ABSTRACT
At the simplest level, this is an attempt to trace the life story of Abraham Esau, Namaqualand village carpenter and smith, through both local folk memories and conventional written sources. With English and Anglicanism important formative influences, Abraham Esau sought, as a young man, to behave as an ‘Englische’ or ‘Engelse Kleurling’. A crucial element in Calvinia folk memory of Esau is the image of him as a ‘Coloured Englishman’, free of the grip of the master culture and customs of the dominant local Boer community. The blacksmith’s anti-Boer adventure was both a silent, independent war against the threat of conquest and subjection, and an attempt to construct a protective form of association and allegiance directly with imperial power. Echoes of the affair actually bounced high enough to catch the attention of the Cape Colonial Secretary and also that of the British Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, as well as Milner.
