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Khoisan resistance to the Dutch in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Shula Marks
Shula Marks
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies and Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London
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Extract

The responses of the Khoisan peoples to the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have generally been dismissed summarily by historians. This article attempts to place their reactions into the broader framework of the receptivity of Late Stone Age society in South Africa to cultural innovation, and suggests that the usual dichotomy drawn between the rapid disintegration of the pastoral Khoi in the face of the Dutch settlers and the fierce resistance of the San hunter-gatherers is an oversimplification. There was little to distinguish cattleless Khoi from San, or San who had acquired cattle from Khoi, and both processes were at work both during and before the Dutch period in South Africa. The belief that the Khoi ‘willingly’ bartered away their cattle for ‘mere baubles’ is challenged, and it is maintained that the violence which punctuated every decade of the eighteenth century, and which culminated in the so-called ‘Bushman Wars’, were in large measure the Khoisan response to their prior dispossession by the Boers. On the other hand, the readiness of the Khoisan to acculturate to both the Dutch and the Bantu-speaking intruders, their relatively small population and loose social organization, meant that their ethnic identity virtually disappeared. Nevertheless their responses were more complex than is generally realized and resemble those of other colonized peoples. They were also to have a profound influence on the attitudes towards whites of Bantu-speakers on the Cape's eastern and northern frontiers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , January 1972 , pp. 55 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

2 For the limitations of the earlier terminology, and my choice of the term ‘Khoisan’, see below.

3 For these and other negative stereotypes of the Khoi, both before and after van Riebeeck, see McCrone, I. D., Race Attitudes in South Africa. Historical, Experimental and Psychological Studies (Johannesburg, 1957), 10, 13, 47–9, 522.Google Scholar The first 136 pages of McCrone's work constitute an interpretation of South African history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This section ends in 1806, and serves as an introduction to his experiments measuring race attitudes in the 1930s. The attempt to use seventeenth and eighteenth century evidence to evaluate twentieth century race attitudes is, however, methodologically unsound. Race attitudes are not static and cannot be divorced from their socio-economic context; the contemporary pattern of race relations in South Africa is as much, if not more, a product of nineteenth and twentieth century developments as of events in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Moreover, by using the earlier period to introduce the later, McCrone tends to overlook those aspects of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which could have led in a very different direction.

4 McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 122.Google Scholar

5 Africa to 1875 (Michigan, 1970), 238.Google Scholar

6 London, 1927, 26–7.

7 Johannesburg, 1957 (reprint, 1st published 1939), 6–7, 13.

8 Cape Town, 1944, 3.

9 ibid. 4.

10 McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 122;Google ScholarSpilhaus, M. W., South Africa in the Making 1652–1802 (Cape Town, 1966), 94, 100, 104,Google Scholarpassim; van der Merwe, P. J., Die Noordwaartse Beweging van die Boere voor die Groot Trek (1770–1842) (The Hague, 1937).Google Scholar See also Die Trekboer in die geskiedenis van die Kaapkolonie (1657–1842) (Cape Town, 1938).Google ScholarTheal, G. M., History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795, ii (London, 1909), 1–242.Google Scholar The quotation comes from p. 433.

11 Wilson, M. and Thompson, L. M. eds., Oxford History of South Africa I (Oxford, 1969), pp. ix, 41–4;Google Scholarde Almeida, Antonio, Bushmen and other non-Bantu Peoples of Angola (Johannesburg, 1965), 3Google Scholar; Tobias, P. V., ‘Bushmen of the Kalahari’, Man, lvii, no. 36 (1957).Google Scholar

12 Clark, J. Desmond, The Prehistory of Southern Africa (London, 1958), pp. 17, 20.Google Scholar See also Tobias, P. V., ‘Somatic Origins of the Hottentots’, African Studies, xiv (1955).Google Scholar

13 Philip, John, in his Researches in South Africa (London, 1828), ii, 2Google Scholar, maintained that all Bushmen were originally Hottentot herders who had been deprived of their cattle. Later authors, partly in an attempt to refute him, have tended to throw out the baby with the bath water and have failed to see that just as ‘Hottentots’ may be Bushmen who acquired cattle, so some ‘Bushmen’ were Hottentots who had lost their stock. See below for an elaboration of how this occurred.

