South Africa Under John Iii 1521-1557

“In this volume occasional comparisons will be found between events as well as persons of King John’s reign and those of modern times. This is no personal caprice. It has been forced upon me by reading the numerous works in English and French which deal with this period. So many writers have engaged in the task of pointing out how far superior later centuries are to that of John III, that it has become a litany of depreciation. To give a list of these writers, or to quote their statements in full, would increase the lenght of the Notes without any compensating advantage. I have thought it best to deal with their views by making a comparison of my own, where I feel it justified. In every such case I have in mind definite assertions of other historians with which I cannot agree. An English philosopher of the seventeenth century, Sir Thomas Browne, warns us not to think that “vices in one age are not vices in another, or that virtues, which are under the everlasting seal of right reason, may be stamped (i.e. coined) by (punlic) opinion.” Too many national historians have written as if what is vice in one nation is virtue in another. The early historians of the Portuguese empire were untained with this idea of a manifest destiny of their own nation based in its unique virtues. They saw only unique opportunities. Their histories painted the actual life of the nation in all its strenght and weakness. I shall be fortunate if I have followed in the footsteps of their method.”

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