In this masterly work of synthesis and reinterpretation, Timothy Keegan looks anew at the relatively neglected period of South African history before the mineral age - in particular the years of British rule up to the 1850s - and decisively establishes its importance in the shaping of South African society.

For whereas a previous generation of historians saw the twentieth-century racial state emerging from the forces unleashed by the mineral revolution, Keegan argues that its roots lie in an earlier period, when the Cape was first integrated into the British empire of free trade of the early nineteenth century.

It is a story that is strong in notable events - slave emancipation, the arrival of the 1820 British settlers, a series of frontier wars, the Great Trek of Boer emigrants - as well as in striking personalities, among them Dr John Philip, Andries Stockenstrom, John Fairbairn, Moshoeshoe and Sir Harry Smith. In Keegan's pages these familiar historical landmarks and characters emerge in entirely novel ways, the subject of fresh interpretations and original insights.