14 Professor E. O. J. Westphal has shown that there are distinct Khoi and San language families and at least four probably unrelated San languages. The present-day Naron and Gwi, who are hunters, speak ‘Khoi’, while in Angola speakers of a San language similar to Kung are beginning to practise agriculture. Westphal, E. O. J., ‘The Linguistic Prehistory of Southern Africa’, Africa, xxxiii, p. iii (1963);Google ScholarOxford History, 43; Almeida, , Bushmen…of Angola, i, 11.Google Scholar

15 ‘Pluralism in Precolonial African Societies’ in Kuper, L. and Smith, M. G., Pluralism in Africa (U.C.L.A., 1969), 110.Google Scholar

16 ‘The Archaeological Background’ in Oxford History, 24.

17 In his Journal of his expedition to Namaqualand, 16 Sept. 1685, translated and edited by G. Waterhouse (London, 1932). See also Report of Landdrost of Stellenbosch 1705 in Précis of the Archives of the Cape of Good Hope. The defence of W. A. van der Stel, ed. Leibbrandt, H. C. V. (Cape Town, 1897), Ann. N2, 158;Google ScholarKolbe, P., The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope or A Particular Account of the Several Nations of the Hottentots, transl. Medley, G. (London, 1738), i, 76.Google Scholar

18 Great Britain, 1961 and 1966.

19 van Riebeeck, Journal, 9 Jan. 1653; Memorandum 5 May 1662. See also the frequent complaints of the so-called ‘Strandloper’ (beach ranger) Herry to van Riebeeck about the thefts of the ‘Souqua’, especially after he himself began to accumulate cattle. van Riebeeck, Journal, 12 Mar. 1654, 30 May 1655, passim. All these documents are reprinted in Moodie, D., ed., The Record or a Series of Official Papers relating to the condition and treatment of the native tribes of South Africa (Amsterdam and Cape Town, 1960, reprint).Google Scholar Moodie's The Record, first published in the late 1830s and early 1840s, is an invaluable source for seventeenth century relations between the Dutch and Khoisan. Originally commissioned to refute Dr Philip's Researches in South Africa, Moodie maintained that his object was to put together ‘all documents relating to the relations of the frontier colonists and the native tribes without exception so that a just impression can be formed…it is not too much to say that nothing short of the entire publication of all that is to be found applying to the subject of its native tribes in all the public offices of the colony can enable the British Government to arrive at just conclusions’ Moodie, Afschriften (Cape Archives), XI, copy of letter from Moodie to Governor Mar. 1836. The Record is, as a result, a meticulous compilation and translation of the documents he found in the Cape Archives on the treatment of the indigenous population by the Dutch in the periods covered by the three Sections published, viz. I, 1649–1690, III, 1769–1781, V, 1809 (Col. Collin's Reports on the Eastern and Northern frontiers). Sections II and IV were never published. Checked against Leibbrandt's, H. C. V. various Précis of the Cape Archives, Thom, H. B. (ed.) Journal of Jan van Riebeeck, 1651–1962, 3 vols.Google Scholar (Cape Town, 1952–8), and a selection of the verbatim copies of seventeenth-century documents in the Cape archives, Moodie's work showed remarkably few lacunae or errors. I have cited extensively from The Record in the account that follows. The occasional conflict in the dating of documents between Leibbrandt and Moodie and the lacunae are indicated in the notes below.

In addition to The Record, Moodie left thirteen volumes of Afschriften (transcripts and translations of documents) in MSS, which are to be found in the Cape archives. Many of the documents transcribed are no longer traceable in the original. Unfortunately, the Afschriften are in no particular order, and many of the documents are illegible, or almost so.

For later complaints of the Khoi herders or San thefts see, e.g., The Record, part 1, passim, and C441 (Council of Policy, Incoming Letters, Cape Archives) Landdrost, Stellenbosch, to C of P, 29 Jan. 1729, p. 42. Cattleless raiders were also the scourge of the Xhosa on the Eastern frontier, who, like the Khoi, were prepared to join hands with White cattle farmers against their common foe. (See, e.g., G.R. 1/9—Records of Graaf Reinet, Cape Archives—Report of J. A. Hurter's commission to the Kafirs, 5 June 1792, where he reports Chief Shaka [Gqunukwebe]'s offer to assist the white ‘with all his Kaffirs’ against the Bushmen. The offer was refused.)

