vernment administrators, who seem to have had their own agenda of exploiting Africa in mind. As they say, "Although stable relations and various forms of cooperation existed at times between the various peoples, conflict was pervasive. Because it had both a racial and a class dimension, negotiations were less effective in resolving disputes than is often the case in purely economic conflicts."2
Nor did Britain, which had established Cape Colony, interfere with Dutch policy of allowing slavery as a component of racial relations, as long as Holland had to look to Britain for military defense of its own colonies or administration. In this connection, Ume says that apartheid itself had its origin with the Dutch East India Company, which in 1682 allowed whites to interfere with making emancipation of slaves easy. The British, in fact, adopted separatist policies almost from the beginning, concluding that white exclusiveness was never questioned when the opposition came from blacks.3 Thus the British policies never challenged the environment of separatism that was institutionalized with apartheid in 1948.
On the other hand, as Elphick and Shell say, there were distinct regional patterns of racial development, particularly in Cape Town, which was more sophisticated than either the southwest or the "trekboer" region of the northeastern part of the colony. In Cape Town, some slaves were freed and even intermarried in limited ways, while in the farming region of the southwest slavery remained a big institution. Most intermarriage occurred between black women and European men because there were so few European women in Cape Colony. But the result was not racial harmony from the European point of view. Instead, "miscegenation," which intermarriage is called, produced a new group, known as the Bastaards.4 The labeling of mixed race children was one aspect of racial order, to the extent that specific racial groups were identified: slave, free, ...