TO THE NORTH, South Africa, 1852-1886

458 pages, 2 folding maps, a very good copy in the original brown with frayed dust jacketnow preserved in a Brodart protector.  

Professor Agar-Hamilon’s own copy signed on the front free endpaper, loosely inserted are extensive notes in the author’s hand for a proposed revised edition and some newspaper cuttings in an envelope.  

“A road runs northward from the old Cape Colony close beside the western borders of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. It is the Great North Road of Africa. Up and down it have gone explorers, hunters, missionaries, traders, refugees from justice, Imperial and Colonial Troops, Boer Commandos, Griqua bands, Bantu regiments, and on occasion High Commissioners, colonial politicians and republican Presidents.Mr Agar-Hamilton tells the story of this road along which so much of the tangled history of South Africa has been fought out by diplomacy or arms from 1852, when the newly independent Transvaalers tried to get control of it, down to the year 1886, when a most reluctant Imperial Government had finally checked this west-ward thrust of the republicans…..” Professor Eric Walker.