, as discussed by Bradlow, ‘Sixty-Seven Years Later’. There is also a passing reference in the entry on Moodie in De Kock and Krüger, Dictionary of South African Biography, vol. 2, 490.

73 Moodie, Natal Question, handwritten comment, inside back cover. The green wrapper is dated to 1859. The book has two title pages, one dated 1859 and the other 1860.

74 Some indication that the book was not well received can be gleaned from the visit by the Prince of Wales in 1860. At the time, the Natal Witness was promoting three books by Natal authors: Moodie’s book on Natal Africans; C. Johnson, Observations on Health and Disease, and the Physical Economy of Human Life in Natal (Pietermaritzburg: May and Davis, 1860); and R.J. Mann, The Colony of Natal: An Account of the Characteristics and Capabilities of This British Dependency (London: Jarrold and Sons, 1860). As part of the official ceremonies, bound copies of only the latter two were presented by the colonial government to Prince Alfred as examples of ‘our local literary talent’. Natal Witness, 7 September 1860.

75 See website: https://www.worldcat.org/title/1017183303, accessed 27 July 2023. The British Library catalogue lists many of Moodie's publication, but not the Natal Kafir Question. See website: https://bll01.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Donald%20Moodie&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=Not_BL_Suppress&vid=44BL_INST:BLL01&lang=en&offset=0 (accessed 2 May 2024); https://search.library.yale.edu/quicksearch?q=ocm04274885 (accessed 2 May 2024); and https://librarysearch.kcl.ac.uk/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma990009639570206881&context=L&vid=44KCL_INST:44KCL_INST&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,Moodie,%20Natal%20Kafir%20Question&facet=rtype,exclude,reviews,lk&offset=0 (accessed 2 May 2024).

76 Ross, ‘Donald Moodie’, 203.

77 Bank, ‘The Great Debate’, 280; M. Brabow, ‘A Critical Assessment of Dr George McCall Theal’ (Master’s thesis, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 1962); C. Saunders, The Making of the South African Past: Major Historians on Race and Class (Cape Town: David Philip, 1988), 36–44; and N. Tisani, ‘Continuity and Change in Xhosa Historiography during the Nineteenth Century: An Exploration Through Textual Analysis’ (PhD dissertation, Rhodes University, Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), 2000), 196–238.

78 Western Cape Archives Depot, Verbatim Copies 866, Moodie Papers, 1700–1736, Report, 1 April 1703.

79 H.C.V. Leibbrandt, Precis of the Archives of the Cape of Good Hope: The Defence of Willem Adriaan van der Stel (Cape Town: W.A. Richard and Sons, 1897), 133–149.

80 D. Moodie, List of Official Documents, Explanatory of the Relations between the Colonists of the Cape of Good Hope and the Independent Native Tribes, Compiled and Printed by Order of Government, Preparatory to the Formation of a Schedule, Specifying the Substance of the Papers Here Enumerated; Together with That of Such Other Official Papers – Applying to the Same Subject – as May Be Furnished, in Order, as far as Possible, to Supply the Deficiencies of the Present List, December 1836 (Cape Town: Gazette and Trade, 1836).

81 P.B. Borcherds, An Auto-Biographical Memoir (Cape Town: A.S. Robinson, 1861), 109–116.

82 British Parliamentary Papers, Papers Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Native Inhabitants of Southern Africa, Part I, 9–23.

83 Penn, ‘The British and the “Bushmen”’,184.

84 Ross, ‘Donald Moodie’, 192.

85 A.L. Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance’, Archival Science, 2 (2002), 87.

86 Xolela Mangcu, ed., Becoming Worthy Ancestors: Archives, Public Deliberations and Identity in South Africa (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2011), xiii.

87 Tisani, ‘Continuity and Change in Xhosa Historiography’, v.

88 H. Bradford, ‘Akukho Ntaka Inokubhabha Ngephiko Elinye (No Bird Can Fly on One Wing): The “Cattle-Killing Delusion” and Black Intellectuals, c.1840–1910’, African Studies, 67, 2 (2008), 226.

89 N. Mkhize, ‘The Missing Idiom of African Historiography: African Historical Writing in Walter Rubusana’s Zemk’inkomo Magwalandini’, in J. Bam, L. Ntsebeza, and A. Zinn, eds, Whose History Counts: Decolonising African Pre-Colonialism Historiography (Stellenbosch: African Sun Media, 2018), 58–61. See also N. Mkhize, ‘In Search of Native Dissidence: R.T. Kawa’s Mfecane Historiography in Ibali lamaMfengu (1929)’, International Journal of African Renaissance Studies, 13, 2 (2018), 94.

90 Mkhize, ‘Missing Idiom of African Historiography’, 60.

91 D. Moodie, The Record Or, a Series of Official Papers Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Native Tribes of South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), ‘The Cambridge Library Collection’.

92 E. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 331.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Denver A. Webb

Denver A. Webb is a historian and Senior Director for Strategic Resource Mobilisation and Advancement at Nelson Mandela University. He publishes on different aspects of the nature of colonial power and military conquest in the Cape Colony and Xhosaland.