20 Walker, E. A., A History of South Africa (3rd ed., London, 1957), 16–17, 24–5, 29–30.Google Scholar

21 ‘Interaction between Xhosa and Khoi: emphasis on the period 1620–1750’ in Thompson, L. M. (ed.), African Societies in Southern Africa (London, 1969), 160–5.Google Scholar

22 See, e.g., Purchas, S., Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (Glasgow), iii, 6th Voyage of the E.E.I.C. under Sir Henry Middleton, 1610.Google ScholarFloris, P., His Voyage to the East Indies in the Globe 1611–15. The contemporary translation of his journey, ed. Moreland, W. H. (Hakluyt Society, 1934), 4–5.Google Scholar Remonstrance of Leendert Jansz and N. Proot, 26 July 1649, in D. Moodie, The Record, 3–4.

23 VC 58, No. 7 (verbatim copies of Documents in the India Office, London, made by C. M. Theal in the late nineteenth century. Cape Archives). Letter E. Bletterman to Sir Thos. Smythe, from Bantam, 20 Feb. 1614. See also Jourdain, J., The Journal of John Jourdain, ed. Foster, W. (Hakluyt Soc., 1905), 13–14, 341–2Google Scholar for the inflation and ‘Coree's’ part in it. Terry, E., A Voyage to East India (London, 1616),Google Scholar and Herbert, T., A Description of the Persian Monarchy…and other parts of the Greater Asia and Africk (London, 1634),Google Scholar also contain reports of Coree/Coriel/Corye's activities. The most recent and only full-scale secondary account is Cope, J., The King of the Hottentots (London, 1967).Google Scholar

24 On the whole, this was in very small quantities and from animals that were already dead. By the 1670s, however, some Khoi were hunting elephants with guns.

25 VC 58, No. 42. J. Milward (Surat) to Rt. Hon. J. Hopkinson, 11 July 1732. G. S. Nienaber, Hottentots (Pretoria [in Afrikaans], 1963), 24, 26–30.

26 Nienaber, , Hottentots, 24.Google Scholar

27 MajorHart, R. Raven, Before van Riebeeck. Callers at South Africa from 1488–1652 (Struik, 1967), 127–8.Google Scholar

28 The Record, pp. 31–2. van Riebeeck, J. to Chamber of Seventeen (C of XVII), 14 04 1653.Google Scholar

29 The Record, 26. J. van Riebeeck, Journal, 24 Dec. 1652.

30 The Record, 37. Resolution and Proclamation of Council of Policy, 21 Oct. 1653.

31 McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 35–6;Google ScholarSpilhaus, , South Africa in the Making, 27–8.Google ScholarThe Record, 123. Desp. from van Riebeeck to C of XVII, 31 March 1658, and pp. 129–30. Resolution of Council 23 June 1658, for a fascinating insight into the relationships between the three mediators.

32 The Record, 138–9; van Riebeeck's Journal 26 Aug. 1658.

33 Van Riebeeck felt this to be the case as early as Nov. 1652, when Herry demanded brokerage fees. The Record, 19: Journal, 24 Nov. 1652. See also pp. 49, 86, and 94, despatches to C of XVII, 22 Apr. 1654, 10 June 1656 and 5 Mar. 1657.

34 The Record, 19, op. cit., 38–9, Journal, 23 Oct. 1653; p. 49, Desp. to C of XVII 22 Apr. 1654; p. 67, Desp. to C of XVII, 4 May 1655.

35 Leibbrandt, H. C. V., Précis of the Cape Archives of C. of G.H., Part II, 1659–62. Letters Received. Also in The Record, 259 (slightly different translation), C of XVII, 17 Sept. 1662, to van Riebeeck and his successors, p. 204.Google Scholar For similar advice of caution see The Record, 54, 75, 99, 107, 140, 240, passim.

