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George McCall Theal and Lovedale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Christopher Saunders
Christopher Saunders*
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
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Extract

South Africa's most prolific and influential historian still awaits a biographer. Such brief biographical sketches of his life as do exist say little about his career before he began work in the Cape archives in the late 1870s. Given the views he espoused in his later writings, it is at first surprising to find that he spent over five years at the Lovedale Seminary outside Alice in the eastern cape working closely with missionaries and Africans. An examination of this period of his life throws light on his historiographical career as a whole and reveals new complexities in his character.

In the early 1870s Lovedale was the most influential institution of its kind in South Africa. A non-sectarian, non-denominational Christian school and a theological seminary, it had been founded by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries in 1841. It was rejuvenated under the leadership of Dr. James Stewart--missionary, medical doctor, explorer--who came to it as teacher in 1867 and took over as its second principal in 1870. Stewart emphasized the importance of “industrial” activities, including printing and bookbinding, and greatly enlarged Lovedale's intake of students. Drawing Africans not only from the eastern Cape but increasingly also from farther afield, the school grew from 92 pupils in 1870 to 336 in 1873 and 460 in 1876.

In mid-1872 Stewart needed someone who could both teach and supervise the printing works. George McCall Theal met these requirements. He had taught at a small elementary school at Knysna in the late 1850s, then from 1867 in the public undenominational school at King William's Town, later to be known as Dale College.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 8 , 1981 , pp. 155 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1981

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References

NOTES

1. Apthorp, Elsa, “South African Literary Portraits VII: Dr. Theal,” South African Bookman, 3 (June, 1911)Google Scholar; Norton, W.A., “Dr. Theal and the Records of South-East Africa,” South African Journal of Science, 19(1922)Google Scholar; Bosman, I.D., Dr. George McCall Theal as die Geskiedskrywer van Suid-Afrika (Amsterdam, 1931)Google Scholar; Boëseken, A.J., “Theal as Baanbreker (11 April 1837-17 April 1919),” S.A. Argiefblad, 1(1959)Google Scholar; Babrow, Merle, “A Critical Assessment of Dr. George McCall Theal” (M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1962)Google Scholar; Immelman, R.F.M., “George McCall Theal: A Biographical Sketch” in Theal, G.M., ed., Basutoland Records, 1 (reprint, Cape Town, 1964).Google Scholar See also the sketch by “H.A.” in Cape Mercury, 3 February 1904, and various obituaries.

2. Cape Parliamentary Papers (CPP), G.27-1874, p. 6, G.12-1877, p. 128. On Lovedale generally and Stewart see Shepherd, R.H.W., Lovedale South Africa The Story of a Century (Lovedale, n.d.)Google Scholar; Wells, James, The Life of James Stewart (London, 1909)Google Scholar; Stewart, James, Dawn in the Dark Continent (Edinburgh, 1903)Google Scholar, Brock, Sheila, “James Stewart and Lovedale,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1974).Google Scholar

3. Denfield, Joseph, “Notes on Some Lost Border Newspaper,” Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Library, 19 (March 1965), 74–79.Google Scholar

4. Theal, G.M., South Africa As It Is (King William's Town, 1871), 28.Google Scholar

5. Apthorp, , “Dr. Theal,” 135.Google Scholar

6. Cape Archives, Acc. 378, cutting: Theal to Editor, Telegraph and Standard, 19 August 1873.

7. Young, Robert, African Wastes Reclaimed (London, 1902), 229.Google Scholar

8. King William's Town Gazette, 12 July 1871. For Theal's account of his journey to the fields see his letters in ibid, 2 October and 23 October 1871.

9. King William's Town Gazette, 13 December 1871: letter by Theal dated 23 November. Cf. Theal, , History of South Africa (11 vols.: reprint, Cape Town, 1964), 8:375, 394.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., 8:394-96n.

