2 See Gouda, Frances, Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900-1942 (Amsterdam 1995) 1–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the conversation, see Interview Magazine (05 1989)Google Scholar.

3 See Schama, Simon, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London 1987)Google Scholar.

4 Gouda, , Dutch Culture Overseas, 2Google Scholar.

5 Quoted in Gouda, , Dutch Culture Overseas, 2.Google Scholar The quote is from Trollope, Anthony, South Africa (London 1878) 2, 10Google Scholar.

6 For the genealogical origins of Afrikaners, see Heese, J.A., Die herkoms van die Afrikaner, 1657-1867 (Cape Town 1971)Google Scholar. Only thirty-seven per cent of the population had Dutch origin at the turn of the nineteenth century, the rest being of German and French (Huguenot) origin. Some families also count blacks among their ancestors.

7 See Fig, David, ‘The Afrikaner Migration to Patagonia, 1902-1906’ in: The Political Economy of South-South Relations: The Case of South Africa and Latin America (Phd thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, London 1992)Google Scholar.

8 Perhaps more than anyone else, Hermann Giliomee has shown that the notion of a monolithic and conservative Afrikanerdom is quite inadequate to explain Afrikaner history as a whole (a history more often than not marked by a fairly high degree of factionalism and division: see the chapters by Giliomee in Adam, Heribert and Giliomee, Hermann, Ethnic Power Mobilized: Can South Africa Change? (New Haven 1979).Google Scholar Posel's work has further undermined even the notion that the National Party had a common agenda before 1948; Posel, Deborah, ‘The Meaning of Apartheid before 1948’ in: Beinart, William and Dubow, Saul eds, Segregation and Apartheid in Twentieth Century South Africa (London and New York 1995)Google Scholar.

9 Work on the colonial origins and history of white South Africans in general and Afrikaners in particular is still going on. Hermann Giliomee, for instance, has work in progress in that quarter (see discussion below), and so does Stanley Trapido. For a quick sum-up of the problem of establishing colonist identity, see Elphick, Richard and Giliomee, Hermann, ‘The Origins and Entrenchment of European Domination at the Cape, 1652-c. 1840’ in: Elphick, R. and Giliomee, H. eds, The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Cape Town 1988) 523Google Scholar. See also, in the same book, the pieces by Richard Elphick and Robert Shell, ‘Intergroup relations’ and by Gerrit Schutte, ‘Company and Colonists at the Cape’.

10 Gouda, , Dutch Culture Overseas, 1Google Scholar.

11 For the Leeward Islands, see three classics (that mention religion): Hoetink, Harry, Het Patroon van de Oude Curacaose Samenleving (Amsterdam 1987)Google Scholar;Romer, R.A., Un pueblo na haminda: Een Sociologische Historische Studie van de Curacaose Samenleving (Phd thesis, Rijks-universiteit Leiden 1977)Google Scholar; and Alofs, Luc and Merkies, Leontine, ‘Ken la arubiano’: Sotiale Integratie en Natievorming op Aruba (Leiden 1990).Google Scholar For the East Indies, see Boxer, C.R., The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800 (New York 1965)Google Scholar; for the Cape, see Elphick, Richard and Shell, Robert, ‘Intergroup Relations’. The quotation on Surinam is from Lier's, R.A.J. van classic Frontier Society: A Social Analysis of the History of Surinam (The Hague 1971) 172Google Scholar.

12 Legassick, Martin, ‘The Frontier Tradition in South African Historiography’ in: Marks, Shula and Atmore, Anthony eds, Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa (London 1980) 44–79Google Scholar. This influential paper, originally written in 1970, was a landmark since, by criticizing and rejecting the ‘frontier tradition’ of what is called ‘liberal’ scholarship in South Africa, it started a long and prestigious line of'revisionist’ (often Marxist) historio graphy that continues to this day. However, frontier studies are an on-going project in South Africa today, not least through the efforts of Martin Legassick himself.

13 Walker, Eric, ‘The Frontier Tradition in South Africa’, lecture delivered at Rhodes House, Oxford, on 5 03 1930Google Scholar.

14 MacCrone, I.D., Race Attitudes in South Africa (London 1937)Google Scholar.

15 A dispatch of 1743 to the company headquarters in Amsterdam by Commissioner van Imhoff, where he decried the low state of religion among colonists mainly because, being dispersed over the vast interior, they had no church at their disposal.

16 MacCrone, , Race Attitudes, 99Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 114.

18 Legassick, , ‘Frontier Tradition’, 59–60Google Scholar.

19 ‘No Chosen People: The Myth of the Calvinist Origins of Afrikaner Nationalism and Racial Ideology’, The American Historical Review 88/4 (10 1983) 920–952CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 See Toil's, André du article above and also his ‘Puritans in Africa? Afrikaner “Calvinism” and Kuyperian Neo-Calvinism in Late Nineteenth Century South Africa’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 27/2 (04 1985) 209–240.Google Scholar Du Toit provides in both articles a detailed account of the formation and development of the Calvinist hypothesis, plus exhaustive bibliographical references both in English and Afrikaans. Perhaps the most influential book to use the hypothesis to explain Afrikaner nationalism was Moodie's, T. DunbarThe Rise ofAfrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley 1975)Google Scholar.

