Book launch: Orchards of Privilege: Water, Oranges, and Race in the Gamtoos Valley of South Africa, 1700–2023, by Robert Ross
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This study of the Gamtoos River floodplain in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province traces its transformation from an eighteenth-century natural landscape of thick bush into an agricultural zone now threatened by climate change.
The first half of the book explains how missionaries from the London Missionary Society and residents of the Hankey Mission Station introduced irrigation, turning the area into a community of small-scale farmers. Despite early failures, by 1849 they had constructed South Africa’s first major irrigation tunnel and aqueduct. However, conflicts between the missionaries and residents led to the loss of communal lands to privatization, which ultimately impoverished the local farmers.
The second half explores efforts to develop the valley for large-scale agriculture, addressing challenges like drought, flash floods, and saline water. By the mid-twentieth century, Afrikaners dominated the area, benefiting from the construction in 1970 of the Kouga Dam, which provided fresh water for the floodplain. This led to the rise of a wealthy white farming community, sustained by apartheid policies and labor from the “Coloured” and African populations. In the early twenty-first century, however, this prosperity has become threatened by severe droughts linked to global climate change.
In view of these historical transformations, the Gamtoos River floodplain exemplifies the complex interplay between human ambition, environmental challenges, and sociopolitical forces.
Robert Ross is Professor Emeritus of African History at Leiden University.
The book launch will be in the context of the Collaborative Research Group Patterns of Living and conducted by Wayne Dooling, a former student of Robert Ross, highly esteemed colleague and visiting fellow at the ASCL and historian at SOAS in London.
This event will take place in person in Leiden. For registrants who cannot travel to Leiden, a link to an online platform will be sent before the start of the event.
Image credit: Ohio University Press
Speaker
Born in Cape Town, Wayne Dooling is a historian of South Africa and a graduate of the Universities of Cape Town and Cambridge. His research interests, grounded in extensive use of documentary archives, span the period from the 17th to the 20th centuries. His earliest historical work was on the history slavery in the Cape Colony, after which he completed a study of the social and economic consequences of the ending of bonded labour there.
His publications include Law and Community in a Slave Society: Stellenbosch District, South Africa, 1760-1820 (Cape Town, 1992) and Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa (Ohio, 2007). He is a Senior Lecturer in African History at SOAS, University of London where he has also served as Director of the Centre of African Studies.
Date, time and location
11 June 2026
15.00 - 17.00
Herta Mohr Building / Faculty of Humanities, Witte Singel 27a, 2311 BG Leiden
Room 0.31
Registration
Posted on 19 May 2026, last modified on 19 May 2026