The Africanders: A Century of Dutch-English Feud in South Africa

Published in 1900 as the Second Boer War erupted, this is a vivid historical account of the century-long collision between Dutch settlers and British imperial ambition in South Africa. Le Roy Hooker traces the story from Jan van Riebeeck's arrival in 1652, when the Dutch East India Company established a refreshment station at the Cape, through the slow crystallizing of a distinctly Afrikaans-speaking people, the Africanders, whose ancestors had put down roots far from Amsterdam and London. The narrative builds with mounting tension as British commercial and military pressure intensifies, examining the cultural grievances, political humiliations, and deepening sense of peoplehood that drove the Boer communities toward two wars of independence. Hooker writes with the urgency of someone living through the very events he documents, offering both a historical account and a polemical intervention into the imperial politics of his moment. For readers interested in the tangled roots of colonial history, the formation of settler identities, or the violent birth of modern South Africa, this book provides a window into how one group understood their own origins at a moment of existential crisis.