36 Robinson, R. E., ‘Collaboration in the Politics of the Colonies’, unpublished paper given to the Seminar on the Recent History of the Commonwealth, Institute of Cornxnonwealth Studies (London), 1969.Google Scholar

37 McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 47.Google Scholar

38 McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 47.Google Scholar

39 Walker, , History of Southern Africa, 39.Google Scholar

40 McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 32;Google ScholarThe Record, 93, 125–6, van Riebeeck's Journal, 20 Feb. 1657, 12 May 1658, 25 May 1658 et passim.

41 McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 35–6;Google ScholarSpilhaus, , South Africa in the Making, 27–8.Google Scholar

42 The Record, van Riebeeck to C of XVII 16/29 Mar. 1660; van Riebeeck to C of XVII 4 May 1660; van Riebeeck to Batavia 7 July 1659.

43 The Record, 205, van Riebeeck's Journal 4 Apr. 1660. Also cited in McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 37.Google Scholar

44 Mossop, E. E. (ed.), Journals of the Expeditions of Hon. Ensigns Olog Bergh (1682–3) and Isaq Schrijver (1689) (Van Riebeeck Society, 1931), Introduction, p. 15.Google Scholar Also p. 200.

45 The Record, 289, 293–4. Z. Wagenaar to C of XVII, 15 Apr. 1664. Memorandum Z. Wagenaar, 24 Sept. 1666. Le Roux, H. J., ‘Die Toestand, Verspreiding en Verbrokkeling van die Hottentotstamme in Suid Afrika 1652–1713’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Stellenbosch, 1945), 226–7.Google Scholar

46 McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 60–2;Google ScholarSpilhaus, , South Africa in the Making, 38–40.Google Scholar

47 Le Roux, , ‘Hottentotstamme’, 41, 46, 56–7.Google Scholar van Riebeeck thought they were 17,000–18,000 strong, and as late as 1711 Bogaert estimated they had 100,000 head of cattle, which seems unlikely. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the name ‘Gunjemans’ (a corruption of Gonnema) was, however, being applied to all the Khoi in the neighbourhood of the Cape. (Le Roux, 52 ff.)

48 A Resolution of the Council of Policy described them as ‘a kraal of Sonquas called in the Hottentot language Obiquas, but dependants of Gonnema and regarded as bushrangers’. Acc. to E. C. Godée Molsbergen (Reizen in Zuid Afrika in de Hollandse Tijd, 1. Journal of J. Croes, 123 n.), they were ‘Hottentotten waarin veel Boesman bloed was’. They also apparently had cattle of their own, despite their reputation as ‘Bushman’ robbers. In 1673 the ‘Oebeiquaes’ are described as allies of Gonnema's rivals, the Chainouqua. The Record, 324.

49 Leibbrandt, H. C. V., Précis of the Archives of the Cape of Good Hope: Journals 1662–1670 (Cape Town, 1901), 343, Journal 22 12 1670.Google Scholar This document is not in Moodie's The Record; Moodie apparently did not find the Journals for 1667–71 and 1674–6 in the Cape Archives in the 1830s. Leibbrandt's transcriptions may have been made from the verbatim copies made in Holland and sent to the Cape at the end of the nineteenth century.

50 Leibbrandt, , Précis of the Archives…: Journals 1671–4, 1676 (Cape Town, 1902), 6–11, 85.Google Scholar The question of opening up the Hottentot's Holland area was discussed in the late 1660s, and the first steps taken in Feb. 1671, though the decision to take final possession of the area was made only after it had been ratified by the C of XVII in 1672.

51 Spilhaus, , The Making of South Africa, 38–40.Google ScholarThe Record, 345, Resolution C of P 25 Nov. 1676.

52 Oxford History, 208–13. For a detailed examination in English, Neumark, S. D., Economic Influences on the Cape Frontier, 1652–1836 (Stanford, 1957),Google Scholar and van der Merwe, P. J., Trek: Studies oor die pioniers-bevolking aan die Kaap (Cape Town), 100 ff.Google Scholar

53 Though one should beware of the current stereotypes about the influence of the ‘frontier’ on the trekboer, as Dr. Martin Legassick has shown in ‘The Frontier Tradition in South African History’, in Collected Seminar Papers on the Societies of Southern Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, vol. 2, (Univ. of London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, forthcoming) this generalization does seem a valid one, both in terms of numerous observations made at the time, and the actual events of the later eighteenth century in the frontier zone.

