This is a history of the Afrikaner peoples from their arrival in southern Africa in 1652, up to the present day. The account covers the establishment of the Dutch East India trading post in the Cape, the Greak Trek of the 1830s, the discovery of gold and diamonds in the Transvaal in the late nineteenth century, the Anglo-Boer War, the effects of the two World Wars, and the democratic elections of 1994. At all these stages, G H L Le May assesses not only the development of the state institutions of Afrikaner society, but the evolution of the people's distinct mentality.

The author was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University, South Africa, and Worcester College, Oxford. From 1953 until 1967 he was Professor of Political Studies in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. From 1968 until 1990 he was Fellow and Tutor in Politics of Worcester College, Oxford, of which he is now and Emeritus Fellow. His previous writings include British Government, 1914-63: Select Documents, British Supremacy in South Africa, 1899-1907, Black and White in South Africa, and The Victorian Constitution.