History I NEED HELP ON MY HOMEWORK

Journal of African History, xm, i (1972), pp. 55-80 re Printed in Great Britain

KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES1

BY SHULA MARKS

T H E Khoisan peoples of South Africa, or, as they are usually called in the literature, the Bushmen and Hottentots,2 have on the whole had a bad press from historians, as indeed they had from most of their seven- teenth- and eighteenth-century European contemporaries. To this day, the Shorter Oxford Dictionary has as one of the definitions of 'Hottentot' 'a person of inferior intellect and culture', and illustrates its use with the sentence: 'The most I can do for him is to consider him a respectable Hottentot.' Jan van Riebeeck, the first commander of the Dutch East India Company's settlement at the Cape, was neither the first nor the last to refer to the Hottentots as 'a dull, stupid, lazy, stinking nation'—who were, at the same time, 'bold, thievish and not to be trusted'.3 Stereo- types of the San or Bushmen as 'incorrigible banditti', 'ineducable' and 'unassimilable' also abound in the literature of South Africa.4

History tends to be the history of the successful, and the Khoikhoi herders and San hunter-gatherers, whom Europeans encountered when they first rounded the African continent, have all but disappeared from twentieth-century South Africa, at least in their earlier guise. Most historians writing of South Africa dismiss them in passing; to take a recent, but very typical example, Robin Hallett, in his History of Africa to 1875, assesses the whole of their experience in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in half a sentence:

1 This paper was first presented in slightly different forms to Seminars at Sussex and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Oxford. I am most grateful to members of the Seminars for their comments, as well as to Dr Martin Legassick for his extremely help- ful criticisms.

* For the limitations of the earlier terminology, and my choice of the term 'Khoisan', see below.

* For these and other negative stereotypes of the Khoi, both before and after van Riebeeck, see I. D. McCrone, Race Attitudes in South Africa. Historical, Experimental and Psychological Studies (Johannesburg, 1957), 10, 13, 47-9, 122. 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.

* McCrone, Race Attitudes, 122.

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56 SHULA MARKS

The Boers . . . advanced northwards and eastwards [from the Cape]. The Bush- men they hunted down; the Hottentots provided them with cheap labour; but the Bantu they encountered . . . in the 1770's presented a block of population too massive for them to penetrate... .5

The 'liberal' historians of the 1930s—W. M. Macmillan, J. S. Marais, and C. W. de Kiewiet—while working on the history of their nineteenth century descendants, the Cape coloured and 'Griqua' communities, tend to see the Khoisan past in similarly cliched terms. Thus Macmillan, in the Cape Colour Question, maintains:

Of the unlucky Bushman there is little for history to say. The 18th century had all but completed their extermination. . . . Their resistance to colonial en- croachment took the form of 'thieving' and was at one time almost formidable. . . . As a factor in later history, the Bushmen are negligible.

. . . Hottentot resistance . . . to the advance of the Dutch settlers was hardly even as vigorous as that of the more primitive Bushmen, so that by the 19th century free Hottentot captaincies had all but disappeared.... Nothing what- ever had been done to adapt [the Hottentots] to the changed conditions brought about by the advent of the white man.6

In similar, if contradictory, terms, J. S. Marais in his Cape Coloured People remarks:

The Hottentots put up a remarkably feeble resistance to the weak white com- munity. . . . Hottentot tribes in the neighbourhood of the company's settle- ment fought two little wars . . . but from the year 1689 onwards there was no resistance on the part of the Hottentots to the European advance . . . Unlike the Bantu, they were surprisingly ready to barter away their cattle in exchange for copper, beads, tobacco and . . . brandy and arrack.7

In Maynier and the First Boer Republic, Marais goes on to suggest that

The Bushmen proved a more dangerous enemy [to the whites]. During the last thirty years of the 18th century they unceasingly harassed the stock-men and drove many of them from their farms.8

Ultimately, though, it was the 'Bantu', who 'had reached a considerably higher stage of civilization', who were to prove the formidable opponents of white expansion.9 Even those authors like I. D. MacCrone, M. Spilhaus and P. J. van der Merwe, who have worked on the documents and written at length on the Dutch period in South Africa, still tend to contrast the servility of the Hottentots with the bitter resistance of the hardy but anachronistic and primitive Bushmen, who were able for a time to hold up colonial expansion. Despite their criticisms in other respects of the work of G. M. Theal, the 'father' of South African historiography, most

6 Africa to 1875 (Michigan, 1970), 238. • London, 1927, 26-7. 7 Johannesburg, 1957 (reprint, 1st published 1939), 6-7, 13. 8 Cape Town, 1944, 3. • Ibid. 4.

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 57

of these authors appear to draw very largely on his conclusions with refer- ence to the Khoisan. Thus, although Theal deals with the first two Khoi wars in considerable detail, he maintains that after the small-pox epidemic of 1713 the Khoi were so decimated that from that date 'until the Bantu were reached . . . the only difficulty with the coloured inhabitants was occasioned by Bushmen'—this, despite the fact that Theal quotes these 'Bushmen' as complaining explicitly that they had been robbed of their cattle by the colonists.10

In general, there is some truth in these views. It is, of course, correct that the Bantu-speaking peoples, who lived by agriculture as well as pastoralism, were far more numerous than the Khoisan bands with their more precariously based economy. As a result they undoubtedly did form a more solid block of people which it was far more difficult to dis- lodge in the long run. Nevertheless, the usual stereotypes should be challenged. Not only do they seriously telescope the events of nearly two hundred years of culture contact; the very terms in which the argu- ment is conducted seem to distort reality. It is clear from anthropological evidence that 'Hottentot' and 'Bushman' are not discrete racial categories.11

Although it is commonly believed that the San were smaller in stature than the Khoi, here again the evidence is inconclusive. Dutch sources in the seventeenth century noted that the Narna were considerably taller than the Cape Khoi, while Desmond Clark has drawn attention to a similar difference between the northern and southern Bushmen.12 The Dutch did not distinguish between Khoi and San on physical grounds in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, though the words 'Hottentot' and 'Bosjesman' did describe a way of life: a Hottentot or Khoi was a herder; a Bushman or San someone who quite literally lived in or by the 'bush'. Yet there is little to distinguish a landless and cattleless Khoi from a Bushman, or a Bushman who has acquired cattle from a Khoi.13 Thus, despite the reservations of the linguists, who point out that the Khoi and San language groups are quite unrelated, the term Khoisan appears

10 McCrone, Race Attitudes, 122; M. W. Spilhaus, South Africa in the Making 1652- 1802 (Cape Town, 1966), 94, 100, 104, passim; P. J. van der Merwe, Die Noordwaartse Beweging van die Boere voor die Groot Trek (1770-1842) (The Hague, 1937). See also Die Trekboer in die geskiedenis van die Kaapkolonie (1657-1842) (Cape Town, 1938). G. M. Theal, History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795, 11 (London, 1909), 1-242. The quotation comes from p. 433.

11 M. Wilson and L. M. Thompson eds., Oxford History of South Africa I (Oxford, 1969)) PP- >x> 4'~4; Antonio de Almeida, Bushmen and other non-Bantu Peoples of Angola (Johannesburg, 1965), 3; P. V. Tobias, 'Bushmen of the Kalahari', Man, LVII, no. 36 (i957)-

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

13 John Philip, in his Researches in South Africa (London, 1828), n, 2, 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.

