Department of History

Prof T Dedering

College of Human Sciences
School of Humanities
Department: History
Professor
Tel:
012 429 6869
Fax:
012 429 3221
E-mail:
dedertm@unisa.ac.za

Qualifications

  • MA Social Anthropology (Free University Berlin, 1984)
  • PhD History (University of Cape Town, 1990)

NRF Rating

B2

Fields of academic interests

  • Namibian and South African history
  • Modern German history
  • World history; globalisation

Field of Specialisation

  • History and technology, particularly history of air power
  • South Africa, Namibia and the League of Nations
  • Relations between South Africa and Germany

Books

Hate the Old and Follow the New. Khoekhoe and Missionaries in Early-Nineteenth Century Namibia (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1997)

Journal articles

  • Brigitte Lau, Namibia in Jonker Afrikaner's Time (Windhoek: 1987): ‘Problems of Pre-colonial Namibian Historiography’, (review article), South African Historical Journal, 20, 1988, pp.95-104.
  • ‘Khoikhoi and Missionaries in Early Nineteenth Century Southern Namibia: Social Change in a Frontier Zone’, Kleio, 12, 1990, pp. 24-41.
  • ‘The Murder of William Threlfall. The Missionaries in Southern Namibia and the Cape Government in the 1820s’, South African Historical Journal, 24, 1991, pp. 90-111.
  • ‘The German-Herero War of 1904: Revisionism of Genocide or Imaginary Historiography’, Journal of Southern African Studies. (Special Issue: Namibia: Africa's youngest nation), 19 (1) 1993, pp. 80-89.
  • ‘Hendrik Witbooi, the Prophet’, Kleio, 25, 1993, pp. 54-78.
  • ‘The Prophet's “War against Whites”: Shepherd Stuurman in Namibia & South Africa, 1904‑7’, Journal of African History, 40 (1), 1999, pp.1-20.
  • ‘The Ferreira Raid 1906. Boers, Britons and Germans in Southern Africa in the Aftermath of the South African War’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 26 (1), 2000, pp.43-60.
  • ‘Reflections on World History and African Studies’, (review article) South African Historical Journal, 50, 2004, pp.249-267.
  • ‘War and Mobility in the Borderlands of South Western Africa in the Early Twentieth Century’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 39 (2), 2006, pp.275-294.
  • ‘Petitioning Geneva: Transnational Aspects of Protest and Resistance in South West Africa/Namibia after the First World War’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 35 (4), 2009, pp.785-801.
  • ‘“We Are Only Humble People and Poor”: A.A.S. le Fleur and the Power of Petitions’, South African Historical Journal, 62 (1), 2010, pp.121-142.
  • ‘Compounds, Camps, Colonialism’, Journal of Namibian Studies, 12, 2012, pp.29-46.
  • (with Stefan Manz), ‘“Enemy Aliens” in Wartime: Civilian Internment in South Africa during World War I’, South African Historical Journal, 68 (4), 2016, pp.536-556.

  • ‘Blue Skies into White Space. Southern African Responses to the Trans-African Flight of the Silver Queen, 1920’, Technology & Culture, 59 (2), April 2018, pp.289-312. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2018.0030

  • ‘“Prophet of Air Power”: Jan Smuts and the History of Aviation’, in Michael Eckhardt (ed.), Mission Afrika. Geschichtsschreibung über Grenzen hinweg. Festschrift für Ulrich van der Heyden (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2019), pp.401-416

Chapters in books and contributions to encyclopedias:

