Five Hundred Years Rediscovered-Southern African precedents and prospects-Swanepoel,Esterhuys,Bonner

Five Hundred YearsRediscovered - Southern African precedents and prospects-N Swanepoel, AEsterhuysen, P Bonner(AFRICANA OUT OF PRINT NEW)

In the age of the AfricanRenaissance, southern Africa has needed to reinterpret the past in fresh andmore appropriate ways. The last 500 years represent a strikingly unexplored andmisrepresented period which remains disfigured by colonial/apartheidassumptions, most notably in the way that African societies are depicted asfixed, passive, isolated, un-enterprising and unenlightened. This period is onethe most formative in relation to southern Africa's past while remaining, inmany ways, the least known. Key cultural contours of the sub-continent tookshape, while in a jagged and uneven fashion some of the features of modernidentities emerged. Enormous internal economic innovation and politicalexperimentation was taking place at the same time as expanding Europeanmercantile forces started to press upon southern African shores and itshinterlands. This suggests that interaction, flux and mixing were a strongfeature of the period, rather than the homogeneity and fixity proposed instandard historical and archaeological writings. Five Hundred YearsRediscovered represents the first step, taken by a group of archaeologists andhistorians, to collectively reframe, revitalise and re-examine the last 500years. By integrating research and developing trans-frontier research networks,the group hopes to challenge thinking about the region's expanding internal andcolonial frontiers, and to broaden current perceptions about southern Africa'scolonial past.