The Fish Hoek Valley Historical Association’s last talk of the year will take place on Thursday, November 7 at the Fish Hoek Bowling Club, Central Circle, Fish Hoek at 5pm.
The speaker, Edward Hudson, who is the editor of Historical Publications Southern Africa Volume 2024, will share selections of the soon-to-be-published book, Pepysian Perceptions of the Cape, 1798 -1828: Selections from the Western Cape Diaries of Samuel Eusebius Hudson, in an illustrated talk, “The struggle for a free press and against Somerset’s autocracy: A plebeian perspective”.
The diaries offer perspectives on the Cape from 1798 to 1828.
Drawing on the voluminous diaries of Samuel Hudson, an early British settler at the Cape who arrived there from England as a manservant to Lady Anne and Andrew Barnard in 1797, this lecture will examine how, as a devoted newspaper reader, he perceived the struggle for a free press at the Cape in the 1820s and also the local resistance to the growing autocracy of Lord Charles Somerset.
This resistance eventually saw Lord Somerset forced to give up his position as governor of the Cape and return to England in 1826.
Edward Hudson (the speaker) is a graduate of Oxford University, where he acquired a lifelong interest in 18th-century social history.
Since discovering, 20 years ago, that one of his relatives, Samuel Eusebius Hudson, had left a voluminous, largely unexplored, archive in Cape Town, he has been researching and writing about his life and writings.
He has contributed articles to peer-reviewed journals in South Africa, the UK and America.
He is preparing a biography of Hudson and an electronic edition of the complete text of his diaries.
Pepysian Perceptions of the Cape, 1798-1828: Selections from the Western Cape Diaries of Samuel Eusebius Hudson is due to be published by Historical Publications Southern Africa (HiPSA).
Entry for members is R20 and visitors pay R30. Refreshments will be available at the bowling club.