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58 SHULA MARKS

best suited to refer to the Late Stone Age peoples of the Cape whom the Dutch encountered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, unless their precise tribal groupings are made clear from the documents.14

The question of which groups acculturate, and why, is clearly of crucial importance in African history. In a recent review of what he calls 'differing forms of inter-ethnic accommodation', M. G. Smith has sug- gested that bands of hunter-gatherers in contact with more advanced societies face the alternatives of 'decimation by external assault', en- capsulation and subordination, serfdom, or the 'withdrawal to freedom in refuge areas'.15 In fact, a study of the accommodation and adaptation of the Late Stone Age societies of southern Africa suggests a more com- plex picture still, and one can point to groups all along the continuum from 'unassimilability', whether in terms of cultural, political or economic adaptation, to complete social change. Thus the evolution of the Khoi as a distinct socio-economic group was itself an aspect of the 'inter- ethnic accommodation' of hunter-gatherers, for, as Ray Inskeep has recently pointed out, 'the evidence of archeology and physical anthro- pology [suggests that] . . . the yellow-skinned cattle and sheep herders represented components of a basic indigenous hunter-gatherer population of the Late Stone Age, whose culture had been variably altered by con- tact with Early Iron Age farmers and metal-workers'.16 In prehistoric times, then, the Stone Age hunter-gatherers were able to adopt and adapt new social and economic mores, and the same was to be true of their responses throughout the historic period. By calling the 'Bushman' unassimilable, previous historians have been arguing by definition: those people who retained their 'Bush' culture and therefore remained re- cognizably 'San' were, by definition, 'unassimilable'. Those who were able to adopt a new way of life passed imperceptibly into the ranks of the Khoi, Coloured, or Bantu-speaking populations—and, therefore, failed to remain 'Bushmen'.

Nor was the change-over from hunting and gathering to pastoralism a once-and-for-all-time change. The relationship of the Khoi herders with those groups which remained hunter-gatherers was a fluid one. On occasion, the divisions between the Khoi and the San resembled class divisions as much as ethnic or cultural ones. Thus Simon van der Stel, Governor at the Cape (1679-99), was to describe the 'Souqua' as 'just the same as the poor in Europe, each tribe of Hottentots . . . employing

11 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. E. O. J. Westphal, 'The Linguistic Pre- history of Southern Africa', Africa, xxxin, p. iii (1963); Oxford History, 43; Almeida, Bushmen . .. of Angola, 1, n .

16 'Pluralism in Precolonial African Societies' in L. Kuper and M. G. Smith, Pluralism in Africa (U.C.L.A., 1969), n o .

18 'The Archaeological Background' in Oxford History, 24.

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 59

them' as soldiers and hunters.17 This relationship indeed takes care of Professor Smith's categories of subordination, encapsulation and serfdom, though at times it was closer to the system of free-lance clientage des- cribed by Colin M. Turnbull in The Forest People and Wayward Servants.19 In addition, while many of the San acted as clients to the Khoi, others resisted the cattlemen: within a year of the Dutch arrival at the Cape, the Khoi at the Peninsula were complaining of the thieving activities of the 'Souqua'. On the whole, San cattle-thieving has been regarded almost as a racial characteristic, and has been ascribed to the encroachment on their hunting lands by pastoralists and farmers. While this was almost certainly occurring, it also appears likely that some groups of 'Bushmen' were stealing cattle in order to set up as pastoralists in their own right. Thus, in 1653 the 'Visman' or 'Soaqua' were described to the Dutch as having 'some cattle, but not many, against which people we must be well on our guard . . . as . . . they never had any other means of subsistence than plunder, and their stock was not their own property but plundered from the Saldanhars [i.e. a Cape Khoi group] . . .', while in 1662, in a Memorandum left by the first Dutch Commander at the Cape for his successor, Jan van Riebeeck maintained that the 'Little Changuri- qua', a people who lived between Saldanha Bay and mid-way between Robben and Dassen Islands, were originally subject to the Cochoqua chief, Oedasoa, and 'were accustomed to be his stock-keepers, but approp- riated his cattle to their own use; and therefore they are not recognized by any of the Hottentots as a people who have . . . a hereditary king or chief. . ,'.19

Moreover, while groups of San could acquire cattle and become herders

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

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 D. Moodie, 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). 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 main- tained 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, Afs- chriften (Cape Archives), xi, copy of letter from Moodie to Governor 3 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

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60 SHULA MARKS

—a process which probably became more difficult once the Dutch settled at the Cape—it is equally clear that Khoi herders who lost their cattle reverted to hunting and gathering, and became 'Bushmen'. Indeed, by the second decade of the eighteenth century 'tame Bushmen' were working for white settlers—and cattleless Khoi had become 'Bushman' resisters. The responses of both groups to the first Europeans to land at the Cape were part of a far longer process of adaptation which had probably started with the coming of the Iron Age to southern Africa more than 1,000 years earlier.

Though the Portuguese had tended to avoid the Cape on their east- ward journeys, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Dutch, the British and to some extent the French, with their sturdier vessels and different sea-routes, found the Cape a useful half-way house.20 The Khoi pastoralists they encountered at the Cape were initially quite willing to exchange a certain number of their cattle for iron, and later the copper, tobacco, brandy and beads of the Europeans. These, as Gerrit Harinck has recently shown, they exchanged for more cattle, tobacco and dacha (Indian hemp) in the interior. Trade routes extended all the way to the Xhosa in the East, and probably to Bantu-speaking groups across the Orange River in the north.21 The Khoi, whose economy and social cohesion depended very largely on their stock, were unaccustomed to trading large numbers of cattle; they preferred to get rid of the stock they considered surplus, and sailors frequently complained that the Khoi had sold them their old, lame and lean beasts. Nevertheless, the Khoi response to the newly created market for cattle was surprisingly quick

periods covered by the three sections published, viz. I, i64g-i6go, III, Ij6g-ij8i, V, i8og (Col. Collin's Reports on the Eastern and Northern frontiers). Sections II and IV were never published. Checked against H. C. V. Leibbrandt's various Precis of the Cape Archives, H. B. Thorn (ed.) Journal of Jan van Riebeeck, 1651-62, 3 vols. (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 E. A. Walker, A History of South Africa (3rd ed., London, 1957), 16-17, 24-5, 29- 3°-

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

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 6 l

for a group generally considered outside long distance trading networks, and suggests that they were by no means unfamiliar with trading practices even at the beginning of the seventeenth century.22

Their willingness to trade only a limited number of beasts probably accounts for their fierce resistance to what they considered unfair practices on the part of Europeans, and the fairly constant inflation of meat prices at the Cape. This was especially marked in 1614, after the return to the Cape of one 'Coree', whom the British had taken to London in an effort to teach him English and to use him as mediator in the trade. On his return Coree promptly spoilt the market by informing the Khoi of the low value of the goods they were being offered in exchange, so that, as one English- man bitterly remarked, 'itt were better hee hadde been hanged in Englande or drowned homewarde' than returned to his people.23

If Coree proved a recalcitrant intermediary, the Dutch and British were able to find more willing collaborators at the Cape from quite early on, both to negotiate in the trade and to look after the mail they left behind for the return fleets, and even to help fetch wood and carry water when ships were stranded at the Bay. By 1624 the Khoi were trading in ivory24 as well as cattle, and two years later a local curio trade had sprung up in ostrich feathers, shells, wood and sorrell, which the sailors exchanged for 'iron hoops' and 'brasse'. By 1632 one 'Haddah' was acting as postman for the English in return for bread, and was 'dressed in English habitte from head to foote'.25

Already by 1639 Europeans noted the existence of a small class of Khoi whom they termed 'Beachrangers', who lived at the Bay and who had lost their cattle, either in the course of the trade or through the inter- tribal warfare which may have been its result.28 By the 1650s their leader was 'Herry', who may have been the same as 'Haddah' the postman, a man of many parts.27 Herry spoke broken English, having been taken to

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

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

M 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.