21 Hexham, Irving, The Irony of Apartheid (New York and Toronto 1981)Google Scholar. For the convoluted relationship between the influential Dutch politician and theologian Abraham Kuyper (who almost went to the Transvaal once on a fact-finding mission) and his Calvinist stanwerwanten (kinsmen) in South Africa, see Koppen, Chris AJ. van, De Geuzen van de Negmtiende Eeuw: Abraham Kuyper en Zuid-Ajrika (Wormer 1992)Google Scholar. H. Giliomee writes that ‘this discussion of development of Afrikaner ethnic consciousness does not assume that it was the organic antecedent of the “secondary” phase of full-blown Afrikaner ethnic consciousness that was formed in the twentieth century’. See Giliomee, H., ‘The Begin nings of Afrikaner Ethnic Consciousness, 1850-1914’ in: Vail, Leroy ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London and Berkeley 1989) 21–22Google Scholar. However, as I attempt to show below, it is Giliomee's work that allows one to relate apartheid to the Dutch period (though, admittedly that is not the same as relating apartheid to earlier Afrikaner na tionalism).

22 Geertz, Clifford, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York 1983) 232Google Scholar.

23 He is here tackling the comparative study of law, but his remarks are set within the framework of his wider theoretical concerns and the wider scope of his work: Geertz, , Local Knowledge, 232Google Scholar.

24 Geertz, , Local Knowledge, for ‘dialectical tacking’, see page 69Google Scholar; for ‘hermeneutic tacking’, see page 170.

25 Ibid., 186.

26 Ibid., 186-187; for ‘symbolic forms”, see page 58. The essays I mention and quote from are ‘“From the Native's Point of View”: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding’ and ‘Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective”, both in Geertz, Local Knowledge.

27 Again, I have reordered quotes: Geertz, , Local Knowledge, 216 and 218Google Scholar.

28 Geertz, , Local Knowledge, 233Google Scholar.

29 See Ribeiro, F. Rosa, ‘“Apartheid” and “Democracia Racial”: South Africa and Brazil Compared’, University of Utrecht, 1996Google Scholar. I was not entirely successful because, though I was tacking between Rio and Cape Town both in the literal and metaphorical sense for almost three years between early 1993 and late 1995, there is at times a thinly veiled Brazilian bias in my dissertation. Also, my attempt to use the all-encompassing, at bottom universalistic, analytical framework of French anthropologist Louis Dumont certainly did not foster a good hermeneutic movement.

30 Edward Said shows clearly how powerful and unique British imperialism was, even in comparison to French imperialism: Said, Edward, Culture and Imperialism (New York 1993)Google Scholar. For the French ideal, see Lewis, Martin, ‘One Hundred Million Frenchmen: The “Assilimation” Theory in French Colonial Policy’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 3/4 (1961) 129–151Google Scholar. For Freyre's luso-tropicalismo, see his Integracao Portuguesa nos Tropicos/Portuguese Integration in the Tropics: Notes Concerning a Possible Lusotropicology (Lisbon 1958)Google Scholar. The Netherlands were painfully aware of their ambiguous and marginal position as a world power in comparison with their much more powerful neighbours: for the views of Abraham Kuyper, an important Dutch politician, about the neighbours of the Netherlands, see van Koppen, De Gotten.

31 ‘The Origins and Entrenchment of European Dominance at the Cape, 1652-C.1840’ in: Elphick, and Giliomee, , The Shaping, 521–566Google Scholar. An earlier version appeared in the first edition of 1979.

32 See Arkel, D. van, Quispel, G.C. and Ross, Robert, ‘De Wijngaard des Heeren?’ Een Onderzoek naar de Wartels van ‘die Blanke Baaskap’ in Zuid-Afrika (Leiden 1983).Google Scholar Nigel Worden also seems to spouse an intermediary line in a recent work: The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Segregation and Apartheid (Oxford 1994)Google Scholar.

33 Elphic, and Giliomee, , The Shaping, 523Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., 529.

35 Ibid., 529-530.

36 I am grateful to Hermann Giliomee for having sent me a draft of the chapter in his book, on which this discussion is based.

37 See Worden, Nigel, The Making of Modern South Africa, 66–67Google Scholar.

38 Nonetheless, MacCrone's thesis of the primacy of the frontier as the cradle of discrimina tion is disproved, as there were as many cases of discrimination in the southwestern Cape as in the frontier.

39 Quoted in Gerstner, J.N., The Thousand Generation Covenant: Dutch Reformed Covenant Theology and Group Identity in Colonial South Africa (Leiden 1991) 252Google Scholar.

