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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | 'A free, united South Africa under the Union Jack': F.S. Malan, South Africanism and the British Empire, 1895-1924 |
Author: | Mouton, F.A. |
Year: | 2006 |
Periodical: | Historia: amptelike orgaan |
Volume: | 51 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 29-48 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | politicians political unification Afrikaners English-speaking South Africans biographies (form) |
About person: | François Stephanus Malan (1871-1941) |
Abstract: | During his turbulent career as newspaper editor and politician, François Stephanus Malan (born in 1871 in South Africa's Cape Colony) elicited strong and conflicting reactions. In the late 19th century, English-speaking South Africans and imperial officials regarded him as an insidious republican and a bitter enemy of Britain. During the Anglo-Boer War, they clamoured for his imprisonment. After Union in 1910, however, he was increasingly seen as a defender of the British Empire and he rose to the rank of privy councillor. For many Afrikaners he was a hero who became a renegade and a puppet of British imperialism. Despite the conflicting views, Malan's political vision remained unchanged over the years. He campaigned for a united South Africa free from internal British control, but an integral part of the Empire, which he regarded as essential to secure a stable, prosperous society in which Afrikaners and English-speakers could overcome their enmity and become one nation. Malan played a leading role in the unification of South Africa, as well as the Union's growing autonomy within the Empire, but in the process he sacrificed his political career. Trapped between a retreating British imperialism and an advancing Afrikaner nationalism, Malan's public career was shattered in the general election of 1924. Notes, ref., sum. in English and Afrikaans. [Journal abstract] |