" 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.

" Nienaber, Hottentots, 24. •' Major R. Raven Hart, Before van Riebeeck. Callers at South Africa from 1488-1652

(Struik, 1967), 127-8.

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62 SHULA MARKS

Bantam on a ship of the English East India Company, and on the strength of this acted as interpreter to British and Dutch visitors to the Cape. The Khoi at the Cape were already relatively sophisticated traders, re- fusing to take thin copper or notched and rough copper wire, and insisting on only fresh and strong Caribbean tobacco, which had rapidly become an essential element in any trading transaction.28 The variety of relationships established in this half century of trading profoundly influenced the nature of the contact between the Khoi and the Dutch, when they decided to establish a more permanent refreshment station at the Cape.

In the early days of the outpost, middlemen, mediators, and inter- preters were essential to the Dutch, and they took great pains to establish a class of collaborators, like the interpreter Herry, even though at times the attempts appeared to backfire. As soon as the Khoi realized that, unlike their previous visitors, the Dutch had come to stay, their initially friendly overtures turned to hostility. They asked longingly when the more generous English would return,29 and their petty pilfering culmin- ated in the murder of a Dutch herd-boy in 1657. Van Riebeeck was con- vinced that Herry was the chief instigator of the crime.30

Disillusioned with Herry, the Commander was forced to look for substitutes, and chose Eva, Herry's 'niece', who was brought up in his own home, and Doman, who was sent to Java to learn Dutch.31 Like Coree before him, however, and also like many an African nationalist leader of the twentieth century, Doman returned from his education abroad to lead Khoi resistance to European intrusion at the Cape. Within months of his return, van Riebeeck was complaining: 'Doman . . . is three times worse and more mischievous to the Company than Herry ever was.' Doman now turned against his fellow-interpreter, Eva, calling her a sycophant and saying

that she speaks on the side of the Dutch rather than of the Hottentoos [sic], and calling out when she comes . . . 'See! there comes the Hollanders' advocate again, she is coming to deceive her own countrymen with a parcel of lies, and to betray them to the last' and other expressions tending to make her odious; so that it were to be desired that this scamp [? guyt] had never left the Cape... .32

Clearly his experiences in Java had sharpened Doman's perception of the nature of the Dutch presence and its potential repercussions. At the same time, the white presence at the Cape disturbed the normal pattern of transhumance, as Herry and his 'Beachrangers' or Goringhaikons

28 The Record, p p . 31-2 . J . van Riebeeck to Chamber of Seventeen ( C of X V I I ) , 14 Apr . 1653.

29 The Record, 26. J . van Riebeeck, Journal , 24 Dec . 1652. 30 The Record, 37. Resolut ion a n d Proc lamat ion of Counci l of Policy, 21 Oct . 1653. "McCrone, Race Attitudes, 35-6; Spilhaus, South Africa in the Making, 27-8. The

Record, 123. Desp. from van Riebeeck to C of XVII, 31 Mar. 1658, and pp. 129-30. Resolution of Council 23 June 1658, for a fascinating insight into the relationships between the three mediators.

" The Record, 138-9; van Riebeeck's Journal 26 Aug. 1638.

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 63

tried to build up their own herds again by insisting on mediating in the cattle trade and taking a commission. They thus prevented other Khoi groups from coming to the Company's fort, except in their presence and by their leave. Within a short time Herry had built up a herd of more than 2,000 head of cattle, and van Riebeeck became convinced that he was deliberately impeding the vital trade.33 Van Riebeeck gave vent to his fantasies of revenge in bloodcurdling letters to the Directors,34 who, fully aware of the weakness of the settlement, refused to sanction his punitive proposals; they instructed van Riebeeck to keep the peace as long as possible, for, as they remarked to his successor, Commander Wagenaar, 'neither war nor any other troubles will do us any good there, nothing unreasonable should be required of them [the Khoi] and they should be protected from all injustice, rather passing over what is not too intolerable than that you should . . . put on a coat of mail'.35

Partly because of the reluctance of the Khoi either to part with sufficient cattle to meet the demands of the Company's ships, or to engage in agri- culture, it became apparent that in the short term it would be easier to release some of the men as free burghers and allow them to cultivate and raise cattle on the Company's behalf. Almost imperceptibly, and despite the reluctance of the Company's Directors, the refreshment station began to change into a colony of settlement, though one governed by, and in every way subordinated to, the interests of a commercial company anxious to maintain its trading monopolies and maximize its profits. White settlers were intended to be, in Professor Robinson's succinct phrase, 'the ideal prefabricated collaborators'.36

In 1657 the first handful of free burghers were granted lands along the Liesbeck River, behind Table Mountain. Their first demand was for labour. The local Khoi people were not regarded as suitable for this purpose. Although the Dutch had found it possible to employ individuals on a temporary basis as herders, and to fetch and carry water and wood, while they still had an abundance of cattle and sufficient grazing and their social system was intact, there was little reason why more than those few already dispossessed of their cattle should take regular employment with the white intruders. Dutch law, moreover, had forbidden the enslavement of the local population from the first.37 To have done so would have

M 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, des- patches to C of XVII, 22 Apr. 1654, 10 June 1656 and 5 Mar. 1657.

14 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.

36 H. C. V. Leibbrandt, Pricis 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. For similar advice of caution see The Record, 54, 75, 99, 107, 140, 240, passim.

** R. E. Robinson, 'Collaboration in the Politics of the Colonies', unpublished paper given to the Seminar on the Recent History of the Commonwealth, Institute of Com- monwealth Studies (London), 1969. " McCrone, Race Attitudes, 47.

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64 SHULA MARKS

imperilled the cattle trade on which the outpost depended;38 in any case, the Khoi were a purely pastoral people who did not take easily to the idea of cultivating for others and, as slaves, could easily have deserted to the hinterland. To answer the demand from the freemen, as well as from Company servants, for an additional labour supply, the first batch of slaves was landed at the Cape, also in 1657.39

As the first freemen took up their lands, tensions between them and the Khoi inhabitants of the Cape peninsula—whom they called the Capemen— increased. The introduction of slaves exacerbated the situation, as they immediately tried to escape, and the Khoi were accused of harbouring them.40 In 1659, the first of the two Khoi wars in the seventeenth century broke out.

