“This dying out race” W.H.I. bleek's approach to the languages of Southern Africa

Wilhelm Hendrick Immanuel Bleek was the first scholar to intensively study southern African languages and literatures. This paper examines his motivationfor doing so. Important influences included the German "Higher Criticism " of Biblical texts, and conflict between "High "and "Broad" church tradition in the English church. Bleek's attention to field study of actual oral literature is presented as his most important achievement, and his single‐minded effort to salvage the literature of the Cape Bushmen, "this dying out race" as he called them, was also his last effort before his early death at the age of forty‐eight.