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

the Transgariep were only published in the above-mentioned publications
between 1833 and 1838. Both the dominant and the contradictory discourses in
these texts will be highlighted.
The primary publications, 1823 to 1828
Geographical and ethnological knowledge of southern Africa outside the
borders of the Cape Colony was very meagre until the early 1840’s. The area
beyond the Kei and the Gariep was a “blank space” 7 in the minds of the reading
public in the Colony and Europe. Contemporary writers, cartographers and
traders thought of the far interior in terms of the ‘extensive blank’, 8 a ‘blank
map’, 9 or as a ‘terra incognita’, which in 1834 Chase estimated would cover an
area of 50 000 square miles in extent, 10 an area which he drew graphically on
one of his maps. 11 This “blank space”, however, was not static, but constantly
contracting as Europeans visited, and/or settled, parts of it. This empty area, on
colonial maps and in the minds of Europeans, comprised African-occupied land
in which the events described in the mfecane narrative were deemed to have
taken place.
Information on contemporary events in the blank space was transmitted by
authors who reported on an alien land and culture, the local language of which
most of them could not speak. Most authors, as well as their African informants,
were situated only at the edge of the “blank space” and were far removed from
actual events. Some, however, were either eyewitnesses to events or reported
from within the “blank space”, being travellers or traders in Port Natal. The
translation of such information directly into English, or via Dutch, was often
7 For the origin of the term, see Richner, ‘Withering Away', 2-3. For a visual illustration see O.I.
Norwich, Maps of Africa (Johannesburg, 1983), 246 – 249, 252, 256-260.
8 A.G. Bain, 'Recent Travels Beyond the Colony, North East of Graaff-Reinet', The South
African Commercial Advertiser, 26 September 1829.
9 W. Shaw, The Story of my Mission in South-Eastern Africa (London, 1860), 558-9.
10 J.C. Chase, 'Progress and Present State of Geographical Discovery in the African Continent',
The South African Quarterly Journal, 3 (1834), 226.
11 P.R. Kirby, 'John Centlivres Chase, Geographer and Cartographer', Africana Notes and
News, 18 (1968), 135-60.
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