White Supremacy and Black Resistance in Preindustrial South Africa: The Making of the Colonial Order in the Eastern Cape, 1770

This book provides an innovative and indepth analysis of the emergence of a racially divided society in preindustrial Southern Africa. It centers on an exploration of the past of the Eastern Cape, a region of decisive importance in Southern African history. Colonial land and labor policies that had their origin in the Eastern Cape spread into much of British Southern and Eastern Africa and as far away as the White Highlands of Kenya. In the modern era the Eastern Cape has been the cradle of African nationalism in South Africa. Clifton Crais moves beyond the liberal and Marxist approaches that have dominated South African history by bringing questions of culture to the center of his analysis.