Born into a Xhosa royal family around 1792 in South Africa, Jan Tzatzoe was destined to live in an era of profound change - one that witnessed the arrival and entrenchment of European colonialism. As a missionary, chief, and cultural intermediary on the eastern Cape frontier and in Cape Town and a traveller in Great Britain, Tzatzoe helped foster the merging of African and European worlds into a new South African reality. Yet, by the 1860s, he was an oppressed subject of harsh British colonial rule. In this innovative, richly researched, and splendidly written biography, Roger Levine reclaims Tzatzoe's lost story and analyzes his contributions to, and experiences with, the turbulent colonial world to argue for the crucial role of Africans as agents of cultural and intellectual change.

Roger S. Levine is assistant professor of history at Sewanee: The University of the South.

"Jan Tzatzoe (c.1792 – 1868) was an African chieftain and a Christian missionary. His remarkable life story forms the subject of Roger S. Levine’s engrossing book, which uses an innovative present-tense narrative to bring Tzatzoe, his companions, and the teeming world of colonial South Africa to life… Skilfully weaving archival sources into a beautifully written text, Levine’s book is a prime example of a colonial “micro history”: showing the symbiosis between individuals and often brutal historical events."—Dr Andrew Rudd, Church Times

"It is a study that should be indispensable for any student of the imperial nineteenth century, and indeed of the broad evolution of the western world franchise through that epoch, and by no means least, of what formed the deep generational background of men like Mandela." - Noel Mostert, author of Supership, Frontiers and The Line Upon a Wind