An African Volk by Jamie Miller

An African Volk (Signed & Inscribed to Historian Herman Giliomee)

A Landmark Study of Vorster's Apartheid Foreign Policy, Inscribed by the Author to a Leading South African Historian

Bibliographic Specifications

• Title: An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival
• Author: Jamie Miller
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, New York
• Publication Date: 2016
• ISBN-13: 9780190274832
• Edition Details: Inscribed and signed by the author, with a personal dedication to the historian Herman Giliomee.
• Binding: Publisher's red cloth hardcover with printed dust jacket.
• Physical Format: Octavo hardcover. Dust jacket with a photographic front panel showing a crowd and John Vorster.
• Language: English

Official Condition Report

• The Book: Very Good (VG)
• Exterior / Boards: The red cloth boards are square and sound, with a few small pale specks and one small rubbed patch on the front board. The spine edges are intact.
• Interior: The title page and the signed page are clean and bright, with no foxing to the pages examined. The text block is otherwise unmarked by ownership stamps or library marks.
• Provenance: Signed and inscribed by the author on the preliminary page: "Dear Hermann, Thank you for all your help, over so many years, on this project. I really could not have done it without you. Your advice, ideas, and friendship have been invaluable." It closes with an Afrikaans wish that the reader enjoy the book, and is signed "Jamie Miller, Stellenbosch, November 2016". The recipient is the well-known South African historian and intellectual Herman Giliomee, and the copy comes from his library. The inscription shows the author thanking him for years of advice, ideas and friendship on the project, an association that gives this copy real significance for collectors of South African historiography.
• The Dust Jacket: Present, and protected in a durable archival-type plastic cover. The jacket shows chipping and creasing at the head of the spine, a small nick or chip near the tail, light edge wear, and rubbing to the corners and top front edge. A small mark or sticker remnant sits at the lower left of the front panel. Graded Very Good (VG).

Synopsis & Historical Value

Published by Oxford University Press in New York in 2016, An African Volk examines how the apartheid state tried to escape international isolation under Prime Minister John Vorster. It follows the regime's search for survival as the world of white empire gave way to a post-colonial order that rejected racial hierarchy.

The study concentrates on South African foreign policy during the Vorster years, and reviewers have singled it out as an important work on the country's diplomacy in the mid-Cold War era. One reviewer called it the first in-depth, primary-source study of Vorster's efforts in this field. It shows how Pretoria sought to justify itself and to find allies during the Cold War and decolonisation.

This copy adds a human dimension to the scholarship. The author's inscription records his gratitude to Hermann, whom he thanks for advice, ideas and friendship over many years of work on the project. The recipient is Herman Giliomee, the well-known South African historian and intellectual. A scholarly work of this standing, signed for a leading historian of the Afrikaners, will appeal to collectors of Africana, apartheid-era history and the writing of South African history itself.

Author Profile: Jamie Miller

Jamie Miller is a historian of Africa and the Cold War. He took his PhD at the University of Cambridge and has held fellowships at Yale University and Cornell University. At the time of this book's publication he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh.

His research interests include decolonisation, anti-colonial nationalism, state violence, and the Cold War in Southern Africa and the wider developing world. Among his other published work is the 2015 article "Africanising Apartheid" in the Journal of African History.

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