Eric A. Walker

Eric Anderson Walker (6 September 1886 – 23 February 1976) was an English historian who served as King George V Professor of History at the University of Cape Town and Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge. He was a pioneer in writing the history of South Africa and later an important historian of the British Empire, though by the end of his life his work was seen as dated and Eurocentric.

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.

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)