Manzo provides a keen historical analysis of the political, economic, social, and cultural conditions in South Africa. The country's racial and ethnic groups, with subtle distinctions even within these groups, testify as object lessons to the changes brought about by foreign power. The themes of domination and resistance, developed through the several stages of South Africa's evolution are examined on the larger scale of international relations. Concepts of power, rights, and political relationships involved in international relations are analyzed in light of historical fact that offers useful suggestions for the future.

During a research trip to South Africa in 1988 I attended a wedding, a "crossover" marriage uniting an Afrikaans speaker named Johannes and an English speaker named Wendy. Although struggling to follow conversations largely in Afrikaans, I was struck nonetheless by the familiarity of the scene; I could have been in England where I was reared or in the United States where I was born and now live. My hosts even referred to themselves and their community as "European." And yet the fleeting glimpse of a black person passing the reception hall window was a reminder that we were indeed in Africa. One word sprung to mind which seemed most aptly to capture my sense of the occasion; that word was colonial.

From that moment on I was unable to accept that the politics of South Africa are historically a product of isolationism--that is, to accept the notion that Boers beyond the frontier of British liberal influence articulated a theory of racial difference drawn straight from the Bible and left untouched by any of the ideas of the European Enlightenment. Whatever it was that had shaped modern South Africa, it seemed to me, was intimately bound up with the history of its relations with the West. Investigating what those relations have been, and how they have shaped both the practices of domination in South Africa and the struggles of the oppressed to overcome them, was the research project that resulted in this book.

This book seeks to make sense of South Africa, but it is not a narrow country study intended to expose historians to new archival material. Informed by the critical social theory of Michel Foucault and drawing upon published works and documents, the book examines the effects of global power relations in one particular locale; as such, it goes to the heart of the sorts of questions usually asked by scholars of international relations and . . .