In this masterly work of synthesis and reinterpretation, TimothyKeegan looks anew at the relatively neglected period of South African history beforethe mineral age- in particular the years of British rule up to the 1850s- anddecisively establishes its importance in the shaping of South African society. Forwhereas a previous generation of historians saw the twentieth-century racial stateemerging from forces unleashed by the mineral revolution, Keegan argues that itsroots lie in an earlier period, when the cape was first inegrated into the Britishempire of free trade of the early nineteenth century.