A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa 1820-2000

A Commonwealth of Knowledge addresses the relationship between social and scientific thought, colonial identity, and political power in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Africa. It hinges on the tension between colonial knowledge, conceived of as a universal, modernizing force, and its realization in the context of a society divided along complex ethnic and racial fault-lines. By means of detailed analysis of colonial cultures, literary and scientific institutions, and expert historical thinking about South Africa and its peoples, it demonstrates the ways in which the cultivation of knowledge has served to support white political ascendancy and claims to nationhood. In a sustained commentary on modern South African historiography, the significance of `broad' South Africanism - a political tradition designed to transcend differences between white English- and Afrikaans-speakers - is emphasized. A Commonwealth of Knowledge also engages with wider comparative debates. These include the nature of imperial and colonial knowledge systems; the role of intellectual ideas and concepts in constituting ethnic, racial, and regional identities; the dissemination of ideas between imperial metropole and colonial periphery; the emergence of amateur and professional intellectual communities; and the encounter between imperial and indigenous or local knowledge systems. The book has broad scope. It opens with a discussion of civic institutions (eg. museums, libraries, botanical gardens and scientific societies), and assesses their role in creating a distinctive sense of Cape colonial identity; the book goes on to discuss the ways in which scientific and other forms of knowledge contributed to the development of a capacious South Africanist patriotism compatible with continued membership of the British Commonwealth; it concludes with reflections on the techno-nationalism of the apartheid state and situates contemporary concerns like the `African Renaissance', and responses to HIV/AIDS, in broad historical context.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1: Literary and Scientific Institutions in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony 2: Of Special Colonial Interest': The Cape Monthly Magazine and the Circulation of Ideas 3: Colonialism, Imperialism, Constitutionalism 4: Science and South Africanism 5: A Commonwealth of Knowledge 6: Conclusion: The Renationalization of Knowledge? Select Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Saul Dubow is professor of history at the University of Sussex. Born in South Africa and educated at the Universities of Cape Town and Oxford, he has written key books on the history of racial segregation and apartheid; the history of scientific racism in South Africa, and the history of colonial science. He has edited several collections and is considered to be a leading authority on race, nationalism and identity in modern South Africa.

Review :
...an important and fresh contribution to the historiography. For the first time in very many years, intellectual history takes centre stage and opens up new terrain. Jane Carruthers, South African Historical Journal A Commonwealth of Knowledge is much more than a mere synthesis since Dubow sheds new light on interconnections and contexts. Only an author like him who is able to cover such a broad range of historical interests, and who over the years collected such an immense and impressive knowledge about details and contexts, could write a book like this. Christoph Marx, African History A welcome addition to recent scholarship Daniel Gilfoyle, African Affairs