Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Glossary of Afrikaans Terms
Terminology
Introduction
Part I: From Control to Opportunity
Ch 1 'We Are Not Europeans': Ideology and Identity in Pretoria's
Golden Age
Ch 2 Into Africa: The Outward Policy
Ch 3 'We Must Stay Prepared': Reimagining the White Redoubt
Ch 4 In Search of Détente: Negotiating a Transfer of Power in
Rhodesia
Part II: From Challenge to Crisis
Ch 5 Mission Creep: South Africa's Intervention in the Angolan
Civil War
Ch 6 The Post Mortem: Lessons from Angola
Ch 7 Dr. Kissinger, I Presume?: The 1976 Initiatives
Part III: From Collapse to Reconstruction
Ch 8 A New Roadmap: The Development of Total Strategy
Ch 9 "If you say change, I'll say I can't": A New Vision
Conclusion
Note on Sources
Archival Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Jamie Miller is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and has held fellowships at Yale University and Cornell University.
"Jamie Miller's analysis of apartheid diplomacy in the
1970s...delivers two important points: that local political agendas
mattered to the global history of the Cold War and that
international developments prompted ideological reassessment in
Afrikaner nationalist circles....Miller's close reading of
Afrikaner politics supports his assertion that regional specifics
mattered in the Cold War. His analysis also undermines assumptions
about the power of
international whiteness. Even within Afrikanerdom, there were
differences about whose white privilege merited protection and how
it might be achieved."--Nancy J. Jacobs, American Historical
Review
"[A] fresh, well-written, and deeply insightful look at the
apartheid regime's efforts to escape international isolation and
respond to major regional transformations in the 1970s....This
re-centering of apartheid's history on an often-neglected
diplomatic history approach admirably highlights its leaders'
uncertainties, ambiguities, and plausible roads not
taken....Miller's work is remarkable, and promises to be a standard
reference for years to
come....[S]hould serve as a useful model for aspiring young
researchers writing their first books. It exhibits a stunningly
rich knowledge of personalities and institutions....His
wide-ranging use of archives, and
lengthy note on their nature and availability, should serve as
inspiration to future scholars, young and old. I thus highly
recommend An African Volk to anyone interested in the history of
apartheid, the Cold War in Southern Africa, or the burgeoning field
of African international history."--Nathaniel K. Powell, H-Diplo
Roundtable
"Jamie Miller's An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and the
Search for Survival is the first in-depth study, based on primary
sources, of Vorster's efforts to secure for South Africa a better
image in the international community and attract allies in the
independent African states in Southern Africa. Miller tells this
entire story with great aplomb. His book is in my view the most
outstanding debut of an historian of South Africa that has appeared
in
the last thirty to forty years....With An African Volk: The
Apartheid Regime and its Search for Survival Miller has made a
seminal contribution to both Cold War history and to the study of
the crucial stages
of the transition to black rule in Southern Africa."--Hermann
Giliomee, H-Diplo Roundtable
"While Miller's book includes several positive characteristics
including convincing analysis, a lively writing style, and
compelling examples of evidence throughout, arguably the most
impressive aspect of An African Volk is the fact that much of the
research examined documents written in Afrikaans, from a variety of
South African archives....Miller succeeded in the very difficult
task of putting himself into the shoes of the South African
apartheid
government's leadership in the 1970s, and convincingly portraying
the regime as one that sought to walk a perilous tightrope and
present itself as post-colonial and African, while simultaneously
defending a putrid
system of institutionalized racism. The remarkable result is that
in Miller's account, the individuals ruling the roost from
Pretoria, who are usually presented as one-dimensional, come across
as human."--Andy DeRoche, H-Diplo Roundtable
"Unlike many scholars who have studied the apartheid regime, Miller
is appreciative of the fact that the National Party leadership
really did believe that apartheid was morally justi?able and that
the polity established under white Afrikaner dominion was
legitimate....An African Volk is an excellent addition to the South
African historiography of the apartheid regime. It bears all the
hallmarks of high-quality scholarship: thorough research and
mastery
of the secondary literature, an engaging style, profound and
provocative insights, a coherent and convincing thesis and
impeccable editing. Indeed, it is a consummate and exemplary piece
of history writing. As
such, it should establish Miller's good standing in the local and
international academy."--Gary Baines, South African Historical
Journal
"[I]mpressive....[N]o one has researched this story in anything
like the depth he has, and the result is a major contribution to
knowledge of the ideology and discourse of the apartheid state in
relation to the rest of Africa....[H]is book will, without doubt,