54 van der Merwe, , Trek, 41–3.Google Scholar

55 In 1660 one Herman Remajenne was trading illicitly even with the Goringhaiqua, who were at war with the colonists.

56 La Roux, , ‘Hottentotstamme’, 50.Google Scholar

57 Mossop, E. E. (ed.), Journals of the Expeditions of the Hon. Ensign Olof Bergh and the Ensign bag Schrijver, 69, footnotes.Google ScholarPrécis of the Archives…: Letters Received, 1695–1708 (C.T. 1896), 220. O. Bergh, Rivier Zonderend, to C of P 25 Nov. 1699. As late as 1694, the Hessequa were described as the ‘magtiste en veerykste van alle bekende Hottentotte’ (V.C. 13, Dagregister, 373–4, 8 Jan. 1694); Kolben, P., The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, i, 75.Google Scholar

58 Muller, C. F. J. (ed.), 500 Years. A History of South Africa (Pretoria and Cape Town, 1969), 23, 33, 58, 67.Google Scholar

59 van der Stel, for example, claimed to have supplied 206,000 more head of cattle during the past fifteen years than his predecessor had over the same period. (Leibbrandt, Précis of the Archives…: Letters Desp. 1696–1708 (C.T. 1900) Gov. to C of XVII, Middleburg, 16 June 1696).

60 Theal, , History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795, ii, 351–4.Google Scholar VC 13 and 14 Dagregister 15 Mar. 1694, 20 July 1694, 13 Feb. 1696, and 6 Dec. 1698.

61 Undoubtedly individual Khoi continued to exploit the colonial situation, and processes of accommodation, collaboration and subordination also continued apace, but the evidence for this is now to be found in the judicial and local records of the colony, and is beyond the scope of this article, except in so far as it affected Khoisan resistance.

62 Even before the ban on the cattle trade between the colonists and the Khoi was lifted in 1699, the amount of illegal trade had increased very considerably. Despite increasingly stringent prohibitions, the Company appears to have been unable to control the trade in which the Governor and many high officials appear to have been involved in their personal capacity. It may be a recognition of this which lay behind the Chamber of XVII's decisions in 1699 and 1707. See Oxford History, 1, 208–9; Muller, (ed.), 500 Years, 34, 46–7.Google Scholar VC Dagregister, 196–7, 20 July 1693. VC 14, 613–14. Dagregister; Plakkaat and Resolusie, 19 Oct. 1697. Also Kaapse Plakhaatboek, 1, 282–3.

63 Liebbrandt, H. C. V., Précs of the Archives…Journal 1699–1732 (Cape Town, 1896)Google Scholar, entries 13 Mar. 1701, 10 Apr. 1701, 16 June 1701, 16 Aug. 1701, 7 Oct. 1701, 26 Nov. 1701, 29 Nov. 1701, 22 Jan. 1702. The entry for 3 Mar. suggests that the landdrost accused the Ubiqua of the thefts, but W. A. v.d. Stel thought the Grigriqua were responsible. On 10 April and 16 June Grigriqua and Nama are explicitly named as responsible by Khoi informants.

64 E.g. Theal, , History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795, ii, 390;Google ScholarOxford History, 252; Muller, (ed.), 500 Years, 34.Google Scholar

65 The Dagregisters for 1696–7 have numerous references to deserted slaves fleeing to the Grigriqua. See VC 14 passim, but esp. 405–6, 411, 456–20, 423–4.

66 Leibbrandt, H. C. V.: Précis of the Archives…The Defence of Willem Adriaan v.d. Stel (Cape Town, 1898), Ann. N2, p. 161,Google Scholar Report of Landdrost Starrenburg, Oct. 1705. Sim. Leibbrandt, Précis of the Archives…Letters Despatched 1696–1708, 191, Gov. to C of XVII, 20 Mar. 1702.

67 See above n. 5, p. 56.

68 This was probably the worst of the epidemics to hit the non-immune Khoi, though even before this they had suffered from European-introduced disease which played a large part in reducing their numbers. Khoi cattle also appear to have been hit by disease in 1713–14 and in 1755, when another smallpox epidemic raged.

69 C 10. Resolutions of Council of Policy, 19–26, 101–7, 162–70: 15 Oct. 1715, 20 Nov. 1715, 7 Jan. 1716. C 435 Inkomende Brieven III, 101–6. Sergt. H. Treurniet, Land of Waveren to Gov. (Report), 20 Nov. 1715.

70 Leibbrandt, , Précis of the Archives…Journals 1699–1732, 276, 31 Jan. 1719. Sim. C 13 (Resolutions), 290–1.Google Scholar

71 Mossop, E. E. (ed.), The Journals of Brink (1761–2) and Rhenius…(1724), V.R. Soc. 28 (Cape Town, 1947), 137.Google Scholar This may have been the result of the plundering expedition of J. v.d. Heyden in 1723. which led to a protest from the Church Council of Drakenstein. C 17, 11 (Resolutions), 593–7, incl. letter from Minister and Kerkraad, Drakenstein to Gov. 9 Mar. 1723. C 439 (Ink. Br.) 509–11, Landdrost, Stellenbosch, to Gov. Apr. 1723. Theal, , History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795, ii, 439.Google Scholar

72 C 441 (Ink. Br.), 773–5. Landdrost, Stellenbosch, to Gov. 19 Dec. 1728. Theal, , History and Ethnography…, ii, 447.Google Scholar

73 C 442 (Ink. Br.), 113–14, Landdrost, Stellenbosch, to Gov. 8 Mar. 1731.

74 St 1/12 (Stellenbosch Archives, Cape Town), Notule van landdrost en heemraden, 20 Apr. 1739. Sim. C 466 (Ink. Br.), 440–1, Landdrost to Gov. 22 Oct. 1738. Also cited van der Merwe, Noordwaartse Beweging, 8. C 37, 163–203. Report of J. Cruywagen of his Commando's activities, 28 May 1739. According to Cruywagen, the raiders had guns and ammunition, which they used with accuracy.

75 v.d. Merwe, Noordwaartse Beweging, 8.

76 G. M. Theal in his History of South Africa under the D.E.I.C., ii, 28, gives a highly tendentious account of this episode, laying the blame for the violence and robbery on the Khoi servants and exonerating the settlers under Willem van Wyk. The coritemp. orary documents suggest that the servants were acting under orders. The affair came to the attention of the government through the Khoi servants, who reported it when they were cheated of their promised share of the booty. When the government attempted to punish the guilty party, it led to much excitement amongst the white community and a small-scale uprising under Etienne Barbier, a French deserter. The movement collapsed when the Government offered a pardon to all Barbier's followers who joined the Commando against the ‘Bushmen-Hottentot’ raiders. The raid on the Nama took place ‘after the ploughing season’ in 1738; the Khoisan raids from the area of the ‘Kleine Nama’ began in October 1738 and continued through the first half of 1739. According to Craywagen's Report (C 31, 28 May 1739) ‘Titus’ and ‘Swarte Booy’, two of the informants against the van Wyk party, were participants in these attacks. The Moravian missionary, George Schmidt, at that time still working at Baviaans Kloof, was also convinced that the Khoisan raids were retaliation for the van Wyk episode. See Kruger, B., The Pear Tree Blossoms (Cape Town, 1969), p. 26.Google Scholar

C 37 Resolutions, 101–10, Evidence Khoisan witnesses before Council of Policy, 1 Mar. 1739. St. 10/2 Report Landdrost, Stellenbosch, 22 Oct. 1738. C 31 and C 446 Letters from Landdrost and Heemraden to Gov. and C of Policy, Nov. 1739, 21 Nov. 1739, 20 Apr. 1739, 28 Apr. 1739.

77 C 453 (Ink. Br.), 771. Landdrost and heemraden, Swellendam, 17 Nov. 1753. Also p. 705, ibid. 5 Mar. 1753, and encl. and C 452, 234–44 Report of Commando under C. P. de Jager, 25 Oct. 1751.

78 C 452 (Ink. Br.), 203, Report of Commando under Dirk Marx, May 1750. Ibid. p. 353, Landdrost and heemraden, Swellendam, to Gov. 30 Sept. 1750. C 42 Resolutions, 202, 13 Oct. 1750.

79 van der Merwe, Noordwaartse Beweging, 9. C 654 Dagregister, Stellenbosch, 28 May 1754.

80 Moisbergen, E. C. Godée: Reizen in Zuid-Afrika, iii, Journey of Ensign Beutler 1752, 279–80, 291–3.Google ScholarSparrman, Sim. A., A Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope 1772–1776 (Dublin, 1785), ii, 145,Google Scholar talking of the Khoisan in Agter Bruintjes Hoogte, and C 470/11 (Ink. Br.), 727, Landdrost Woeke, Graaff Reinet, 10 Dec. 1786.

81 C 456 1, 335–7. Report Landdrost, Swellendam, 30 June 1758.

82 According to van der Merwe, Noordwaartse Beweging, 10, this was because it was the ‘real Bushman frontier’.

83 Splits within the Xhosa royal lineage and the movement of small fragmented chiefdoms westward probably accelerated in the eighteenth century; together with the growth of half-caste communities north of the Cape settlement and the establishment of the Koranna on the Orange River, and the presence of White deserters from the Cape Colony, they made ‘frontier zones’ areas of very considerable instability.

84 van der Merwe, Noordwaanse Beweging, 96–7.

85 In the 1780s Le Vaillant described the ‘Boshiesmen’ as ‘a set of vagabond deserters of no particular nation, living by robbing alike Caifree’ (sic), ‘Hottentot or Colonist’. Vaillant, F. Le, Travels into the Interior Parts of Africa…in the Years 1780–1785 (London, 1790), i, 338.Google Scholar

86 See, for example, St 10/162, 10/164 O.R. 1/1 and 1/12 in the Cape Archives.

87 Acc. to Marais, Maynier and the First Boer Republic, 22 n. 20, between 1786 and 1795 19,161 cattle and 84,094 sheep were stolen, and 276 herders were killed. In 1786 alone 1,328 cattle and 2,738 sheep were stolen. CC 471 (Ink. Br.), Landdrost Graaff Reinet to Gov. p. 609.

88 For the 1790 band, see v.d. Merwe Noordwaartse Beweging, 59–20. According to van der Merwe, the numbers of the Khoisan bands were so great that the Commandos were too weak to tackle them and this is certainly borne out by the records. Op. cit. 40.

89 v.d. Merwe op. cit. 10–15. St. 10/164, 39 Landdrost to Gov. 19 Apr. 1785.

90 Afrikaner historians have tended to be more aware of this than their English speaking compatriots. Cf. v.d. Merwe, Noordwaartse Beweging, cc i and ii with the opening pages of MacMillan's Bantu, Boer and Briton.

91 Cf. Oxford History, 227 which suggests the Commando system was more effective against the San than the Xhosa—in fact it was probably ineffective in both cases. It took the arrival of British troops both on the northern and eastern frontier to tip the balance of power in favour of the White man.

92 Marais, , Maynier, 19–21.Google Scholar These tables of cattle losses alleged to be the result of Xhosa theft in the period immediately preceding the 1793 war show a total of 493 cattle and 2 sheep stolen and 8 herders killed. This was probably an overestimate.

93 Sparrman, , A Voyage, xi, 159.Google Scholar

94 Burchell, W. J., Travels in the Interior of South Africa, ed. Schapera, I. (London, 1953), i, 302.Google Scholar

95 Spilhaus, , South Africa in the Making, 271–3, 303–10.Google Scholar

96 Though van der Merwe (op. cit. 98) suggests that the warfare in the nineteenth century was less bitter, and some attempt was made to only punish those Khoisan who actually participated in raiding activities, eyewitness accounts in the first twenty or thirty years of the nineteenth century cast considerable doubt on this contention. See. e.g. Thompson, G., Travels and Adventures in Southern Africa (London, 1827), ii, 6, 40–1;Google Scholar J. Philip, Researches in South Africa, ii, cc. ii, iii, xiv and xv Great Britain: Parliamentary Papers: re Native Inhabitants, 1835, passim, esp. p. 59; Pringle, J., African Sketches (London, 1834), 371.Google Scholar

97 Leeuwenberg, J., ‘The Griqua Reformation Movement in the zoth Century’ (unpublished seminar paper, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, 1970), 4.Google Scholar

98 Though the movement of the Khoi and mixed groups like the Griqua out of the Cape and their state-building activities can be seen in this light, especially in the early nineteenth century. See Legassick, M., ‘The Griqua, the Tswana and the Missionaries, 1780–1840Google Scholar: The Politics of a Frontier Zone’ (unpublished Ph.D. U.C.L.A., 1969).

99 Spilhaus, , South Africa in the Making, 37–8, 58–9, 100–1, 121, 129, 188, 256, 263, 272, 306, 375.Google Scholar

100 Sparrman, , A Voyage, 1, 20.Google Scholar

101 Leibbrandt, , Précis of the Archives…Letters Despatched 1695–1708, 24–5.Google Scholar Gov. to C XVII Middelburg, 1 Aug. 1696. Theal, , History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795, ii, 392.Google Scholar

102 McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 43.Google Scholar

103 Marais, J. S., The Cape Coloured People, cc i and ii.Google Scholar

104 McCrone, , Race Attitudes, 35, 44.Google Scholar

105 Spilhaus, , South Africa in the Making, 129, 155, 157, 161, 178.Google Scholar

106 Oxford History, 68. This option appears to have been appreciated by Khoi leaders like Gonnema as early as 1666, when it was rumoured that he ‘intended to go far away from us (the Dutch) into another country and never more to return’. Leibbrandt, , Précis of Archives…Journal 1662–72, 385, 6 07 1666.Google Scholar

107 This had, of course, continued over a very long period of time, but the accounts of travellers like Beutler (1752), Wikar (1778), Sparrman (1775–1776), Campbell (1813), etc., are full of references to mixed Khoi-San-Bantu speaking groups at all stages of intermixture and acculturation.

108 See, e.g. Spilhaus, , South Africa in the Making, 286;Google ScholarSchapera, I. (ed.), Apprenticeship at Kuruman: the Journals and letters of Robert and Mary Moffat 1820–1828 (London, 1951), 274;Google ScholarLister, M. H. (ed.), Journals of Andrew G. Bain (Van Riebeeck Society, 1949), 14–15, 21–2;Google ScholarTheal, G. M., Records of the Cape Colony (London, 1896)Google Scholar, iv, Journal of Truter and Somerville's Journey to the Briqua, 101–2, 373–4.

109 Oxford History, 400, 404, 408, 411.

110 Cited Macmillan, Bantu, Boer and Briton, 272. See also evidence, A. Smith before S. C. on Kafir Tribes, British Parliamentary Papers, 1851, §2074, p. 280.

111 Spilhaus, , South Africa in the Making, passim.Google Scholar

112 Ibid. 121, 169. Theal, G. M., Belangrijke Histothche Dokumenten, iii (Cape Town, 1911), 216, 218–21, 243.Google Scholar

113 Wellington, J. H., South West Africa and its Human Issues (Oxford, 1967), 152.Google Scholar

114 C 471, Inkomende Briefen, 1121–1256, Reports of Landdrost of Swellendam and evidence of witnesses, Oct. 1788. Unfortunately the evidence on what was termed at the time the ‘Hottentot conspiracy’ are most unsatisfactory. Nevertheless the rumours and evidence of some of the participants is most suggestive. The authorities believed that the ‘Hottentots’ had been ‘misled’ by two white deserters. One of them, ‘Jan Pierre’ whom they addressed as ‘Onse liewe Heer’, (our dear Lord) appears to have tried to play the role of the Messiah.

115 Kolbe, P., The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, i, 210–14, 264, 267, 324, 326.Google Scholar

116 This is the subject of Macmillan's The Cape Coloured Question.

117 ‘African reactions to the imposition of colonial rule in East and Central Africa’ in Gann, L. H. and Duignan, P., Colonialism in African (Cambridge, 1969), 304.Google Scholar