Masters Degrees (History)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (History) by Subject "Afrikaners -- Biography"

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    Aweregs : die rustelose lewe van Ben Viljoen 1868-1917
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-12) Van der Merwe, Willem Carel; Grundlingh, Albert Mauritz; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is a critical interpretative biography of Barend (later Benjamin) Johannes Viljoen, who was born in Thembuland, South Africa in 1868 and died in New Mexico, USA in 1917 at the age of 48 from natural causes. After his arrival at the age of eighteen in the South African Republic as a the eldest son of a poor migrant farming family, Ben Viljoen rose within twelve years from an ordinary policeman to a journalist, newspaper owner, commandant of the Johannesburg commando and member of the Tweede Volksraad (Second House of Assembly) for the Johannesburg constituency. During the Anglo-Boer War he participated in numerous engagements and was promoted to general and assistant commandant-general of the Transvaal forces. He was captured at the beginning of 1902 and banished to St. Helena. Following several unsuccessful attempts to establish himself in the Transvaal Colony after the war, Viljoen was the co-organiser of and a participant in the Boer War Spectacle at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Afterwards he remained in the USA and married an American woman even before his divorce in South Africa was finalised. After an unsuccessful attempt by him and “general” Willem Snyman to establish a Boer colony in northern Mexico, Viljoen and other Afrikaners settled at the end of 1905 in the southwestern American state of New Mexico where they became successful alfalfa farmers. Here Viljoen played an active role in the local community life and state politics. During the Mexican revolution in 1911 he acted as a military adviser to the revolutionary leader (and later Mexican president) Francisco Madero, who afterwards appointed him as peace commissioner to the Yaqui Indians of Mexico. After a short appointment as a Mexican consul in Germany he was involved in several filibustering attempts in northern Mexico with prominent American capitalists. This thesis is based on extensive primary research in South Africa, the Netherlands, Britain, Mexico and the USA. It contributes to an understanding of the undercurrents in the ranks of the Afrikaners and Afrikaner nationalism during the first few years after the war. Considered as a whole this biography of Ben Viljoen is a re-evaluation of the prevailing notions of how the Boer leaders adapted to the post-war dispensation. It also examines the strategies that Viljoen used to establish and further himself in the South African Republic, Mexico and the USA. By examining Viljoen’s life and the influences that formed him, this thesis seeks to throw more light on that period and thus promote a nuanced understanding of the South African past.