Elphick, Richard and Hermann Giliomee, eds. The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1979.
A collection of essays by some of the foremost historians of colonial South Africa. Authors examine all of the racial groups at the Cape, and essays include topics such as the economy, politics, culture, and the rise of European domination.
Elphick, Richard. Khoikhoi and the Founding of White South Africa. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985.
Still considered the best book-length study of the history of the Khoikhoi. Elphick considers Khoikhoi and San society and culture before the arrival of the Europeans, and then uses a variety of sources to work out a very fine history of contact and interaction between the Khoikhoi and the colonists up to ca. 1713.
Merians, Linda. Envisioning the Worst: Representations of “Hottentots” in Early-Modern England. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001.
As a literary scholar, Merians deals with European texts about the Khoikhoi from the 15th through the 18th centuries, explaining how a mostly negative view of these people was developed and sustained over time.
Ross, Robert. Beyond the Pale: Essays on the History of Colonial South Africa. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England, 1993.
Ross is a legal historian, and his book of essays is mainly concerned with the development of legal structures and ideologies that permitted and perpetuated European domination over other racial groups at the Cape from the beginning of Dutch rule, through the early 19th century.
Shell, Robert C.-H. Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1838. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994.
Though Shell’s book has been criticized for being too analytical and therefore not clear enough about the individual experience of slavery, it is, nonetheless, the most complete recent work on slavery at the Cape.
