Streekgeskiedenis van die historikus

Abstract

Although local and regional history forms the basis for a composite national history, it did not come into its own in South African historiography until the Section for Regional History gave its attention to it. Some of the pressing issues that needed examination related to the substance, the field and the method of regional historical research. With these in mind the Section for Regional History divided the RSA into administrative, historical and socioeconomic Regions, on which the Section's research programme was to be based. In this programme, whose object is to make a preliminary historical study and to explore the regional sources of all the regions of the RSA, two projects are under way, i.e. the Eastern Free State Border Area and the Eastern Transvaal Highveld. In order to coordinate regional historical research, to promote interest in it and to create publication facilities for interim research results, the journal Contree was established.