A Horse Designed by a Committee

Abstract

South Africa’s Department of External Affairs was set up in 1927 to demonstrate the country’s political independence of the United Kingdom. It operated under various names until the white regime gave way to a democratically-elected government in 1994. Unlike its counterparts in Australia and Canada, which had long included in their structures sections of historians tasked to research those countries’ diplomatic history, the South African department was never historically-aware. It is, therefore, ironic that in 1990, during the death throes of the regime, departmental management itself commissioned a history of the department. This was recently published after several hiccups including a lengthy search for a publisher, and authorisation by the department’s post-1994 management. This paper examines the book.

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David Tothill

A former South African foreign service officer, David Tothill holds the degrees MA (cum laude) and DLitt et Phil in history from the University of South Africa. He was a Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia in 1998, has been a member of the AHA since 1996, and is a long-time writer of journal articles.