THEWHITEINVADERS
The 1820
Settlers and subsequent immigrants from Britain introduced
further complexity into an already complicated colonial society.With their
different language, traditions, religious affiliations, and experiences, they
were culturally distinct from the earlier settlers. They were the first white
immigrants who did not assimilate with them. Deep into the twentieth
century, except among the elite of the southwestern part of the colony,
social mixing was rare and intermarriages were few. The British immi-
grants expressed the distinction by calling the earlier settlers Boers, mean-
ing farmers, and the term came to have derogatory overtones. During the
Dutch period, Dutch-speakers themselves had begun to use the word Af-
rikaner, alongside Christian and European. We shall employ the word
Afrikaner, which gradually gained in popularity and became the univer-
sally recognized label in the twentieth century.
White South Africans thus acquired an ethnic problem.analogous to the
Anglo-French problem of Canada. But the demographic proportions
were-and
have remained-decisively
different. In the colonies that be-
came Canada, British settlers soon outnumbered the French Canadians. In
greater South Africa, Afrikaners have always formed at least 55 percent of