Author Description

Historian 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. Though they were actual or virtual servants of the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch 'burghers' nonetheless owned slaves and commanded servant labour.