How do people cope when confronted with the unfamiliar? This book explores encounters between Europeans and 'the Other' in South Africa, specifically the Khoe peoples at the Cape of Good Hope, to offer a critical study of the earliest depictions of these indigenous peoples between 1488 to 1652.

Placing the image of the Khoe in the earliest accounts by European visitors against the development of colonial discourse in Europe, this book sets at its centre a critical analysis of a learned treatise by J.W. van Grevenbroek, the Dutch East India Company's head scribe at the Cape who set out to scrutinise his employer's colonial practice while rehabilitating the Khoe. Arguing that biblical and classical ideas about foreign peoples shaped the thinking about the 'Otherness' of the Khoe more so than race or colour, it also highlights the role played by age-old sterotypes about 'the African' and myths about the 'dark continent' that prevail into the present day.

The Cape has always held particular power over the European imagination of Africa. This book traces its development and the challenges it faced from the earliest first-hand accounts of its people during the expansion of empire. It offers a fresh and critical perspective on notions of race in European and South African colonial historiography, and adds to an understanding of post- and decolonial efforts globally today.