All the Khoi groups or Capemen, of the peninsula, were involved: Herry's Goringhaikona; the more powerful Goringhaiqua under Gogosa and Doman, who had by this time acquired a useful knowledge of the limitations of European firearms; and the Gorachouqua, who had already received the revealing epithet, the 'Tobacco Thieves'.41 From being the first collaborators, Doman and Herry now became the leading resisters to the Dutch presence, though Herry spent most of the period of the war in captivity on Robben Island. For the following year the Khoi, by stealing the plough-oxen, and by conducting elusive guerrilla warfare on rainy days when the Dutch muskets would not fire, brought agricultural work in the small colony virtually to a standstill. It is not generally realized how near the Khoi were to success: largely as a result of the war, almost half (57) the total number of Company servants and freemen tried to abscond by stowing away on passing vessels.42 In April 1660, however, perhaps in response to pressure from other groups for a resumption of the trade, the Capemen sought peace, though they had by no means been conquered. They complained that the Dutch were

taking every day . . . land which had belonged to them from all ages and on which they were accustomed to depasture their cattle. They also asked whether if they were to come into Holland they would be permitted to act in the same manner.43

And this was to be echoed by fresh Khoi groups through the next century and more, as they came up against the expanding Dutch settlement.

Though the number of actual settlers was extremely small, the con- stant demand of Company ships for meat led to considerable expansion

as McCrone , Race Attitudes, 47. 39 Walker, History of Southern Africa, 39. 40 McCrone , Race Attitudes, 32 ; The Record, 93 , 125-6, van Riebeeck's Journal , 20

F e b . 1657, 12 May 1658, 15 May 1658 et passim. 41 McCrone, Race Attitudes, 35-6; Spilhaus, South Africa in the Making, 27-8. 42 The Record, van Riebeeck to C of XVII 16/19 Mar. 1660; van Riebeeck to C of

XVII 4 May 1660; van Riebeeck to Batavia 7 July 1659. 48 The Record, 205, van Riebeeck's Journal 4 Apr. 1660. Also cited in McCrone, Race

Attitudes, 37.

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66 SHULA MARKS

from the Cape in search of new cattle supplies, and fresh Khoi groups were brought into the Company's orbit. By 1663 cattle traders had crossed the Hottentots Holland to the Chainouqua people in the area between the Caledon River and Danger Point, and were bartering with the Hessequa be- yond the Storms River area, as far east as Riverdale and the River Zonder End. In the next decade, they had reached the Nama in the north, and the Attaqua in the east. Thousands of sheep and hundreds of head of cattle were bartered for iron, copper, beads, arrack and tobacco.44 As one group became improverished or reluctant to trade, another would take its place. This in turn set up rivalries between the Khoi chiefdoms, and partly explains the fighting observed amongst them in this period. Thus in 1664 the Cochoqua requested Dutch aid against their rivals in the cattle trade, the Chainouqua and the Hessequa—which was refused—and in 1671, when the Cochoqua were being supplanted in the trade by these chiefdoms, war broke out between them.45 The pattern was to repeat itself to the end of the century.

Rivalry over the trade, and fear of the gradual encroachment of whites on his preserves, appears to have been behind the second conflict between the Dutch and the Cochoqua under-chief Gonnema, which broke out in the early 1670s.46 Although the Cochoqua, who were probably the most powerful of the groups near the Cape, had remained neutral during the war of 1659-60, Gonnema had been suspicious of white intentions from the outset, and had already moved towards the middle distance between the Berg River and the Fort to escape their demands.47 At the end of 1670, the Cochoqua and their client soldiers, the Ubiqua, probably a mixed San or Bushman and Khoi group,48 were reported as committing 'in a spiteful manner various acts of mischief, breaking into farmhouses, stealing provisions and assaulting freemen and soldiers.49 Moreover, their

44 E . E . M o s s o p (ed . ) , Journals of the Expeditions of Hon. Ensigns Olog Bergh (1682-3) andlsaq Schrijver (i68g) (Van Riebeeck Society, 1931), Introduction, p. 15. Also p. 200.

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

44 McCrone, Race Attitudes, 60-2; Spilhaus, South Africa in the Making, 38-40. 47 Le Roux, 'Hottentotstamme', 41 , 46, 56-7. 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 neighbour- hood 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 bush- rangers'. Ace. to E. C. Gode'e 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 Chain- ouqua. The Record, 324.

48 H. C. V. Leibbrandt, Pricis of the Archives of the Cape of Good Hope: Journals 1662- 1670 (Cape Town, 1901), 343, Journal 22 Dec. 1670. This document is not in Moodie's

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 67

continued war against the Company's allies was hampering the cattle trade. By the end of 1672, when plans were afoot to open the Hottentots Holland to white settlement, hostilities between Gonnema and the whites broke out in more serious fashion, and between 1673 anc^ ^76 several commandos were sent out against him.50 On no occasion were they able to do more than capture a few hundred head of cattle, perhaps through the double dealing of their San spies.51 It was not until 1677 that Gonnema, still unsubdued, sued for peace.

After the peace with Gonnema, white expansion, which had been held up by his resistance, was rapid, both to the north and the east. In part this was the result of the increase in the white population at the turn of the century, in part a function of economics and geography.62 Despite one or two sporadic attempts, the Dutch East India Company made little effort to follow the trekboers. Though the new districts of Stellenbosch (1685), Swellendam (1745) and Graaf Reinet (1785) were formed, they were large and unwieldy and their centres far from the expanding frontier. The authority of the full-time magistrate or landdrost and his burgher assistants, the heemraden and veldkorporaals, was without an adequate police force and could hardly control the trekboer, who became accustomed to handling emergencies on his own and taking the law into his own hands.53

Thus it was that already by the end of the seventeenth century Simon van der Stel noted with concern the existence of a class of cattle farmers beyond the confines of the settlement, where they supported themselves by combining hunting with the illegal cattle trade with the Khoi.64 At times it was difficult to distinguish their trading from their raiding opera- tions. Although increasingly dire penalties were proclaimed against anyone indulging in the illegal cattle trade with the Khoi, this injunction was being disregarded even during the first Khoi war.65 After 1680, as the colony

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.

60 Leibbrandt, Prfcis of the Archives . . . : Journals 1671-4, 1676 (Cape Town, 1902), 6-11, 85. 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 possess- ion 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. The Record, 345, Resolution C of P 25 Nov. 1676.

11 Oxford History, 208-13. For a detailed examination in English, S. D. Neumark, Economic Influences on the Cape Frontier, 1632-1836 (Stanford, 1957), and P. J. van der Merwe, Trek: Studies oor diepioniers-bevolking aan die Kaap (Cape Town, 1945), 100 ff.

a 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 eight- eenth century in the frontier zone.

" van der Merwe, Trek, 41-3. '* In 1660 one Herman Remajenne was trading illicitly even with the Goringhaiqua,

who were at war with the colonists.

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68 SHULA MARKS

expanded, Company servants began to grow tobacco on their out-stations for cattle trade on their own behalf, and burghers built up their stock in similar fashion.56

For the majority of the Khoisan peoples of the interior, the expansion of the trekboer ultimately spelt the destruction of their social system and their independent existence, although the process took longer and was more complex than is generally realized. Already by the end of the century, however, the groups nearest the Cape had become impoverished. The 'Capemen' participants in the first Khoi war, then the Cochoqua parti- cipants in the second war, and by 1699 the Chainouqua and the Hessequa, amongst the wealthiest of the Khoi groups fifteen years earlier, had lost their cattle. Though the Hessequa apparently recouped their losses for a while in the early eighteenth century, they did this in part by working for the colonists for cattle.87 The Nama and the Grigriqua to the north and the Attaqua and the Inqua to the east were now in the line of colonial advance.

