THE RISE OF SOUTH AFRICA

Author and Title: Cory (Sir George Edward) THE RISE OF SOUTH AFRICA: A History of the Origin of South African Colonisation and of Its Development Towards the East from The Earliest Times To 1857 (Complete 6-Volume Set)

Collation: Complete facsimile reprint edition: 6 volumes, octavo (8vo), with numerous archival indices and fold-out maps. Original publisher's dark olive green skivertex boards with bright gilt-stamped lettering to spines and blind-stamped device to front boards, issued without dustwrappers. A very good, structurally sound set with excellent shelf appearance. The boards show minor shelf-rubbing, faint corner bumping, and light edge wear consistent with age. Spines remain rigid and uniform with bright, untarnished gilt. Text blocks are entirely clean and free of annotations, showing light foxing concentrated primarily on the top edges and outer margins, with mild uniform page tanning. Minimal historic sticky-tape residue marks are present on the introductory endpapers and final blank leaves. A small, neat previous owner's name stamp is applied to the first pages. All large historic fold-out maps (including South Africa to 1820, The Eastern Province, and Albany, Victoria & Somerset) are fully intact, correctly folded, and securely attached.

Notes: Originally published by Longmans, Green & Co. between 1910–1930 and concluded posthumously by the Archives of the Union of South Africa in 1940, this highly regarded Struik facsimile edition is prized by Africana collectors for bringing all six volumes together into a uniform binding—including the elusive final sixth volume left unfinished at the author's death. Cory’s work remains a monumental pillar of early twentieth-century South African historiography, offering an exhaustive chronicle of the Eastern Province frontier, detailing the Slagter's Nek Rebellion, the British Settlers of 1820, the Sixth Frontier War, the Great Trek, and the establishment of British Kaffraria. Though classified alongside George McCall Theal as a "settler historian" by modern academics like Christopher Saunders, Cory's methodology was revolutionary for its time; he actively travelled the Eastern Cape by cart and bicycle, gathering oral histories directly from aging 1820 Settlers and Xhosa elders. Sir George Edward Cory (1862–1935) was a founding professor at Rhodes University College in Grahamstown, and his vast personal archive formed the foundation of the world-renowned Cory Library for Historical Research.

Size: 8vo (218 x 140 mm)
Imprint: Cape Town, C. Struik Publishers, 1965