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Article: Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa's Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa.
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- September 5, 1992
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Small wars, disputes over grazing rights, quarrels over a patch of land: if the story had taken place anywhere else, it would hardly merit 16 years of research and more than 1,300 pages of text. But Noel Mostert's subject is the conflict between British colonists and the powerful Xhosa tribe, the battleground is now South Africa, and this series of small wars, Mr Mostert claims, helped set the tone of black/white relations in the region for years afterwards.
To make his case, Mr Mostert discusses a huge range of subjects, from Henry the Navigator (whose ships were the first European vessels to land on the Cape) to Xhosa cattle-breeding practices to the funeral ...