Networks,Institutions and the Failure of the Survey Law of 1874 in the Transvaal

Abstract

This article concerns the birth and death of the proposed Survey Law of 1874 in the South African Republic (Transvaal), a law that promised to ‘correct’ flawed or fraudulent knowledge with an ongoing triangulation and a general survey of lands that would locate and map all aspects of geography for the state. Such knowledge was essential to the rising class of technocrats that had taken over government bureaus in Pretoria in 1872 and who sought to stabilise and then grow the finances of the republic to support the modernisation of its administration of land as well as its other functions. To this end, a network of technical consultants with knowledge across the subcontinent—and occasionally beyond—worked to draft a law and make the case. Despite the manifest failings of existing systems of land inspection and wide agreement on the desirability of a detailed survey in governmental and scientific circles, however, other forces opposed a formal survey of lands on grounds of cost, principle and possibly self-interest. The result was a failure to pass the draft law or even consider its technical merits. This failure speaks strongly to the need to consider the political and social contexts and conflicts around technical networks and discourses as being relevant to their operation and their outcomes.

Keywords

South Africa mapping surveying law settler colonialism Transvaal

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Barlow

(1988). The clouded face of truth: A review of the South African newspaper press approaching Union (Doctoral dissertation, University of Bristol). https://research-information.bristol.ac.uk/files/34509187/233588.pdf

Barlow

T. B.

(1972). President brand and his times. Juta & Company.

Braun

L. F.

(2015). Colonial survey and native landscapes in rural South Africa: The politics of divided space in the Cape and Transvaal. Brill.

Braun

L. F.

(2018). An agent in Pretoria? Fred Jeppe, the cartography of the Transvaal, and imperial knowledge before 1900. Cartographic Journal, 55(2), 111–120.

Christopher

A. J.

(1984). The crown lands of British South Africa, 1854–1910. Limestone Press.

Cohn

B. S.

(1996). Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: The British in India. Princeton University Press.

De Kock

W. J.

, Krüger

D. W.

, Beyers

C. J.

, & Basson

J. C.

(Eds.). (1968–1987). Dictionary of South African biography (Vols. I–V). Human Sciences Research Council.

De Smidt

(1876). Report of the surveyor-general on the tenure of land, on the land laws and their results, and on the topography of the colony. G.30-’76. Saul Solomon.

Delius

(1983). The land belongs to us: The Pedi Polity, the Boers, and the British in the nineteenth century Transvaal. Ravan Press.

10.

Doucakis

(2003). ‘Een uur gans overkruys’: The earliest form of land survey north of the Vaal, 1841–1860s. In Pound

D. S.

(Ed.), A century of land surveying in the Transvaal, 1903–2003 (pp. 66–70). Sereti Press.

11.

Edney

M. H.

(1997). Mapping an empire: The geographical construction of British India, 1765–1843. University of Chicago Press.

12.

Edney

M. H.

(2019). Cartography: The ideal and its history. University of Chicago Press.

13.

Engelbrecht

S. P.

(1933). President Thomas François Burgers: ‘n lewenskets. J. H. de Bussy.

14.

Gill

(1908). The geodetic survey of South Africa, volume V: Reports on the geodetic survey of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. Harrison & Sons.

15.

Jeppe

, & Merensky

(1868). Original map of the Transvaal or South African Republic. Justus Perthes. Scan courtesy of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

16.

Jeppe

, & Kotzé

J. G.

(1887). De locale wetten en Volksraadsbesluiten der Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, 1849–1885. J. F. Celliers.

17.

Kauanui

J. K.

, & Wolfe

(2012). Settler colonialism then and now. Politicae Società, 1(2), 235–258.

18.

Latour

(1999). Pandora’s hope: Essays on the reality of science studies. Harvard University Press.

19.

Liebenberg

E. C.

(1973). Die topografiesekartering van Suid-Afrika, 1879–1972: ‘N histories-geografieseontleiding (Master’s thesis, UNISA).

20.

Picton

L. J.

(1969). NicPrint 50: Being some account of the history of the printing, packaging, and newspaper industry of South Africa, and of the National Industrial Council for Printing, prepared to mark the Jubilee of the Council 1919–1969 (Master’s thesis, University of Cape Town). https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/28911/thesis_com_Picton_1969.pdf

21.

Scott

J. C.

(1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. Yale University Press.

22.

Spoelstra

(1989). Secession and the, reformed (‘Dopper’) churches in South Africa. In die Skriflig, 23(4), 60–80.

23.

Van Jaarsveld

F. A.

(1957). Die Vrystaat-Transvaalse Vriendskapverdrag van 1872. Historia, 2(2), 148–162.

24.

Veracini

(2021). The world turned inside out: Settler colonialism as a political idea. Verso Books.

25.

Watson

W. C.

(1968). The Jeppe-Merensky Map of 1:1,850,000—1868. South African Survey Journal 11(5), 12–19.

26.

Weaver

J. C.

(2003). The great land rush and the making of the modern world, 1650–1900. Queen’s University Press.

27.

Winichakul

(1994). Siam mapped: A history of the geo-body of a nation. University of Hawai’i Press.