author
George McCall Theal
1837–1919
A hugely influential historian of southern Africa, he spent decades collecting records and turning them into sweeping histories that shaped how the region's past was written for generations. His work was ambitious and deeply researched, though modern readers also approach it with an awareness of its colonial-era viewpoint.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, on April 11, 1837, George McCall Theal later made his life in southern Africa and became known as a historian, archivist, genealogist, and journalist. He died in Wynberg, Cape Town, on April 17, 1919.
Theal was remarkably prolific. He produced major multi-volume histories of South Africa and Africa south of the Zambezi, and he also edited large collections of official colonial records. That combination of narrative history and archival work made him one of the most important builders of South African historical writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
His books were influential for many years because they gathered together a vast amount of material that was otherwise difficult to access. At the same time, his work reflects the assumptions of the colonial world in which he wrote, so today he is read both as a major historian and as a figure whose interpretation of the past needs to be understood in context.