The Diary of Adam Tas 1705-1706 . . . (Dutch and English; 1914)

\" . . . with an enquiry into the complaints of the Colonists against the Governor, Willem Adriaan van der Stel. With two maps\"

The original diary is lost, but two partial copies exist. The first of these, which has been in the Government Archives in the Hague since 1706, covers two months of the original diary, from 13 June to 14 August 1705. The second copy, which was found in Cape Town as recently as the end of 1911, includes a duplication of most of the Hague MS but additonally covers most of December 1705 and January and February 1706. The Trustees of the South African Library, where the second copy was found, commissioned Fouche to prepare an edition of the diary for the press. They agreed that a discussion of the troubles and disputes in which Tas was involved should also appear, and this material is included in the appendix, which is longer than the transcript of the diary.

From the editor\'s Preface: \"It was the wish of the Trustees that the edition should include an English translation of the Diary, in the interests of those to whom the original must otherwise have remained a sealed book . . . The Introduction and Appendix have also been translated by Professor Patterson, and my debt to him is the greater as the work had to be carried out . . . amidst the pressure of other duties.\"

It says much for the quality of the scholarship and administration of the time that the work on the diary, introduction and appendix, including the translation, and the printing and publishing should have taken less than three years, when the editor and translator were a thousand miles from the South African Library and when the printer and publisher were another seven thousand miles from the editor and translator. They all contributed to a great book on an inspiring period in the history of the Cape, when the power of Adam Tas\'s pen - he was imprisoned for 13 months before he was vindicated - led to the toppling of Willem Adriaan van der Stel, the then Governor of the Cape.

The lower front panel of the red cloth-boards is stained and a 2 x 1 cm area of the top of the spine cover is missing. The binding, however, is firm. The free leaves of the plain white endpapers are foxed and there is a small bookseller sticker on the front paste-down. The book is otherwise unmarked and undiscoloured. The xlvii + 367 pp of introduction, text and index, the two maps - monochrome frontispiece and black with sepia relief folding map at the back - are all present in fine condition. Internally, this is a very good copy of an important book.