Afrikaner Calvinism

Afrikaner Calvinism is, according to theory, a unique cultural development that combined the Calvinist religion with the political aspirations of the white Afrikaans speaking people of South Africa.

From 1652 to 1835, settlers primarily from the Netherlands, and migrant and refugee Calvinist Protestants from Germany, France, Scotland, and elsewhere in Europe, combined in South Africa to form a distinct people, called the Afrikaners. A significant number of the French progenitors of the Afrikaner people were Huguenots, who first began to arrive between 1687 and 1691 in flight from the persecution that lasted for one hundred years after the Edict of Nantes was revoked. Between the end of the 18th century and the end of the 20th century, these people increasingly considered themselves Afrikaner (originally meaning simply "African") rather than European. They spoke their own, indigenous language, called Afrikaans, and were bound together by a form of Calvinist religion. The Afrikaners negotiated a home-rule arrangement in the four British Colonies 10 years after the Anglo-Boer war and firmly established themselves as the ruling minority in South Africa until international pressure and increasing chaos within South Africa compelled them to dismantle their policies of exclusive control, called Apartheid.