Microhistory unlocked new avenues of historical investigation and methodologies and helped uncover the past of individuals, an event, or a small community. Reclamation of "lost histories" of individuals and colonized communities of colonial South Africa falls within this category. This study provides historical narratives of indigenous Khoikhoi of modest status absorbed into Cape colonial society as farm servants during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Based on archival and other sources, the author illuminates the "everyday life" and "lived experience" of Khoikhoi characters in a unique way. The opening chapter recounts the love-loathe drama between a Khoikhoi woman, Griet, and Hendrik Eksteen, whose murder she later orchestrated with the aid of slaves and Khoikhoi servants. The malcontent Andries De Necker, arrested for the murder of his Khoikhoi servant, attracted much legal attention and resulted in a protracted trial. The book next features the Khoikhoi millenarian prophet-turned-Christian convert Jan Paerl, who persuaded believers to reassert the land of their birth and liberate themselves from Dutch colonial rule by October 25, 1788. The last two chapters examine the lives of four Khoikhoi converts immersed into the Moravian missionary world and how they were exhibited by missionaries and sketched by the colonial artist, George F. Angas.

The essays in this volume examine the nature and extent of disease on indigenous communities and local populations located within the vast regions of the Indian and Pacific Oceans as a result of colonial sea power and colonial conquest. While this established a long-term impact of disease on populations, the essays also offer insights into the dynamics of these populations in resisting colonial intrusions and introduction of disease to newly-acquired territories.

This remarkable life story offers young and old, white and black South Africans, an insight into life as it was in the country at the time when Ramaphakela Hans Hlalethwa grew up. We are given a picture of family life and values, with vivid descriptions of both comical situations and tragic events. We follow Hans in his hard slog to succeed in his chosen profession, education. It is vital for those who did not experience apartheid and what this did to the people of South Africa themselves, to be able to follow Hans' experiences: white prejudice, police action, arrests and detentions, sabotage and meetings, the so-called 'political funerals' of the 80's and much more. Those citizens who now, post 1994, can live free lives and who do not know what a passbook is, will find this book an eye-opener. Throughout his life, Hlalethwa's religious belief shines brightly, culminating in his ordination as a Deacon in the Catholic Church. His parish church in Soshanguve became almost as famous as Regina Mundi in Soweto as a centre for activism and opposition to the hated apartheid system, where he also was a fieldworker for the Justice and Peace Commission of the Pretoria Archdiocese.