The Boers developed in complete isolation from European history.

Evidence

The Boers are descended from Dutch settlers who in the middle of the seventeenth century were stationed at the Cape to provide fresh vegetables and meat for ships on their voyage to India. A small group of French Huguenots was all that followed them in the course of the next century, so that it was only with the help of a high birthrate that the little Dutch splinter grew into a small people. Completely isolated from the current of European history, they set out on a path such “as few nations have trod before them, and scarcely one trod with success.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 499

Categorization

• QUESTION: Arendt is setting up the Boers as the test case of a European group that lived among ‘black savages’ in isolation. Worth tracking how she uses this to explain Boer race thinking as a distinct mechanism from European colonial racism.