Archival Significance
Significant well beyond its modest pamphlet format: this 1965 booklet was banned by the Rhodesian government, largely over a section on race relations written by Philip Warhurst that challenged settler historiography directly. Its banning, the year of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, is itself a documented historical event, not incidental context.
Institutional Context
Issued as pamphlet No. 15 in the Central Africa Historical Association’s Local Series, an academic body producing short historical works for teaching and general readership in the region during the 1960s.
Content Summary
Co-authored by Ian Henderson and Philip Warhurst, offering revisionist essays that challenged received settler-era narratives of Central African history up to 1953.
Research Utility
A primary source for historians of censorship, academic dissent and revisionist historiography under the Rhodesian Front government. Best used alongside the Warhurst Papers held at the Killie Campbell Africana Library, Durban, which document the banning and its aftermath.
Abantu Archives Note
Held in-house, a document banned in its country of origin is now preserved as part of the archival record it originally intervened in.