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Mar 14, 2026
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2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
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HS 218 Modern Africa/South Africa
(4 Credits)
Southern Africa has been one of the most important and fascinating regions in modern world history. The first place in Africa to be colonized by Europeans, it became a pioneering model for creating a race-based system. This system culminated in what became known as apartheid (a mixture of segregation and discrimination), which governed South Africa until the 1990s. It was only with the election of Nelson Mandela as President in the country’s first free democratic elections that the Black, Colored, and Asian majority was finally able to dismantle centuries of institutionalized racism. In this course, we will follow the rise and fall of South Africa’s race-based system and place it in a global context. It’s a fascinating story of Western empire-building and colonialism; the rise of capitalism and the discovery of the world’s largest diamond and gold deposits; the battles not only between whites and non-whites for dominance in the region but also between rival white European groups; the apex of the racial system under apartheid; how and why that system declined and fell; the rise of Nelson Mandela to power; and, finally, how South Africa has reckoned with the legacy of its difficult past in the years since the fall of the white supremacist regime.
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