Though most, if not all, secondary authorities state that, after the defeat of Gonnema, Khoi resistance to the advance of the colonists was at an end, this is not borne out by the evidence, though to some extent the resistance did change in character. It was not so much that it was now more sporadic and less well organized; it was more that the white settlement was stronger and better able to cope. From 200 in the 1660s, the white population increased to about 2,000 by the beginning of the eight- eenth century, 5,000 to 6,000 by the mid-century, and almost 20,000 by the end of the Dutch period.58 With the growth of the burgher population and, even more important, with the rise of a few wealthy meat contractors like Henning Husing, Jacob van der Heyden, and the Governor himself, the Company was no longer so dependent on Khoi intermediaries, who were, moreover, finding it difficult to supply the largely increased numbers of cattle in demand in the last decade of the seventeenth century.69 In 1696, it is true, Simon van der Stel was drawn into a dispute between the rival Chainouqua captains, Koopman and Klaas, ostensibly because Klaas, formerly the most reliable of the Company's intermediaries, was now hampering the cattle trade.60 In fact, by this time the days of the

66 Le Roux, 'Hottentotstamme', 50. 67 E. E . Mossop (ed.) , Journals of the Expeditions of the Hon. Ensign Olof Bergh and the

Ensign Jsaq Schrijver, 69, footnotes. Precis of the Archives . . .: Letters Received, z6gs- 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 Hot- tentotte' (V.C. 13, Dagregister, 373-4, 8 Jan. 1694); P. Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, I, 75 .

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

68 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, Pricis 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, n, 351-4. VC 13 and 14 Dagregister 15 Mar. 1694, 20 July 1694, 13 Feb. 1696, and 6 Dec. 1698.

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 69

independent Khoi intermediary were virtually over. Individuals like Herry, Doman or Klaas were no longer necessary, and their names disappear from the records of the central government.61

In an attempt to meet the escalating demand for fresh meat, the Com- pany tried various expedients. In 1699 the ban on the cattle trade between the Khoisan and burghers, which had existed since the early days of the colony in order to avoid conflict, was lifted, contrary to the wishes of the Governor. An immediate outbreak of violence on the lifting of the ban led the Governor to reimpose it in 1702, but with his dismissal in 1707 the cattle trade was once again thrown open, this time for a further twenty years. In 1727 it was reimposed once again because of the violence which had resulted from the 'free for all'. In fact, the ban was always honoured more in the breach than the observance.62

At the same time, new grazing areas were opened up in Riebeeck's Kasteel, Groenekloof and Waveren by the large meat contractors, who were now able to trade with Khoi pastoralists in their own right. And this shift in the geographic focus of interaction from the centre to the periphery of the settlement is also reflected in the nature of the evidence. The highly circumstantial journals of the Cape Commanders, which relate every detail of their relationships with the Khoisan, now give way to far more sporadic accounts of raids and counter-raids, in which tribal names are barely mentioned. Individual settlers were undoubtedly in- jured by these attacks but, in part because of the scattered nature of settlement in the outlying districts, the colony as a whole was no longer threatened in the same way.

The 1690s, indeed, saw a mounting tide of violence on the periphery, which continued into the eighteenth century, perhaps the result of this insatiable demand for cattle. Not only were there wars between the Nama, Grigriqua and Cochoqua, the Hessequa and Attaqua, and within the Chainouqua; from 1700 onwards white farmers and Khoi loyalists in the northern part of Stellenbosch began complaining of the robbery of their cattle, and there is little doubt that these were raids by Nama and Gri- griqua peoples, accompanied by their San client-soldiers, in retaliation for earlier plundering by the white man and his allies. The large meat contractors in the newly opened grazing lands suffered especially large

81 Undoubtedly individual Khoi continued to exploit the colonial situation, and pro- cesses 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.

" 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 in- creasingly 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 XVIPs decisions in 1699 and 1707. See Oxford History, 1, 208-9; Muller (ed.), 500 Years, 34, 46-7. VC Dagregister, 196-7, 20 July 1693. VC 14, 613-14. Dagregister; Plakkaat and Resolusie, 19 Oct. 1697. Also Kaapse Plakkaatboek, 1, 282-3.

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70 SHULA MARKS

losses.63 Though the raiders, who are generally described in the documents as 'Bosjesmans-Hottentotten', have been identified by most previous writers with the San or 'Bushmen',64 there is strong evidence to suggest that, while the San were undoubtedly involved in the raids both on this occasion and through the eighteenth century—and even Gonnema had his San spies and mercenaries—these so-called 'Bosjesmans-Hottentotten' were Khoi who had lost their cattle and had reverted to a 'Bushman' way of life. There was, after all, little to distinguish the two groups, once the Khoi had lost their cattle and grazing lands. There is also some evidence to suggest that even at this stage they were being joined by runaway slaves.66

The process whereby a herder-Khoi became a 'Bushman' was well delineated by the landdrost of Stellenbosch, commenting on the results of the temporary lifting of the ban on the cattle trade between 1699 and 1702: not only had it led to retaliatory raids of revenge, but it had turned kraal against kraal, 'so that from a contented people peacefully supporting themselves with their cattle, they have mostly all been changed into bushmen [my italics] hunters and robbers, scattering everywhere and among the mountains'.66

The pattern of violence and counter-violence, raid and counter-raid, punctuated every decade in the eighteenth century. The documentary evidence suggests a close connection between cattle-trading expeditions, which tipped easily over into raiding expeditions when the Khoi were reluctant to barter a sufficient number of cattle on the terms offered, and Khoi counter-raids to recover their stock. Far from being 'surprisingly willing' to barter away their cattle for brandy, tobacco and baubles, on very many occasions it had to be extorted by force, and the Khoi were swift to retaliate.67 Though the power of the Khoi to resist white expansion was undermined by the disastrous small-pox epidemic of 1713, attempts to dislodge the white intruders on their grazing lands continued.68 In

63 H. C. V. Liebbrandt, Prids of the Archives . .. Journal z6gg-i732 (Cape Town, 1896), entries 13 Mar. 1701, 10 Apr. 1701, 16 June 1701, 26 Aug. 1701, 7 Oct. 1701, 26 Nov. 1701, 29 Nov. 1701, 22 Jan. 1702. The entry for 3 Mar. suggests that the land- drost 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.

"E.g. Theal, History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795, 11, 390; Oxford History, 212; Muller (ed.), 500 Years, 34.

•* The Dagregisters for 1696-7 have numerous references to deserted slaves fleeing to the Grigriqua. See VC 14 passim, but esp. 405-6, 411, 416-20, 423-4.

•• H. C. V. Leibbrandt: Prids of the Archives ... The Defence of Willem Adriaan v.d. Stel (Cape Town, 1898), Ann. N2, p. 161, Report of Landdrost Starrenburg, Oct. 1705. Sim. Leibbrandt, Prids of the Archives ... Letters Despatched 160.6-1708, 191, Gov. to C of XVII, 20 Mar. 1702.

