My understanding of South African history and the clashing introduction of Europeans was very different from the “New World” rushes where adventurers were promised a land of plenty. Almost everyone at that stage was working the land of the VERY old world in some form. None of this modern “what do you want to be when you grow up?”.
Some people did well out of that, but the vast majority were struggling along. The “teach a man to fish” parable probably still worked because all the fish weren’t *explicitly* owned. On top of struggle, there was war.
The Xhosa Wars/Cape Frontier Wars were a series of nine conflicts from 1779 to 1889. After the Napoleonic Wars, the English got more involved. Britain was facing serious unemployment problems, and sent a group of poor “1820 Settlers” to set up in the middle of where this conflict had been.
A bunch of wars followed to set up various people’s dreams of unity. To create identity.
Fast forward to the question, “why spend so much time thinking about history?”. Why not move forward? Leave the past in the past. I spend a lot of time thinking, and rethinking, through my history. I believe it frames how we think and decide.
Learning history is like group therapy. Decisions and behaviours all happen in context. Many of our choices are simple repetitions of what we saw done. Repeated, repeated, repeated, till they are a part of us. Even if we can come up with made up justifications if challenged, we don’t understand why we do everything we do.
Most of our choices are automated. Life is too complicated and intricate for us to constantly reflect on everything. A lot of our wisdom and bias is inherited.
a setting for war
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