long remain a key work on apartheid foreign policy in the
1970s."--Chris Saunders, African Studies Quarterly
"Jamie Miller's important new book is perhaps the most successful
monograph-length attempt to integrate a wide-ranging use of
particularly South African, US and Rhodesian sources into a study
of Pretoria's foreign policy during John Vorster's tenure as prime
minister (1966-78). Based on a Cambridge PhD, its utilization of
archival research, hard to find memoirs, newspapers and interviews
makes it worthy of serious consideration....[T]his is perhaps the
most
important book written about South African foreign policy in the
mid-Cold War era. The archival research, the interviews, and the
wide reading in obscure publications will ensure that anyone who
has an
interest in apartheid and South African foreign policy will need to
read this book and engage with its ideas."--Dr Robert McNamara,
Reviews in History
"[T]his is a valuable and important study in presenting Vorster's
diplomatic efforts and his emphasis on 'multinational' 'separate
development,'...as intimately linked and more than a cynical ploy,
and in questioning claims in published sources through rigorous
archival research. Above all, Miller refreshingly takes seriously
arguments by and between Afrikaners themselves, regardless of how
much he rejects such thinking."--Patrick Furlong, The
International
Journal of African Historical Studies
"An African Volk is the first in-depth study, based on primary
sources, of Vorster's efforts to secure for South Africa a better
image in the international community and attract allies in the
independent African states in Southern Africa Miller tells this
entire story with great aplomb. An African Volk is in my view the
most outstanding debut of an historian of South Africa that has
appeared in the last thirty to forty years The book is based
on a very wide range of primary sources in the archives of several
countries and on personal interviews with many of the main actors.
Proficient in Afrikaans, the language of most white political
leaders and civil
servants, Miller was able to develop an acute understanding of the
dynamics of Afrikaner politics and the often contradictory goals of
the Department of Foreign Affairs and the military
establishment."--Politicsweb
"Miller's book offers fascinating insights into the internal
struggles of the apartheid regime as it tried to project its
legitimacy and ensure its survival in the post-colonial, Cold War
world. In this meticulously researched account, the author reveals
the ways in which apartheid's ideologues appropriated language used
against apartheid in an attempt to strengthen it, emphasizing the
Africanness of the volk in an era of nationalism and
decolonization, the
nation-building claims of separate development, and the
anti-communist consensus that bound White South Africa to the
West."--Elizabeth Schmidt, Loyola University Maryland
"This book is an exceptionally lucid, bold, and incisive study of
the foreign policy of John Vorster. It shows vividly how after some
enterprising attempts to engage African leaders, Vorster intervened
in Angola in 1975, seeking to secure Afrikaner survival in terms
that made the attainment of that goal impossible, and leaving him a
tragic figure."--Hermann Giliomee, author of The Last Afrikaner
Leaders: A Supreme Test of Power
"A long overdue look at the perceptions, ideology, and foreign
policy of South Africa's apartheid regime during the 1970s,
Miller's account is a challenge to conventional wisdom about the
Cold War in Southern Africa and a significant contribution to the
history of South Africa during a critical decade."--Odd Arne
Westad, Harvard University
"Miller's patient and careful reading of declassified South African
documents tells us something new about apartheid and its relations
to the countries north of the Limpopo. In the twenty years before
1994, the apartheid regime struggled, sometimes by encouraging
considerable violence and sometimes at odds with the South African
military, to locate and legitimate white-ruled South Africa in an
anti-imperialist world of new nations."--Luise White, author of
Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African
Decolonization
"This finely realized study of apartheid statecraft considerably
deepens our understanding of the regional dynamics of South African
power in the 1970s. Miller's astute analysis of Pretoria's
realpolitik shows the ambitions and limits of political reforms in
the era prior to the revival of mass resistance to apartheid in the
1980s."--Saul Dubow, author of Apartheid, 1948-1994
"Where apartheid South Africa's response to decolonisation has
usually been seen as one of singular opposition and fear, Dr
Miller's account instead tells a story of rich contradiction and
nuance. He shows how the Afrikaner elite tried to rearticulate the
legitimacy of their system in the new language of decolonisation
and then execute ambitious statecraft feats to give this new vision
substance. Incisive in its analysis, meticulously researched, and
highly
original, Dr Miller's work overturns much conventional wisdom in
the area and lays down new paths for the study of the apartheid
regime in the future."--From the prize citation for the Pernal
Prize
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