Eric A. Walker (historian)

Walker was born in Streatham, London on 6 September 1886 to William Walker, a mercantile clerk of Scottish descent, who worked for Union-Castle Line and Jessie née Goodman. He began his education at Mill Hill School, followed by a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, from where he graduated in modern history with a first class (1908). == Career ==

South Africa Walker was employed as a lecturer at the University of Bristol for a short time, where he co-wrote a textbook for secondary schools on English history that remained in publication for a long time. In 1930, Walker gave an influential lecture in Oxford, printed as The frontier tradition in South African history (Oxford University Press, London, 1930), in which he outlined his theory that the origins of the apartheid system in South Africa lay in conflict between blacks and whites on the frontier regions in the nineteenth century which was then imported into the interior where it was institutionalised in the constitutions of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic. Walker's theory owed much to Frederick Jackson Turner and The Oxford History of Historical Writing described him as "in some respects the George Stanley of South Africa". He continued to write, but with a wider focus than previously now that his chair enjoyed the title of "Imperial". He acted as an air-raid warden in Cambridge in World War II. By 1942, he was the only history professor still teaching at the university; most of the students and teaching staff had left for the war. Retirement Walker retired in 1951, but continued to write. He produced a third edition of his history of South Africa in 1957 (retitled A History of Southern Africa) and edited the second edition of the South African volume of The Cambridge History of the British Empire, published in 1963. This last, however, was criticised for not following the latest historical methods. In 1968, Walker, and wife Lucy, returned to South Africa, where he died in Durban in 1976. ==Personal life==

He had two sisters and two brothers, one of whom was Graham William Walker. His nephew, through Graham, was motorsport commentator Murray Walker. Walker married Lucy Stapleton (1883–1977) in 1913 in Cape Town. They had two daughters: Jean (1914–1985) and Hilary (1919–2006). ==Selected works==

• Historical atlas of South Africa. Oxford University Press, Cape Town, 1922. • Lord de Villiers and his times: South Africa 1842—1914. Constable, London, 1925. • A history of South Africa. Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1928. (From 1957 titled A history of Southern Africa.) • The SA College and the University of Cape Town: 1829–1929. Cape Times for the Council of the University of Cape Town, 1929. • The frontier tradition in South African history. Oxford University Press, London, 1930. • The great trek. A. & C. Black, London, 1934. (Many later editions.) • Cambridge history of the British Empire. Volume 8. 1st edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1936. • The British Empire: Its structure and spirit. Royal Institute of International Affairs & Oxford University Press, London, 1943. • Colonies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1944. • The Cambridge History of the British Empire. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1963. (editor) ==References==