Edward Cavanagh, Settler Colonialism and Land Rights in South Africa: Possession and Dispossession on the Orange River (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Layers of dispossession and disruption are definitive of South African history. Bouncing from Griqua Philippolis (1824–1862) to Afrikaner Orania (1990–2013), this book shows how land rights are prioritised in pre-apartheid and post-apartheid contexts. The result is a new way of looking at the country’s history – different to the version of history that guided transformation and inspired an idiosyncratic system of land restitution.

‘[A] highly innovative study of substantial contemporary relevance. Cavanagh compares the Griqua Philippolis and Afrikaner Orania polities in a compelling analysis, foregrounding issues of dispossession, land rights, sovereignty, indigeneity, and restitution. Insightful and accessible, this is a book that will appeal to both academic and lay readers.’ — Mohamed Adhikari, University of Cape Town

‘An intensely brilliant gem […] The conundrums and contradictions of land dispossession and restitution in South Africa are here presented both factually and analytically in a powerful argument for an, until now, politically submerged subterranean view of land rights and group identity. This study will surely renew much needed institutional as well as scholarly debate.’ — David B. Coplan, University of the Witwatersrand

‘Cavanagh makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of settler colonial studies, in a very original and persuasive way: applying this paradigm to the past and the present, and investigating very different sociopolitical collectives in very different historical circumstances. This book convincingly reintroduces settler colonialism to South African history.’ — Lorenzo Veracini, Swinburne Institute for Social Research