67 See above n. 5, p. 56. 88 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.

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 71

1715-17 'Bosjesman-Hottentotten', or Khoisan, raids along the Berg River and in the land of Waveren led to the first garrison Commando being called out without a complement of Company soldiers from the Cape, a precedent which established itself thereafter as the norm. As in 1700-1, the Khoisan raids may have been provoked by an earlier Boer raid.69 Certainly in 1719, when a strong body of 'Bushmen' stole 700 cattle from the cattle station on the River Zonderend belonging to the Company's licensed butcher, Jacob van der Heyden, they stated that it was because they had been robbed when Ensign Fierabent was sent to barter cattle on the Company's behalf with the 'Inquas' and Gauris'.70

By 1724 the Nama complained that the Company had cleared them of all their cattle and they were no longer prepared to trade—perhaps the result of the violent 'trading' expedition sent out by Jacob van der Heyden in the previous year. So violent was this that it led the Church Council of Drakenstein to request a government enquiry, and the permission he had to trade with the Khoi was withdrawn.71 Four years later a band of 300 'Bosjesman-Hottentotten'—probably Nama and Grigriqua—stole cattle from behind the Piquetbergen.72

Both in 1731 and in 1739 the political motivation behind the Khoisan raids was made explicit. Thus, on the former occasion, the raiders, a small band called 'the sons of Giebenaar', told the pursuing Commando: 'We Bushmen have more people, we shall give the Dutch no rest'; while in 1739 a Khoi interpreter was told that the object of the raids was 'om hun [the Dutch] uyt haar land te verjagen derwijl sy in haarlieden land woonen en dat dit maar een begin was dog dat zy alle de daaromtrent menschen sulx souden doen . . ,'73 ('to chase the Dutch out of their land as long as they live in their land, and that this was but a beginning but they would do the same to all the people around there'). They further threatened to set all the Dutch corn on fire so that they would have to give up their farms north of the Berg River. This attack of 1739 was pro- bably the largest to take place up to this point; more than 400 head of cattle and 2,400 sheep were captured. At least 100 Khoisan were involved, some of them armed with muskets, and their raids extended along the Piquetberg, Bokkeveld and Lange Valley, forcing fifty-nine cattle-stations

•• C 10. Resolutions of Council of Policy, 19-26, 101-7, 162-70: 15 Oct. 171s, 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, Precis of the Archives . . . Journals l6gg-i732, 276, 31 Jan. 1719. Sim. C 13 (Resolutions), 290-1.

71 E. E. Mossop (ed.), The Journals of Brink {1761-2) and Rhenius . . . {1724), V.R. Soc. 28 (Cape Town, 1947), 137. This may have been the result of the plundering ex- pedition 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. 5 Apr. 1723. Theal, History and Ethnography of South Africa before I7Q5, n, 439.

7 1 C 441 (Ink. Br.), 773-5. Landdrost, Stellenbosch, to Gov. 19 Dec. 1728. Theal, History and Ethnography ..., 11, 447.

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

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72 SHULA MARKS

to be deserted.74 In all, four commandos had to be sent against them and burgher service in the Commandos became compulsory for any whites with interests in the outlying districts.76 In this instance again, the immediate spur to Khoisan action appears to have been the activity of an illegal 'trading party' in which a number of Nama had been shot and their cattle stolen by the Boer leaders and their Khoi servants.76

The early 1750s saw a further spate of Khoisan attacks, which the land- drost of Swellendam attributed to the fact that a number of white in- habitants were making their way into the 'woestyn' (i.e. beyond the settled areas) with their guns and wagons, where there were all too many opportunities for them to vent their spleen ('om synen boesem uytte- storten') on the Khoisan.77 The first attack seems to have come from a smallish band of 'Bosjesman-Hottentotten' secretly aided by a white farmer, Jacobus Botha, who had in fact led a commando against Khoisan raiders in 1747, during which a number of women and children had been killed78; by 1754 whole herds of cattle were being driven off in the area of the Olifants River, Bokkeveld, Roggeveld and Doom River, and the raiders had entrenched themselves in 'klip heuwels' (stone huts).79

74 St 11iz (SteUenbosch 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 31, 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.

76 v.d. Merwe, Noordtoaartse Beweging, 8. 78 G. M. Theal in his History of South Africa under the D.E.I.C., 11, 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 contemp- 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 Com- mando 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 Cruy- wagen'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 B. Kruger, The Pear Tree Blossoms (Cape Town, 1969), p. 26.

C 31 Resolutions, 101-10, Evidence Khoisan witnesses before Council of Policy, 13 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, 3 Nov. 1739, 21 Nov. 1739, 20 Apr. 1739, 28 Apr. 1739.

" C 453 (Ink. Br.), 771. Landdrost and heemraden, Swellendam, 17 Nov. 1753. Also p. 70s, ibid. 5 Mar. 1753, and end. 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.

"van der Merwe, Noordtoaartse Beweging, 9. C 654 Dagregister, Stellenbosch, 28 May 1754.

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 73

The snowball effect of cattle marauding was felt beyond the confines of the colony, as groups of Khoi sought to regain their stock by raiding their weaker fellows. Thus in 1752 Ensign Beutler found the Khoi on the Gamtoos poor and starving, having been robbed by 'Bushmen', while the Attaqua had moved to the sources of the Gouritz and Olifants River from Attaqua's Kloof, or had taken service with the farmers in order to escape. Between the Lange and Cromme Rivers, the Khoi had become so impoverished through wars with the 'Bushmen', between themselves, and with the Xhosa, that 'now they lived like the Bushmen on theft, hunting and veldkos [food of the field]'80 added confirmation of the way in which herders were turned into hunter-gatherers. The process was probably exacerbated by the outbreak of small-pox and cattle disease in 1755, which may also have held up Khoi resistance for a generation: in 1758 a party of 200 men who stole 400 cattle from the Roggeveld farmers appear to have come from a considerable distance (they may even have been Tswana from across the Orange River), as their language was unintelligible to the local Khoi.81

In the 1770s, however, when the whites reached the southern ridge of the central plateau, the level of Khoisan attacks reached a new pitch.82

The increased ferocity of the so-called 'Bushman wars' in the last quarter of the eighteenth century may have been the result, at least in part, of increased pressure on the Khoisan, not only from the white trekboers in the south-west but also from the Xhosa, moving slowly westwards, and the half-caste Kora and Tswana groups who were at this time establish- ing themselves on the Orange River from the south and north respectively83

Moreover, the scale of Boer reprisals and the capture of Khoisan children to act as servants undoubtedly added a new dimension to the warfare.84

For whatever reason, however, the entire northern frontier now erupted in violence, with escaped slaves, white deserters and Khoi servants joining the Khoisan ranks.86

It would be tedious to relate the details of their incursions, though the

80 E. C. Godee Molsbergen: Reizen in Zuid-Afrika, i n , Journey of Ensign Beutler 1752, 279-80, 291-3 . Sim. A. Sparrman, A Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope 1772-6 (Dubl in , 1785), 11, 14s, talking of the Khoisan in Agter Bruintjes Hoogte , and C 470/11 (Ink . Br.) , 727, Landdros t Woeke, Graaff Reinet , 10 Dec . 1786.

81 C 456 1, 335-7 . Report Landdros t , Swellendam, 30 June 1758. 8a According to van der Merwe , Noordwaartse Beweging, 10, this was because it was

the 'real Bushman frontier*. 88 Splits within the Xhosa royal lineage and the movement of small fragmented chief-

doms westward probably accelerated in the eighteenth century ; together with the growth of half-caste communit ies nor th of the Cape sett lement and the establishment of the Koranna on the Orange River, and the presence of Whi t e deserters from t h e Cape Colony, they made 'frontier zones' areas of very considerable instability.

