Bill Freund (historian)
Bill Freund | |
---|---|
Born | William Mark Freund July 6, 1944 |
Died | August 17, 2020 | (aged 76)
Nationality | American |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Chicago Yale University |
Academic work | |
Discipline | African history |
Institutions | University of Natal, later University of KwaZulu-Natal |
Main interests | Economic history of Africa, particularly South Africa |
William Mark Freund (6 July 1944 – 17 August 2020) was an American academic historian who was particularly known as an authority on the
A self-described "materialist", Freund is best known for The Making of Contemporary Africa (1984) which was widely praised as a survey of scholarship on the social and economic history of Africa in the colonial and post-colonial eras. He wrote widely on subjects related to African labour and urban history.
Biography
Freund was born in
The Making of Contemporary Africa provided an overview of the social and economic history of colonial and post-colonial Africa and was widely praised for its depth of research, including its bibliography which ran for 55 pages. It has been described as "the defining book of his life".[2]
Freund was awarded a professorship in Economic History at the
Freund was best known as an
Amid the end of Apartheid in South Africa, Freund served as an expert in political economy in committees established by the African National Congress to discuss future economic policy. Although sympathetic to African nationalism, Freund viewed the ANC with critical distance and was skeptical about its development policy.[4] A festschrift was dedicated to him in 2006 and a special issue of African Studies was devoted to an assessment of his work.[4] He authored an autobiography entitled Bill Freund: An Historian's Passage to Africa which appeared posthumously in 2021.[1] He died in Durban on 17 August 2020.
Selected publications
- Capital and Labour in the Nigerian Tin Mines (Humanities Press, 1981)
- The Making of Contemporary Africa: The Development of African Society since 1800 (Macmillan, 1984), with new editions in 1998 and 2016;
- The African Worker (Cambridge, 1988)
- Insiders and Outsiders: The Indian Working Class of Durban, 1910-1990 (University of Natal, 1995)
- The African City: A History (Cambridge, 2007)
- Twentieth-Century South Africa: A Developmental History (Cambridge, 2018).
- Bill Freund: An Historian’s Passage to Africa (Wits University Press, 2021)
References
- ^ a b c d Morrell 2020, p. 1.
- ^ a b c "Bill Freund, the Academy's Outsider Insider". MarketWatch. New Frame/All Africa Global Media. 2 September 2020. Retrieved 1 November 2020.
- ^ Moore, David B. (14 September 2020). "Bill Freund 1944-2020: a professor who wore the weight of history lightly". The Conversation. Retrieved 1 November 2020.
- ^ a b c Morrell, Robert (20 August 2020). "Obituary: Bill Freund (1944-2020): Pioneering economic historian of Africa and South Africa". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 1 November 2020.
Bibliography
- Morrell, Robert (2020). "Bill Freund (1944–2020): Economic historian". South African Journal of Science. 116 (9/10): 1. .