11. Apthorp, , “Dr. Theal,” 135.Google Scholar

12. Theal, , History of South Africa, 8: 354.Google Scholar

13. Anthorp, , “Dr. Theal,” 135.Google Scholar

14. Theal, , South Africa As It Is, 64.Google Scholar

15. CPP, G.1-1876, p. clxv. Cf. G.16-76, p. 81; Christian Express, February, 1876.

16. Wells, , Stewart, 219.Google Scholar

17. CPP, G.12-1876, p. 47; Theal to Stewart, 18 June 1874, Stewart Papers, University of Cape Town Library.

18. Theal to Stewart, 28 July 1874, Stewart Papers.

19. Cape Archives, Acc. 378: cutting, Theal to Editor of Telegraph and Standard, 19 August 1873.

20. Theal, G.M., History of the Boers in South Africa (London, 1887)Google Scholar, preface.

21. Cape Archives, Acc. 378, undated cuttings from 1877; Christian Express, September 1877; Theal to Noble, 1 February 1877, Rhodes University Library Cory Ms. 7359; Cape Monthly Magazine, October 1874, July 1877, September 1878.

22. Wells, , Stewart, 220.Google Scholar

23. Theal to Stewart, 20 October 1879, Stewart Papers.

24. Macdonald, James, Light in Africa (London, 1890), 16.Google Scholar

25. Bokwe to Stewart, 16 November 1877, Stewart Papers.

26. Ibid.

27. Cape Archives, GGR 8, Civil Commissioner, Alice, to J.X. Merriman, 6 December 1877.

28. CPP, G.17-1878, p. 123.

29. Buchanan to Mina Stewart, 21 January 1878, quoted by Brock, , “Stewart and Lovedale,” 209.Google Scholar For details of the Watson affair see CPP, A.39-1878.

30. Nightingale to Stewart, 17 December 1878, Stewart Papers.

31. Theal, G.M., Compendium of South African History and Geography (2nd ed., Lovedale, 1876), preface.Google Scholar Colonel Collins' report of 1809 in Part V of Moodie, Donald, ed., The Record, or a Series of Official Papers… (Cape Town, 1841)Google Scholar; Barrow, John, An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa (2 vols., London, 1801, 1804)Google Scholar; Lichtenstein, Henry, Travels in Southern Africa (2 vols., London, 1812, 1815).Google Scholar

32. Theal, Compendium (2nd ed.), preface.

33. Cape Archives, Acc. 378, cutting, Theal to Editor, Telegraph and Standard, 19 August 1873.

34. See esp. “Dr. Theal on South African History,” Quarterly Review, (July 1900). Many of the points made by this anonymous reviewer were to be taken up by Merle Babrow in her “Critical Assessment.”

35. Stewart, , Dawn, 98.Google Scholar

36. Ibid, quoting the review in Quarterly Review.

37. Theal, History of the Boers, preface; idem, Catalogue of South African Books and Pamphlets(Cape Town, 1912), 295.

38. E.G., “Throughout the work I have tried… to relate occurrences just as they took place, without favour towards one class of people or prejudice against another. I have no interests to serve with any party, and I am on equally friendly terms with all… I am by birth a Canadian… Thus no ties of blood, no prejudices acquired in youth, stand as barriers to my forming an impartial judgment of occurrences in South Africa in bygone times.”: Theal, , The History of South Africa Under the Administration of the Dutch East India Company (2 vols.: London, 1898)Google Scholar, preface.

39. A brief and very unhappy spell as assistant magistrate responsible for Africans in Tamacha district in the eastern Cape in 1881--which for Theal followed the traumatic experience of being “dismissed” as archivist and seeing another appointed to the archival post he coveted--did nothing to revive his earlier sympathies. Yet Theal remained deeply interested in Africans and their history and could say in 1895 that “there can be no member of the Aborigines Protection Society more anxious for the welfare of the natives of South Africa than I am.” Theal to Buxton, 28 January 1895. Aborigines Protection Society Papers, Rhodes House Library, C.153/1.

40. His correspondence as Agent with Oba is printed in CPP A.31-1878.

41. For Theal's career in 1878-79 see Saunders, C.C., “The Missing Link in Theal's Career: the Historian as Labour Agent,” History in Africa, 7 (1980), 273–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar