Modern day South Africa has had contact with Europeans for centuries, and the first group to settle there were the Dutch. Here, Matt Lowe looks at the history of Dutch settlement in South Africa in the 17thcentury and considers how this played a part in later South African history.
A painting depicting the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck, first Commander of the Cape, to Table Bay in April 1652. Painting by Charles Davidson Bell.
At the far southern end of the Old World, the land that is now known as South Africa has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. Nowadays, in the West, South Africa is remembered as the land of Apartheid with continued racial tensions between the black majority and white minority, the legacy of the country’s complicated colonial past. European-descended South Africans are relatively new arrivals to the region, but just how long they have been present in the country may not be evident. Permanent European settlements were first founded by the Dutch in 1652, unintentionally leading to the creation of a new ethnic group in South Africa with its own language, history, and ideology, and, perhaps most notably from a modern perspective, its own unique sins.
The Dutch East Indies Company and the Founding of Cape Colony
Beginning in the early 1400s, the Age of Discovery saw ships from several European nations set out with the explicit purpose of finding new lands and trade routes. As a small country with maritime prowess, the Portuguese were among the most prolific explorers during this period. A Portuguese expedition led by Bartolomeu Dias was the first to locate the Cape of Good Hope at the southwestern tip of South Africa. Ten years later, Vasco da Gama would follow the same route and push further on to be the first to sail from Europe to India. During this voyage, da Gama briefly landed north of the Cape and made contact with the Khoikhoi natives for the first time. For over one hundred years, no other European nations would spend any considerable amount of time or effort in the region.
Like Portugal, the Netherlands was a small country dependent on sea trade. The Dutch wanted to gain a foothold in the immensely lucrative spice trade and sent its fleets to India and the Far East. The Dutch government decided that a chartered company would be useful to profitably govern the growing colonies in India and Indonesia. Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) or Dutch East Indies Company was founded in 1602 and was given almost total political and economic authority over the Dutch possessions in the East. It soon became official protocol for outgoing and returning VOC ships to anchor at the natural harbor of Table Bay at the Cape of Good Hope as a convenient place to rest the crews on the long voyages.
In 1651, the Council made the decision to send a small fleet to the Cape to establish a permanent supply base. Jan van Riebeeck, who had been a competent and loyal employee of the VOC since 1639, was chosen to command the expedition and directly oversee the development of the colony. His orders were simple. He was to find ways to provide food and clean water to the visiting ships and to construct a fort to defend the settlement. Of course, these objectives proved rather difficult to achieve. The expedition, made up of Dutch (and some German) VOC employees and their families and soldiers, departed the Netherlands on December 24, 1651 and arrived in Table Bay on April 6, 1652. Van Riebeeck could not have known it at the time, but the arrival of his fleet would define South African history for the next three and a half centuries.
Early Development
The first priorities were to find food sources, make contact with the native population, and begin construction of the fort. All these efforts progressed simultaneously. Some settlers were put to work experimenting with growing various kinds of European crops, while others were sent to explore the coast and further inland for meat and fish. Prior to the expedition’s arrival, the region had been sparsely populated by the Khoikhoi (or Khoi) and San tribes. The Dutch made initial contact with the Khoi and began trading European goods for local cattle. This relationship benefitted both parties and continued for several decades. There were periods of conflict between the Khoi and the settlers, of course, but the Dutch tried to stay on good terms with them when possible. The San group, however, were not interested in dealing with the Dutch. With food sources established and a fort under construction, Cape Town, the first settlement, was established.
Ships began arriving at Cape Town within a year of its founding, bringing supplies to help the colony grow and consolidate. Van Riebeeck and his settlers were diligent, and the viability of the colony soon became evident. The climate at the Cape proved well suited to growing European crops and trees as well as plants from India and the Far East. Sufficient numbers of cattle were purchased from the Khoikhoi that there were eventually enough for Dutch farmers to raise their own herds. Additionally, the first wine grapes were planted, which began the long tradition of South African wine. Establishing law and order was a priority as well. Early on, Robben Island in Table Bay, where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner for 18 years, was used as a prison and place of exile. Criminal settlers, slaves that attempted to run away, and Khoikhoi and San people that tried to steal from or cheat the Dutch farmers were sent there to live in isolation from the main colony. However, similar to the contemporary European colonies in North America, disease killed many early settlers before adequate housing had been built to protect them from the elements. Population growth in the colony was slow in the early years due to these factors as well as the low numbers of new colonists that arrived from Europe. Over time, however, the colony would become more robust and fresh settlers would steadily arrive for centuries to come.
