SOUTHERN AFRICA
PLAINS, HEIGHTS AND SETTLEMENTS
trategically
located between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the southern
reaches of Africa offered an ideal way station for European
ships heading for the monsoon seas in Asia. The inhabitants
of these lands traded food stocks with occasional European
ships passing by. But this limited support was not enough
to sustain the growing transoceanic trade network. In 1652
the VOC established the first permanent
European settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, a small way
side station intended to water and provision passing ships.
Over time, this outpost grew into a bustling colony, and settlers
flocked to the VOC settlement for
its fresh water, fertile soil, and temperate climate.

View on Table Mountain and
fort and town of Cape of Good Hope, 1778
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From Refreshing Station to Colony
he
semi-nomadic Khoikhoi of the western Cape bartered their cattle
with European ships passing their lands for over a century
before VOC commandant Jan van Riebeeck
arrived to establish a more permanent refreshing station for
passing VOC ships. The colony at
the Cape of Good Hope founded in 1652, initially comprised
little more then a small fortress surrounded by fruit gardens.
Most of the foodstuffs and materials the VOC
settlement needed for itself and the ships that passed by
were expected to come from the Khoikhoi and San through barter.
As European settlement and trade expanded, the older
system of barter was no longer sufficient to meet European
demands. In 1657, the agrarian frontier of the colony extended
beyond the original settlement, when free European farmers
settled behind Table Mountain. Until about 1700, the VOC
's frontier expanded slowly through the south-western Cape.
The growth of VOC settlement also
brought its trading enterprises into contact with new African
polities in the North. Some of these chiefdoms worked with
VOC and others resisted its demands,
but the nature of society, statecraft, trade, and warfare
changed fundamentally for all.
Around 1700 economic and legal systems were firmly
in place. New villages were founded, such as Stellenbosch
and Drakenstein. Many western Cape Khoikhoi were now entirely
dependent on the colony. In the words of one VOC
official, Khoikhoi society had become 'a nation of hunters
and robbers.' As the frontier of European pastoralism expanded
to the north and west and the trekboers settled down, many
Africans were forced to forsake their lands. The Cape settlement
itself contained labourers, soldiers, farmers, artisans, exiles,
and slaves, many of them from places as diverse as India,
China, Indonesia, Madagascar, Zanzibar, and Angola, as well
as the Netherlands, the German states, England, Sweden, and
France. The political order was a hierarchical one, with clear
social distinctions between Company servants, freeburghers,
free Africans, free Asians, and slaves. The early formation
of Cape civil society is an important yet understudied topic
in historical research.
The VOC Cape records
he
Cape records of the VOC in The Hague
and Cape Town include not only the standard administrative
and trade records, but also annual tax rolls, criminal and
civil court records, inventories, wills, land grants, church
minutes, letter books and daily registers, and much more related
to daily life at the Cape. They allow the historical reconstruction
of Cape society between 1652 and 1795 with a comprehensiveness
virtually unparalleled anywhere in the world.

Document in Cape Town:
Attestation subscribed by the whole crew stating
that their mutiny to prevent the ship Overnes
to anchor at Prinseneiland was in the interest
of the VOC , 1753.
(click image to enlarge)
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However, VOC sources concerning
the Cape go beyond the confines of the European settlement
as well. The Company sent expeditions far into the African
continent, both to explore the area and to trade for goods
and slaves. VOC records therefore
include observations on social, economic, and political life
in many parts of southern Africa outside of direct Company
control, including most of the present Republic of South Africa,
Namibia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, and the Swahili
coast of Africa as far north as Somalia. Although not as detailed
as those that exist for the core areas of its settlement,
these papers form an essential and underused resource for
the history of Africa.
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