ABSTRACT
Ideas of race in South African history have usually been seen in the context of the rise of white nationalism and apartheid. Radical scholars have begun to stress the importance of ideas generated in the imperial metropolis seeping through into South African political debate before and after Union in 1910. In the period up to the outbreak of World War Two there was an emerging consensus among both liberals and Afrikaner nationalist intellectuals on the centrality of culture rather than race in South African debate. The South African Association for the Advancement of Science (S.A.A.A.S), which had been founded in 1903, exhibited a continuing interest in the ideas and approaches of the scientific communities in Britain and the US, from where a number of its members were recruited. The discussions in the S.A.A.A.S. reflected the growing interest in the importance of both heredity and environment in the years after World War One.