From the start, the VOC shipped slaves from India, the East Indies, and West Africa to Cape Colony. Since there were only a few hundred European settlers, the colonists alone could not make the farms and ranches functional. Life for the slaves was difficult, although the settlers were prohibited from harming them, as they were considered VOC property. Initially, there were too few settlers to keep watch of the slaves, and many were able to escape into the interior, although there was no hope for them to ever return to their homelands. The natives of the region were not enslaved, however, since the Dutch needed to do business with them in order to survive. In fact, interracial marriages between Dutch men and Khoi or slave women were condoned by the VOC under the proper circumstances. The first mixed marriage occurred between a Dutchman and a freed Indian slave girl in 1658, and the first official Protestant wedding between a European and Khoi woman in 1664. The descendants from these relationships and the colony’s slaves would, in time, create a separate ethnic community known as the ‘Cape Coloureds’ that number in the millions in modern South Africa.
Consolidation of Cape Colony
Legally and practically, the VOC had a monopoly on all the economic activity of Cape Colony. This did not mean, however, that every settler was a company employee per se. Independent citizens, or free burghers, were allowed to own their own farms, ranches, mills, and other businesses, provided, of course, that they sell most of their goods to the company for fixed prices. This arrangement allowed for the VOC to make Cape Colony profitable while, ideally, giving enough freedom to its residents to live how they wanted. Most of the burghers were former VOC employees that had already served the company abroad. The free burghers gradually developed a distinct identity as a community, one that valued individualism and distrusted formal authority. Some burghers would become “trekboers”, or semi-nomadic ranchers. The trekboer lifestyle was an early manifestation of the individualism that would become a prominent feature of Afrikaner culture in later centuries.
Van Riebeeck was relieved of his command in 1662. The Cape Colony commanders that followed van Riebeeck would primarily continue the policies and projects that he had begun. The fort would eventually be replaced by the much larger and more complex Castle of Good Hope, which still stands today in Cape Town. It was not until Simon van der Stel assumed the governorship in 1679 that the colony began to mature economically and expand further inland. Starting with van der Stel, the role of commander was upgraded to governor, with all the civil administrative connotations it entailed. Under his leadership, new towns were founded, agricultural production increased to surplus levels, and the colony started to transform into more than just a supply station for VOC ships.
During van der Stel’s tenure, the first French Huguenots arrived in Cape Colony. While most Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France went to England and the Netherlands, the VOC paid for around two hundred men, women, and children to emigrate to South Africa starting in 1688. France had been an enemy of the Dutch many times prior, but the Huguenots were broadly welcomed at the Cape, due mostly to their Protestant faith which they shared with the Dutch and German colonists. As the colony continued to grow, the Huguenots worked in farming and ranching and contributed greatly to the quality of South African wine. The French settlers assimilated into the Dutch culture of the region, although French surnames are still present among the modern Afrikaner population.
Simon van der Stel retired in 1699 and was succeeded by his son Willem. Unfortunately for the colonists and the VOC leadership, Willem van der Stel was deeply corrupt. For over seven years, van der Stel built a massive estate with company funds and deliberately took steps to monopolize the colony’s farms and ranches under his and his associates’ control. Company employees and free burghers viewed this with great concern and began to organize against van der Stel’s rule. With much trouble and the wrongful imprisonment of prominent burghers, a petition detailing the governor’s abuses and signed by dozens of colonists was shipped back to the Netherlands in 1706. The VOC leadership, wary of discontent in one of their most important colonies, sent orders back that called for peace to be restored at the Cape, dismissed van der Stel, and ordered him to return to Amsterdam. Willem van der Stel left the colony in 1708 and would never return. With his departure, the early period of modern South African history had ended.
Conclusion
During this first half decade of development, the southwestern point of the continent had been permanently altered. The embryonic European population had grown to around two thousand persons, while there were two to three times as many slaves. The land had been tamed and the colonists had learned to utilize the good weather of the region to grow crops, raise livestock, and make high quality wine. It had transformed into a place for permanent settlement rather than merely a VOC outpost. Notably, the fierce independent nature that Afrikaners would become known for in later centuries began to coalesce. Physical distance from the authorities and the need for self-sufficiency in a new land combined to make the colonists distrustful of outside interference in their affairs. Importantly, they began to view themselves as a separate, unique community rather than just a European oasis in Africa. The mass exodus of “Boers” from the Cape in the 1830s and their subsequent wars with the British were the direct results of this independent streak that began in the 1600s. For better or worse, the Europeans were in South Africa for the long haul, and the settlers, slaves, natives, and their descendants would have to reckon with this fact for centuries to come.
How do you think early Dutch settlement impacted later South African history? Let us know below.
References
“History of Slavery and Early Colonisation in South Africa.” South African History Online.
https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-slavery-and-early-colonisation-south-africa.
Hunt, John. “Dutch South Africa: Early Settlers at the Cape 1652-1708.” Leicester, United Kingdom: Troubador Publishing, 2005.
Theal, George McCall. “History of South Africa Before 1795: Foundation of the Cape Colony by the Dutch.” London, United Kingdom: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1907.
