Hidden Histories of Gordonia: Land Dispossesion and Resistance in the Northern Cape, 1800-1990 (Paperback)
The Gordonia region of the Northern Cape Province has received relatively little attention from historians. In Hidden Histories of Gordonia: Land dispossession and resistance in the Northern Cape, 1800–1990, Martin Legassick explores aspects of the generally unknown ‘brown’ and ‘black’ history of the region. Emphasising the lives of ordinary people, his writing is also in part an exercise in ‘applied history’ – historical writing with a direct application to people’s lives in the present.
Martin Legassick (1940 – 2016) was Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape. A historian, activist and author, his publications include The struggle for the Eastern Cape, 1800–1854: subjugation and the roots of South African democracy (2011) and The politics of a South African frontier: the Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the missionaries, 1780–1840 (2010).