Suchergebnisse

Johannesburg, in certain respects the Republic's leading urban centre, celebrates her centenary in 1986. Acquisitive citizens and indifferent officials have, however, long driven much of her past from the streets. Today carnival history is being manufactured hurriedly beyond remote tarmac parking grounds and behind ticketing turnstiles. Although its popularization is also overdue, scholarly interest in South African urban history fortunately has not attracted only whimsical attention. In the brief review which follows an attempt is made to sketch the outlines of the South African urban past, to capture the flavour of substantive research into South African urban history and to contour the intellectual climate in which this has been conducted and shaped. Emphasis is placed on research reported in scholarly outlets. Not unexpectedly there is a wide range of other publications which contain elements of urban historical interest, these ranging from newspapers and magazines to general historical texts and finely liveried, lavishly illustrated Africana. For the purposes of this presentation, the 'modern period' of South African urban history is closed during the 1950s.