This work is the long-awaited sequel to the historian Nigel Penn’s award-winning book Rogues, Rebels and Runaways, in which he entertained and informed readers with stories of the lives of some remarkable characters from early Cape history. In this new volume Penn, a consummate raconteur and storyteller, brings to life an assortment of extraordinary personalities from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There is Maria Mouton, the first white woman at the Cape to be executed, for her adulterous affair with a slave and the murder of her husband. Then, too, there is Johannes Seidenfaden, an LMS missionary whose ‘enormities’ so shocked Dr John Philip, the LMS superintendent, that he branded him ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’ (Seidenfaden, a married man, had not only attempted to seduce his Khoikhoi housekeeper on five occasions but also turned his mission station of Suurbraak, just outside Swellendam, into his own personal fiefdom and impoverished all the Khoikhoi inhabitants.) Other chapters tell stories of desertion by ill-treated soldiers in Cape Town, who intended to escape to Mozambique but got no further than the Hottentots Holland Mountains, where they were apprehended before being hanged; the escapades of the Swiss Meuron Regiment at the Cape; and the ‘ear atrocity’ in the Onder Bokkeveld near Ceres. These remarkable stories, told with élan, erudition and humour, throw light on our extraordinary past and reveal much about social relations and human experience in the early Cape colony.

Historically, scientists and experts have played a prominent role in shaping the relationship between Europe and Africa. Starting with travel writers and missionary intellectuals in the 17th century, European savants have engaged in the study of nature and society in Africa. Knowledge about realms of the world like Africa provided a foil against which Europeans came to view themselves as members of enlightened and modern civilisations. Science and technology also offered crucial tools with which to administer, represent and legitimate power relations in a new global world but the knowledge drawn from contacts with people in far-off places provided Europeans with information and ideas that contributed in everyday ways to the scientific revolution and that provided explorers with the intellectual and social capital needed to develop science into modern disciplines at home in the metropole. This book poses questions about the changing role of European science and expert knowledge from early colonial times to post-colonial times. How did science shape understanding of Africa in Europe and how was scientific knowledge shaped, adapted and redefined in African contexts?

Historically, scientists and experts have played a prominent role in shaping the relationship between Europe and Africa. Starting with travel writers and missionary intellectuals in the 17th century, European savants have engaged in the study of nature and society in Africa. Knowledge about realms of the world like Africa provided a foil against which Europeans came to view themselves as members of enlightened and modern civilisations. Science and technology also offered crucial tools with which to administer, represent and legitimate power relations in a new global world but the knowledge drawn from contacts with people in far-off places provided Europeans with information and ideas that contributed in everyday ways to the scientific revolution and that provided explorers with the intellectual and social capital needed to develop science into modern disciplines at home in the metropole. This book poses questions about the changing role of European science and expert knowledge from early colonial times to post-colonial times. How did science shape understanding of Africa in Europe and how was scientific knowledge shaped, adapted and redefined in African contexts?

This book explores one of the most intractable problems of human existence - our propensity to inflict violence. It provides readers with case studies of political, social, economic, religious, structural and interpersonal violence from across the entire globe since 1800. It also examines the changing representations of violence in diverse media and the cultural significance of its commemoration. Together, the chapters provide in-depth understanding of the ways that humans have perpetrated violence, justified its use, attempted to contain its spread and narrated the stories of its impacts. Readers also gain insight into the mechanisms by which the parameters about the acceptable limits to and locations of violence have dramatically altered over the course of a few decades. Leading experts from around the world have pooled their knowledge to provide concise, authoritative examinations of the complex phenomenon of human violence. Annotated bibliographies provide overviews of the shape of the research field.