This collection of essays significantly refines the way we think about state and society in the British Southern Africa of the 19th and 20th centuries, from the conquest of the Transkei and Natal to contemporary Botswana and Zimbabwe. The essays embody a range of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, history, and historical sociology. Yet they share a set of theoretical and empirical concerns united by an interesting understanding the culture of power - and the power of culture - at Africa's southern tip. Contributing scholars are especially concerned with understanding the hidden and complex histories of state formation and popular culture, and the relationship among rule, experience, and meaning. By focusing on state formation, and not on who rules but on how rule is accomplished, the essays in this exemplary collection present a reinvigorated social history of state formation without reducing African historical actors to mere respondents to the intrusions of others. They argue that precisely because colonial conquest and rule were cross-cultural encounters requiring the exercise of both force and dialogue, state formation and the culture and consciousness of African subjects were intertwined historical developments.

This text explores slavery in the 19th century and offers glimpses into some of the social iniquities of the 20th century. Contributors focus attention on the historical transformation of the Cape Colony during the 19th century. They argue that though this supposedly liberal era may have ended slavery, it also gave birth to new forms of social control which would endure well into the 20th century with the founding of the modern state and the creation of a labour-repressive economy in South Africa.