Cruel, backward, isolationist, and fanatically religious—or independent, resourceful, principled, and courageous? This book is about the Boers of the Transvaal; it is about how they were formed, their relentless territorial expansion at the expense of indigenous groups in both the Cape Colony and the Transvaal, their struggle for distinctiveness and independence against Imperial and African pressures, the state that they carved out for themselves, and their abject defeat in the Anglo-Boer War. It is also about how the experiences and world view of the Transvaal Boers shaped the myth and laid the platform for ‘Boerdom resurgent’ (or the Afrikaner ascent) in apartheid South Africa.
