South Africa

Anthony Trollope's South Africa broadens from travel writing into a searching nineteenth-century survey of a region being remade by conquest, settlement, and wealth. From the Cape Colony and Natal to the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Griqualand West, and neighboring native territories, he traces explorers, governors, wars with the Kafirs, Boer republics, Zulu leadership, missionary influence, and the uneasy coexistence of Dutch, English, French, Hottentot, and African communities. He also turns to the land itself—mountain passes, farms, irrigation, wool, wine, sugar, railways, and the mineral riches of coal, copper, gold, and diamonds. Among its most vivid scenes are the descent into the Kimberley mine and the bustling diamond town above it, where thousands of workers, strict surveillance, and harsh punishments reveal both the power and the moral cost of empire. Throughout, Trollope weighs annexation, labor, and "civilization" against human suffering, creating a vivid, critical portrait of South Africa in flux. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.