The Historiographical Development of the Concept “mfecane” and ...

1990’s. 102 Six of these works were used as school textbooks in both English
and Dutch, in addition to his Compendium of South African History and
Geography of 1874, which was written for use in schools. Agar-Hamilton
thought that Theal school books were ‘the only history that most South Africans
ever read [and] were used every year by thousands of school children [English,
Dutch and African] throughout South Africa’, 103 informing the ideas that
generations of colonists held on African history and the mfecane narrative. The
chapters on the mfecane narrative in one of these - Short History of South
Africa - were re-printed four years later as South Africa, a single-volume history
for the popular British market, on whose readers it had a long-lasting impact. 104
Theal’s impact on mfecane historiography was significant. Despite his extensive
archival research, he remained a conservative settler apologist who
consolidated all the previously published accounts of the mfecane narrative into
a coherent master narrative, which was then disseminated into histories for
academics, the general reader, and Dutch and English and African
schoolchildren in south Africa. He was the first historian to integrate the African
history of the mfecane period, hitherto written with a specific geographical or
ethnic bias, into a coherent narrative. But he did cover African history in racially
separated chapters. This resulted in a failure to integrate the colonial and
African histories into one story. By placing Shaka and the Zulu state at the
centre of the mfecane narrative, Theal followed the tentative ideas of preceding
authors. He however went a step further, creating a Zulu-centric, integrated
102 Wylie, Savage Delight, 191.
103 Quote from J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton, The Road to the North (London, 1937), quoted in Babrow,
'Theal: Conflicting Opinions of Him', 10-11. G.M. Theal, Short History of South Africa, 1486-
1826 (Cape Town,1890). G.M. Theal, Korte Geschiedenis van Zuid-Afrika van (1486-1814)
(Cape Town, 1990) - there were three further editions up to 1897. G.M. Theal, Geschiedenis
van Zuid-Afrika voor Kinderen (s'Gravenhage, 1892). G.M. Theal, Geschiedenis van Zuid Afrika
(Den Haag, 1897). G.M. Theal, Maskew Miller's Short History of South Africa and its People
(Cape Town, 1909). G.M. Theal, Maskew Miller se Kort Geskiedenis van Suid Afrika (Cape
Town, 1922).
104 Theal, Short History of South Africa. G.M. Theal, South Africa, Stories of Nations Series
(London, 1894). There were eight editions until 1925. One of those was Theal, Progress of
South Africa.
139