84 van der Merwe, Noordwaartse Beweging, 96-7. " In the 1780s Le Vaillant described the 'Boshiesmen' as 'a set of vagabond deserters

of no particular nation, living by robbing alike Caffree' (sic), 'Hottentot or Colonist'. F. Le Vaillant, Travels into the Interior Parts of Africa . . . in the Years 1780-85 (London,

>. 338.

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74 SHULA MARKS

records of Stellenbosch, Swellendam, and, after 1786, Graaf Reinet, consist very largely of the numbers of sheep and cattle stolen and herders murdered, together with the reports of the reprisals taken by the burghers.86

Unfortunately, the records give very little indication of the nature of Khoisan organization, leadership or objectives. The bands, however, were sometimes several hundred strong—in 1790 one band was reported of a thousand, while hundreds of head of cattle and thousands of head of sheep were captured annually.87 Though the Commandos were out constantly during the last thirty years of the century they were unable to subdue the raiders, though thousands of Khoisan were killed.88 By 1785 the Khoisan had taken over the land from the Hex River to the Swarteberg, from the Roggeveld, Koup, Sneeubergen and Camdebo, and the Commandant of the North, appointed specifically to deal with the threat, prophesied that before long they would penetrate to the wine and wheat farms of the land of Waveren.89 Those farmers who were not ruined by the robberies were being exhausted by constant military service. Though farmers began to wear the Khoisan down by pure blood-letting, further colonial expansion northwards was prevented for some thirty years.90

This was the more serious for the trekboers, in that it coincided with their coming up against the far more numerous and better organized Xhosa chiefdoms. Their expansion was thus blocked on both fronts, while they were facing two enemies simultaneously. In the eighteenth century, contrary to popular belief, the Khoisan were the more formidable foe.91 By comparison with the robberies committed on the northern frontier, the cattle thefts complained about by farmers through Xhosa depredations were paltry.92 Nor was the Xhosa mode of warfare necess- arily more damaging, though undoubtedly in the nineteenth century their superior numbers and evolution of new tactics made them an increas- ing threat. Initially, however, the advantage would appear to have

86 See, for example, St 10/162, 10/164 O.R. 1/1 and 1/12 in the Cape Archives. 87 Ace. to Mara is , Maynier and the First Boer Republic, 22 n . 20 , be tween 1786 and 1795

19,161 catt le and 84,094 sheep were stolen, and 276 he rde r s were killed. I n 1786 alone 1,328 cattle and 2,738 sheep were stolen. C C 471 (Ink. Br.), Landdrost Graaff Reinet to Gov. p . 609.

88 For the 1790 band, see v.d. Merwe Noordwaartse Beweging, 19-20. 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. 80 Afrikaner historians have tended to be more aware of this than their English speaking

compatriots. Cf. v.d. Merwe, Noordwaartse Beweging, cc 1 and 11 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. 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.

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 75

lain with the Khoisan. According to the Swedish traveller Sparrman in 1775, 'the Bushmen are more than a match for the Caffres, as long as they keep a good distance . . . by means of their poisoned arrows',93 while Burchell, writing in 1811, remarked that the Xhosa 'are, in general, much in dread of the Bushmen, whose insidious mode of warfare and in- defatigable activity in expeditions against their enemies render them . . . more than a match for the . . . Caffre'.94 From the point of view of the colonists, by far the most disastrous of the three 'frontier wars' of the eighteenth century occurred in 1799-1802, when the Xhosa were joined by an uprising of Khoisan servants, who deserted from the farms with their masters' horses and guns. Although the wholesale desertion of servants and their combination with the numerically stronger Xhosa was novel, this was by no means the first time the Khoisan servants had joined the 'resisters'—the raiders of the last three decades (and possibly even the earlier bands) undoubtedly contained a good proportion of deserters, many of them armed with guns.95

The end of the Dutch period did not see the end of Khoisan resistance, though it is impossible to tell the nineteenth century story, with its many new and complex facets, here. It would need to show, however, how it took a further twenty years before the Cape's northern frontier was ex- tended to include 'Bushmanland', as well as to trace the history of the 'Griqua' and other mixed Khoi-San-slave-white groups.96

Most writers on colonial resistance end with some reflections on the achievements of the resisters; many take these achievements up to the rise of modern mass nationalism and their contribution to colonial in- dependence. Of course, in the Khoisan case one can point to no such achievement, though today there are signs of an awakening interest amongst some middle-class coloureds in the struggles of their progenitors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.97 At this earlier period, however, one cannot really talk of an 'independence movement'.98 Not only did the Khoisan fail to dislodge the white man; they undoubtedly also lost

M Span-man, A Voyage, xi, 159. M W. J. Burchell, Travels in the Interior of South Africa, ed. I. Schapera (London,

1953). i,3°2- •• Spilhaus, South Africa in the Making, 271-3, 303-10. M 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. G. Thompson, Travels and Adventures in Southern Africa (London, 1827), 11, 6, 40-1; J. Philip, Researches in South Africa, 11, cc. n, in, xrv and xv Great Britain: Parliamentary Papers: re Native Inhabitants, 1835, passim, esp. p. 59; J. Pringle, African Sketches (London, 1834), 371.

" J . Leeuwenberg, "The Griqua Reformation Movement in the 20th Century* (un- published seminar paper, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, 1970), 4.

18 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 M. Legassick, "The Griqua, the Tswana and the Missionaries, 1780-1840: The Politics of a Frontier Zone' (unpublished Ph.D. U.C.L.A., 1969).

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76 SHULA MARKS

their ethnic identity. In part this must be attributed to their relatively small numbers and social organization. But this is by no means the entire answer. Dutch numbers, especially in the seventeenth century, were also extremely small, and, although the Khoisan failure to unite effectively was important, lack of unity is a feature not only of small pastoral or hunter- gatherer societies.

Of greater importance, perhaps, was their ambiguous relationship with the whites. Resistance was only one of their responses to the Dutch and perhaps not the dominant one. Even in the first two Khoi wars, the Dutch were heavily dependent on 'loyal' Khoi levies and outnumbered by them. In 1670, when there were rumours of a French invasion, the Dutch defences were augmented by Khoi soldiers, while throughout the eight- eenth century they formed the backbone of the colonial defences against both internal and external enemies. All the Commandos were accompanied by Khoi servants, some of them armed, who sometimes outnumbered the burghers."

Even those groups which remained theoretically 'independent' under their own chiefs, were willing to collaborate with the Dutch—often for their own purposes. The Company soon adopted the custom of recognizing 'loyal' Khoi chiefs, or, as the Dutch called them, captains, who were granted copper staffs of office and official white recognition in exchange for their services. Though at the beginning it would appear that the Company was simply acknowledging the already legitimate heads of Khoi chiefdoms, by the end of the eighteenth century, and probably a good deal earlier, trie effect was to separate chiefs from their people in the manner familiar to nineteenth and twentieth century colonical Africa. Thus one Khoi informant remarked to Sparrmann in 1775:

Captain . . . is merely an empty title, formerly bestowed by the regency at Cape Town on some princes and patriarchs of the Hottentots, and particularly on such as had distinguished themselves by their fidelity to their allies by be- traying their countrymen or by some remarkable service . . . it is required of the captain that he shall be a spy on the other Hottentots.100

Already by the 1690s some six or eight of these staffs of office had been granted to Khoi captains, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century chiefs as far off as the Nama had come to seek Company recognition at the Cape.101

In Cape Town itself there was considerable acculturation. There was even some intermarriage between the whites and Khoi women—like that of Eva, the interpretress, who was married, amidst public celebration,

" Spilhaus, South Africa in the Making, 3 7 - 8 , 5 8 - 9 , 1 0 0 - 1 , 121, 129, 188, 256, 263,

272 , 306, 375- 1 0 0 Span-man, A Voyage, 1, 240. 1 0 1 Leibbrandt, Precis of the Archives . . . Letters Despatched 1695-1708, 2 4 - 5 . Gov .

to C X V I I Middelburg, 1 Aug. 1696. Theal , History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795, 11, 392.

