Saul Dubow . A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa, 1820–2000. New York : Oxford University Press . 2006 . Pp. viii, 296. £60.00.

Abstract

Beginning in the 1960s, cutting-edge historians of South Africa turned their attention from white political history to topics in social history, placing strong emphasis on political economy. A new Africanist historiography revealed the evils of dispossession and disenfranchisement while also illustrating many examples of accommodation and resistance. The turn to social history was underway globally, while locally in South Africa the new methods and topics had obvious implications for politics: increasing numbers of South Africans were taking painful steps to undo white domination and create a democracy. Starting in the mid-1990s, with democracy more or less starting to function, several senior historians began to turn their attention back to white communities. Notable works have included Hermann Gilomee's The Afrikaners: A Biography of a People (2003) and Charles van Onselen's The Fox and the Flies: The Criminal Empire of the Whitechapel Murderer (2008). The trend has been noticeable in the history of science, with the publication of two recent monographs: William Beinart's The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770–1950 (2003) and Patrick Harries's Butterflies and Barbarians: Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa (2007). Both studies examine the ways in which whites produced and circulated knowledge about South Africa and assess the ways in which the production of knowledge related to the formation of political ideologies. These themes are evident in Saul Dubow's study, which is not a monograph but rather a sweeping survey of the public sphere in South Africa from 1820 to 2000.