Welsh takes the history of South Africa from the first recorded European contact (Bartolomeu Dias in 1488) through to the post-Mandela election of 1999 in the space of about 540 pages (plus notes, etc.). Despite this rather wide scope, he manages reasonably detailed coverage throughout (skimping a bit on the parts he expects us to know about already, like the military history of the "Zulu wars" and "Boer war" and the stuff we all saw on the TV news in the 1980s), but the core of his interest is clearly in the hundred years of British administration, where he goes into a lot of detail about how successive generations of British officials on the spot and politicians in Whitehall messed up the running of the Cape Colony and its various unwanted appendages (Natal, the Boer republics and the protectorates that became Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana).

Whilst he spends plenty of time on puncturing the core myths of Afrikanerdom (and exposes the newness of at least some glorious African tribal "traditions"), this really seems to be a book addressed at British (or English-speaking South African) readers brought up on the idea that it was benign, if somewhat paternalistic, British imperial supervision that protected the black population from the evil Afrikaners until "we" were so ungratefully chucked out. In reality, of course, British imperial policy was all about keeping the voters in the British Isles happy, which, then as now, meant spending as little as possible, protecting trade, and keeping British casualties low. Embarrassing headlines about "natives" being maltreated could be awkward, but they were rarely the top priority. The office of Colonial Secretary was not a popular one (Joseph Chamberlain seems to have been the only minister who ever volunteered for it), it had a high turnover rate, and was rarely given to anyone disqualified by practical knowledge of the world south of the English Channel. Something I hadn't appreciated was that there was always a strong rivalry between the Colonial Office and the separate India Office — to the extent that the India Secretary sometimes intervened to complain about the mistreatment of Indians in Natal, for example.

This mess of good old-fashioned British amateurishness and cynicism goes a long way to explain the real puzzle of South African history, something I never made sense of in school history lessons, that the British fought a long and nasty war against the Afrikaners, defeated them thoroughly, and then only a few years later agreed a constitutional settlement that allowed them to become the dominant parties in the new Union of South Africa, with no real guarantees for non-white people at all. One part of the puzzle is that it was a Tory government that fought the war, and it was fought to safeguard the rights not of the black people, but of the white, non-Afrikaner capitalists and workers in the gold-mining areas of Transvaal. And the other part is that the Tories were ousted by the Liberals soon after the end of the war, and their policy seems to have been to get rid of the South African problem as swiftly as possible, even if it meant letting Jan Smuts pull a fast one on voting rights...

In the discussion of the twentieth century there wasn't so much that was new to me, but it was interesting to see Welsh's — no doubt well-informed — view that it was chiefly economic factors that forced the end of white minority rule in the 1980s. Employers simply couldn't work with the crazy conditions that the apartheid system dictated, and investors were pulling out, leaving Botha and de Klerk little choice but to start dismantling the rickety apparatus their predecessors had convinced themselves they needed. (Other writers usually give most of the credit to the end of the Cold War making South Africa's "bulwark against communism" irrelevant to the US.)

All very interesting, and useful background on how South Africa got to be how it is now. ( )

Wholeheartedly recommend this if you need a 500 page history of South Africa. It is well researched and comprehensive. Fitting the entire history of a country in 500 pages is always going to lead to some things feeling summarised though, and there were definitely places I felt the book assumed I knew more than I did. Heavy going at times, but really does what it says on the tin. ( )

Excellent fair and balanced history of South Africa, challenging " white" and " black" myths. Well written: thoroughly enjoyed it. ( )

An interesting history of South Africa, at least since colonial times, by an English speaker. It challenges some of the myths, notably that there was nobody in South Africa except the San people (formerly known as bushmen or Hottentots) when white settlers first came. According to this myth, black Africans migrated into South Africa no earlier than the whites and therefore have no more historical claim to the land than the whites do. Welsh demonstrates that it was only in the current Western Cape Province where the whites first settled that the land was "empty" except for the San people; the rest of what is now South Africa was indeed already populated by black Africans by the time the whites expanded there. ( )