Afrikaners, The: The Biography of a People - Tapa dura

Historian and political analyst Hermann Giliomee weaves together life stories and historical interpretation to create a narrative history of the Afrikaners from their beginnings with the colonization of the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company to the dismantling of apartheid and beyond. Throughout their history, Giliomee's Afrikaners are both colonizers and colonized. Actual or virtual servants of the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch 'burghers' nonetheless owned slaves and commanded servant labor.
While documenting - and in important ways revising - the history of the Afrikaners' pursuit of racial domination (as well as British contributions to that enterprise), Giliomee supplies Afrikaners' own, often divided perspectives on their history.

Hermann Giliomee is Professor of History at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.