  • ‘Missionare und Khoikhoi in Namibia 1806-1840: Sozialer Wandel in einer afrikanischen Nomadengesellschaft’, in Kolonien und Missionen, Referate des 3. Internationalen Kolonialgeschichtlichen Symposiums 1993 in Bremen, Wilfried Wagner (ed.), (Münster and Hamburg, vol. 12, 1994), pp.222-241.
  • ‘Hendrik Witbooi. Religion, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Deutsch-Südwestafrika’, in Ulrich van der Heyden/Heike Liebau (eds.), Missionsgeschichte - Kirchengeschichte - Weltgeschichte, Studien der  Berliner Gesellschaft für Missionsgeschichte (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995), pp.325-341.
  • ‘“Eine schwere Gefahr für die gesamte weisse Rasse in Südafrika”: Der Prophet Shepherd Stuurman alias Hendrik Bekeer, 1904-1907’, Ulrich van der Heyden/Jürgen Becker (eds.), Mission und Moderne. Beiträge zur Geschichte der christlichen Missionen in Afrika anlässlich der Jahrestagung der VAD und des 12. Afrikanistentages vom 3.-6. Oktober 1996 in Berlin (Köln: LIT, 1998), pp.63-79.
  • ‘“A Certain Rigorous Treatment of All Parts of the Nation”: The Annihilation of the Herero in German South West Africa, 1904’, in Mark Levene& Penny Roberts (eds.), The Massacre in History (Oxford & London: Berghahn Books, 1999), pp.205-222.
  • ‘History, Historians and Globalisation’, in C.W. du Toit and G.J.A. Lubbe (eds.), After September 11: Globalisation, War and Peace. A compilation of papers presented at the twenty-sixth symposium of the Research Institute for Theology  and Religion (Unisa) held at the University of South Africa in Pretoria on 25 and 26 April 2002 (University of South Africa, Pretoria, 2002), pp.47-65.
  • ‘Globalization, Global History, and Africa’, (republished article), Abebe Zegeye, Richard Harris, and Pat Lauderdale (eds.), Globalization and Post-Apartheid South Africa (Toronto: De Sitter Publications, 2005), pp.7-21.
  • ‘Ostpolitik and the Relations between West Germany and South Africa’, in Carole Fink and Bernd Schaefer (eds.), Ostpolitik, 1969 - 1974. European and Global Responses. Publications of the German Historical Institute (Washington, D.C. and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.206-231.
  • ‘Witbooi, Hendrik (ca. 1825-1905)’, Immanuel Ness (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2009), pp.3539-3540. http://www.revolutionprotestencyclopedia.com/subscriber/tocnode.html?id=g9781405184649_chunk_g97814051846491579
  • ‘Die deutsche Minderheit in Südafrika während des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in Hanns Lessing, Julia Besten, Tilman Dedering, Christine Hohmann, Lize Kriel (eds.), Deutsche evangelische Kirche im kolonialen südlichen Afrika. Die Rolle der Auslandsarbeit von den Anfängen bis in die 1920er Jahre (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011), pp.269-284. See also English version: ‘German Residents in South Africa during the First World War’, in  Hanns Lessing, Julia Besten, Tilman Dedering, Christine Hohmann, Lize Kriel (eds.), The German Protestant Church in Colonial Southern Africa. The Impact of Overseas Work from the Beginnings until the 1920s (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012), pp.255-268.
  • ‘“Avenge the Lusitania!”: The Anti-German Riots in South Africa in 1915’, in Panikos Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities during the First World War. A Global Comparative Perspective (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), pp.235-262.
  • ‘South African-German Relations from Versailles to Soweto’, in Hanns Lessing, Tilman Dedering, Jürgen Kampmann, Dirkie Smit (eds.), Umstrittene Beziehungen. Protestantismus zwischen dem südlichen Afrika und Deutschland von den 1930er Jahren bis in die Apartheidzeit/Contested Relations. Protestantism between Southern Africa and Germany from the 1930s to the Apartheid Era. In collaboration with Rudolf Hinz, Christine Lienemann-Perrin, Christoph Marx, Kirsten Rüther, Studies in the History of Christianity in the Non-Western World, edited by Klaus Koschorke & Johannes Meier, vol.26 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015), pp.48-63.

Professional positions, fellowships & awards

  • Rated as an internationally recognised scholar (B2) by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF)
  • Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)