40 Coetzee, J.M., ‘The Mind of Apartheid: Geoffrey Cronje-1902-’, Social Dynamics 1 (1991) 1–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Ibid., 27-30. The interpretations Coetzee mentions are all well-known: son, Leonard Thomp, The Political Mythology of Apartheid (New Haven 1985)Google Scholar; Moodie's The Rise of Afrikanerdom; Sharp's, John ‘Ethnic Group and Nation: The Apartheid Vision in South Africa’ in: Boonzaier, Emile and Sharp, John eds, South African Keywords (Cape Town 1988)Google Scholar;Dubow, Saul, Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919-1936 (London 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Toil, André du, ‘Ideological Change, Afrikaner Nationalism, and Pragmatic Racial Domination’ in: Thompson, L. and Butler, J. eds, Change in Contemporary South Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1975)Google Scholar;O'Meara's, DanVolkskapitalisme: Class, Capital, and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934-1948 (Cambridge 1983)Google Scholar;Johnstone, Frederick, Class, Race and Gold (Lanham 1976)Google Scholar; and Marks, Shula and Trapido, Stanley, ‘The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism’ in their jointly edited The Politics of Race (London 1987)Google Scholar.

42 As Coetzee points out, later apartheid supporters themselves would be silent about Cronjé's obsessiveness, somewhat embarrassedly trying to signal that it was extraneous or unnecessary. For the importance of Cronjé's works in Afrikaner Nationalist circles in devising the blueprint for apartheid, see Coetzee, , ‘Mind of Apartheid”, 3–4.Google Scholar According to Hermann Giliomee (personal communication), Cronje's work would be used retro spectively to justify apartheid. For an establishment evaluation of Cronje's work, see Rhoodie, N.J., ‘G. Cronje se beskouing van die Suid-Afrikaanse Blank-Bantoe-problematiek, soos weerspieël in sy onmiddellik na-oorlogse geskrifte’ in: Pieterse, J.E. et al. eds, Mens en Gemeenskap (Pretoria and Cape Town 1969)Google Scholar.

43 Coetzee, , ‘Mind of Apartheid”, 16Google Scholar.

44 This and the following paragraphs are freely quoted from my doctor's dissertation, Ribeiro, , ‘“Apartheid” and “Democracia Racial”‘, 35–38Google Scholar.

45 Cronjé, G., ‘n Tuiste vir die nageslag’ (Johannesburg 1945)Google Scholar.

46 Cronjé, , ’n Tuiste, 47Google Scholar, emphasis in the original. I have run paragraphs together. I am deeply indebted to Fernel Abrahams from the Departement Afrikaans en Nederlands of the University of Cape Town for kindly revising with me my own translations of Cronjé here. I have also relied on Coetzee's choice of terms. However, ultimate responsability for the choice of certain terms is my own.

47 There is an ambiguity in Cronjé concerning ethnicity and race: at times the different volk-communities are the different races, and at times they are the different ethnic groups (particularly in what concerns Afrikaners).

48 Cronjé, , ’n Tuiste, 65Google Scholar.

49 Coetzee, , ‘Mind of Apartheid’, 11Google Scholar.

50 Cronjé, , ’n Tuiste, 66–79Google Scholar.

51 Ibid., 79. Emphasis in the original. Cronje is very fond of italics.

52 In Cronjé's work, we notice the term volk contrasting with ‘individual’ (individu). In Cronjé's view, a denationalised or detribalised individual is not really human, but just a being that somehow floats hopelessly in a pulpy world of non-differentiation and chaos where he is neither one thing nor the other. The volk or the race, in fact, has primacy over the individual: in Cronjé's conception, the individual exists only by virtue of the volk.

53 The Indians were going to be ‘repatriated’ to India where they supposedly belonged: Cronjé, G., Afriha sender die Asiaat (Johannesburg 1946)Google Scholar.

54 Cronjé, G., Voogdyskap en apartheid (Pretoria 1948)Google Scholar.

55 Accordingly, Coetzee analyses Cronjé's texts in terms of obsessiveness, with a psycho analytic explanation, ‘Mind of Apartheid”, 18–22.

56 Ibid., 23.

57 Coetzee, , ‘Mind of Apartheid’, 25.Google Scholar See Swanson, Maynard, ‘The Sanitation Syndrome: Bubonic Plague and Urban Native Policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–1909’ in: Beinart and Dubow, Segregation and ApartheidGoogle Scholar.

58 Coetzee, , ‘Mind of Apartheid’, 26–27Google Scholar.

59 Ibid., 30.

60 Dubow, Saul, Scientific Racism in Modem South Africa (Cambridge 1995) 248Google Scholar.

61 A recent, very creative and original attempt was undertaken by Young-Bruehl, Elizabeth, The Anatomy of Prejudices (Cambridge, Mass 1996)Google Scholar. Young-Bruehl develops a characterology to take account of a plurality of prejudices. Interestingly, she points out that the presence of prejudices does not presuppose a pathology - as when Coetzee assigns ‘madness’ to Cronje. She states that prejudices - even highly obsessive ones such as Cronje's - are produced by normal people. Also, they often help normal people maintain their relative normality, p. 209.

62 Doom, Jacques A.A. van, De Laatste Eeuw van Indie: Ontwikkeling en Ondergang van een Koloniaal Project (Amsterdam 1994) 153Google Scholar.