South Africa: A Narrative History

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The Barnes & Noble Review
An in-depth look at the most powerful, and controversial, country on the African continent.

Library Journal

With bold strokes that some may find candid but others coarse, Welsh sketches South Africa's history from the Portuguese landing in 1488 to the evolving nation's first democratic election in 1994. He follows the area's development from East Indies way-station to trading company site to settlement, through British expansion, the Boer War (1898-1902), and apartheid. Peoples and personalities lead his recap, from the original Bushman-Hottentots, advancing Bantu-speakers, and Afrikaners to English-speaking immigrants, including Indians and the racially mixed people called "coloured." Welsh emphasizes potential, writing of the area's peculiar historical isolation, its complexity of cultures, and its bountiful mineral wealth. The result reads with the verve that marked the English-born writer's A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong (Kodansha, 1993), but it faces tough competition from works by Robert A. Ross, Timothy J. Keegan, and Leonard M. Thompson in the escalating contest to formulate a new history for a new South Africa.
—Thomas Davis, Arizona State University, Tempe

Booknews

Welsh, an author and international businessman, draws on previously unpublished source materials to relate the story of South Africa beginning before the arrival of white settlers and ending at the finish of the Mandela presidency. He examines this history through the clash and engagement of cultures, including tribal, Afrikaner, and British, and analyzes South Africa's complex role in imperial history, as well as the international geopolitical impact of its history of apartheid. The book's readability make it useful both to students of African history and to more casual readers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Stephen Taylor

Welsh maintains a clear narrative thread through this hugely complex story....Welsh hs grappled bravely with a vast and daunting subject...
— The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

This massive, thoroughly competent history of South Africa has everything except the final, galvanizing spark of life. As Welsh shows, from the first stirrings of recorded history, South Africans have demonstrated a perverse genius for making the precisely wrong choice at every important historical moment. Apartheid was only the latest and most egregious example of this historical ineptitude. Although it wasn't formally enunciated until the late 1940s, its roots go far back. From the very first encounters between exploring Portuguese and the native pastoralists and nomads, there was suspicion and hostility. Apart from scenery, some fresh water, and a few safe harbors, South Africa had little to recommend itself to early explorers. The Dutch eventually settled Cape Town merely as a provision stop for ships on the long voyage to the vastly more important Indies. But colonists-Dutch and French Huguenots at first, later English-continued to trickle in, and started spreading north and east. Violence and war were endemic, white on black, white on white, black on black. And it only got worse and worse, with escalations on both sides. With the discovery of diamonds and gold, South Africa was transformed from a backwater at the bottom of the world into a regional powerhouse, and whites became even more ossified in their attitudes. It was only with the end of apartheid and the transition to a full democracy that South Africans at last seemed to have escaped their fatal historical incompetence. Welsh (A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong, 1993) has a great command of facts and details, and as a thorough and straightforward account of names, dates, and events, this is exceptional.But he has little feeling for the revealing details and telling anecdotes that illuminate the best histories.