TO THE FAIREST CAPE, European encounters in the Cape of Good Hope

231pp., b/w & colour illus., maps, hardback, d.w., Lewisburg, 2019

Malcolm Jack focuses especially on the encounters that European visitors had with the Khoisan peoples - from Batolomew Dias' rounding of the Cape in 1488 to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833.

"Anyone interested in travellers' accounts will want to read Malcolm Jack's lively and well-researched discussion of how visitors, from the Portuguese in the late fifteenth century to Lady Hershel in the 1830s, viewed the Cape and its people. Along with the sometimes colourful accounts the travellers gave of what they saw as the exotic landscape, fauna and flora of the Cape, Malcolm Jack focuses on their perceptions of the indigenous Khoisan, perceptions that helped shape the way the early colonial society developed." Chris Saunders, Professor of History Emeritus, University of Cape Town.