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 77

to the ship's surgeon and explorer, Pieter van Meerhoff.102 Although inter- marriage between white men and Khoi and freed slaves became rarer— it was expressly forbidden by the metropolitan Commissioner, van Goens, in the 1680s—concubinage undoubtedly continued in both town and country, to give rise in the course of the eighteenth century to a consider- able half-caste population, who became known as the Cape Coloureds.103

For some, the strain of acculturation proved too great: Eva herself ended her days in squalor and drunken disgrace, while the records contain other examples, like the young Khoi girl who was 'respectably educated by burghers' but eventually hanged herself in a sheep-pen.104 Nevertheless, by the end of that century, though they were never granted full burgher status, there were fairly well-to-do baptized 'Basters' (half-castes) on the tax rolls of the colony and participating in the Commandos against Khoisan raiders as well as against European invaders.105

In accounting for the ultimate disappearance of the Khoisan as an ethnic entity, their propensity for acculturation has thus to be taken into account, a propensity which must be closely linked to their loosely knit social organization. They literally acculturated themselves out of existence. The significance of this is not simply that it gave rise to the Cape Coloured community, but that many of the acculturated half-Khoi iden- tified with the whites and passed into their ranks, so that their own group was deprived of manpower and potential leadership. In many cases those who 'passed for white' must have been the most successful and dynamic individuals, in the eighteenth as in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Moreover, for those unwilling or unable either to resist or to assimilate, there was another option—to escape beyond the confines of white settle- ment. Thus many made their way north and east of the colony. Fragments of the Goringhaiqua, the Corachouqua and possibly the Cochoqua fled, for example, to the Orange River, where they formed the Koranna people or mingled with the Tlhaping. In the second half of the eighteenth century they were joined by other mixed groups, like the half-caste Adam Kok, who fled to the Khamiesberg and built up a following of Grigriqua and other groups before moving on to the Orange River.106 Those who fled eastward mingled with still independent Khoi groups or the mixed Xhosa-Khoi on the frontiers of Xhosa settlement.107 On the peripheries

l o a McCrone, Race Attitudes, 43 . 1 0 3 J. S. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, cc 1 and n . 104 McCrone , Race Attitudes, 35, 44 . 105 Spilhaus, South Africa in the Making, 129, 155, 157, 161, 178. 106 Oxford History, 68 . T h i s 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, Pricis of Archives . . . Journal 1662-72, 185, 6 July 1666.

1 0 7 T h i s had, of course, continued over a very long period of t ime, but the accounts of travellers like Beutler (1752) , Wikar (1778), Sparrman (1775-6) , Campbell (1813), etc., are full of references to mixed Khoi -San-Bantu speaking groups at all stages of inter- mixture and acculturation.

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78 SHULA MARKS

of the Bantu-speaking world, they constituted a kind of Voortrekker class, bringing the first intimations of the destructive implications of the white man's presence and an increased political awareness.

The extent to which their presence shaped the responses of Bantu- speaking peoples to later white expansion is difficult to document, but their influence was clearly considerable and had many ramifications. Thus, it was through their example, and in many cases as a result of their raiding activities, that, on the one hand, many African chiefs determined to acquire horses and guns and, on the other hand, that a number of chiefs requested missionaries to settle among them. Amongst Southern Tswana groups, such as the Tlhaping and the Tlharu, the Griqua and other mixed groups prepared the way for white traders and missionaries. As early as 1801 there were Tswana who could speak Dutch, which they had learnt from the Griqua.108 For Mzilikazi on die Highveld it was the resemblance of the Voortrekkers to his enemies, Bergenaar and Griqua raiders, that led him to wipe out the Voortrekker encampments, while Moshweshwe in Basutoland received both his knowledge of firearms and his French missionaries through Griqua intermediaries, though he wanted both,109

initially, to protect him from the mixed raiding communities of the Orange River. As late as 1845 Captain Stretch on the Cape frontier 'warned the authorities that even Tembu and Ndlambi chiefs agreed that they must "stand by the House of Gaika lest we be broken up as the Hottentots were" \110

Yet the majority of the Khoisan were converted into the menials of the white man, depressed socially, politically and economically. Though in the more settled areas they remained the transport riders, guides, messen- gers and, on occasion, trusted emissaries, and even in the interior some were able to retain considerable independence as skilled ivory hunters, their position on the farms in the remoter districts may well have been con- siderably worse than that of the slaves of the west.111

In the barter economy of the interior, Khoi servants earned little more than their keep, plus the occasional head of cattle or sheep and some cast- off clothing. Though they were legally entitled to redress, the primitive administrative and judicial machinery left servants at the mercy of their masters, and there is little doubt that the relationship was not infrequently violent.112 As we have seen, many could, and did, desert; Jager Afrikanner,

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

10» 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. 112 Ibid. 121, 169. G. M. Theal, Belangrijke Historische Dokumenten, m (Cape Town,

1911), 216, 218-21, 243.

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KHOISAN RESISTANCE TO THE DUTCH 79

who murdered his master after years of ill treatment, and formed his own group of resisters along the Orange River, is another case in point.113

Others seem to have indulged in millenarian fantasies, like the two hundred servants in Swellendam who were reported in 1788 to have burnt their Dutch clothes and killed their white animals, prophesying the end of the world and threatening to kill all whites, after which they would inherit their goods.114 The alternative for many, however, was listlessness and despair and an addiction to dacha, tobacco and alcohol, already noted by Peter Kolbe in the first decade of the eighteenth century.115

Apart from the attempt by George Schmidt of the Moravian Brethren to establish a mission amongst the Khoisan in 1737, which lasted only five years, it was only at the very end of the century that mission work got under way at the Cape. Thus, by the time the missionaries became the champions of Khoisan rights, they were fighting against a settler community which had entrenched itself over 150 years.116 Throughout the period of Company rule there was no creation of an educated and articulate Christian elite within the Khoisan community; nor was there any equivalent in Holland of the British pressure groups of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which could act in the interest of African rights.

Despite its limitations, from the vantage point of the late eighteenth century rather than that of the twentieth, any assessment of Khoisan resistance must have looked very different. Both Khoisan and Dutch had had their social structure and economy profoundly changed as a result of 150 years of contact, conflict and acculturation, and in many ways by the end of the eighteenth century they were more evenly matched than before or since. At the Cape itself, whites, with their metropolitan links, were in a dominant position; in the interior, their position was by no means as overwhelmingly superior as is often imagined. It was the coming of the British, and their intervention in Cape affairs, which was to tilt the balance of power irreversibly in favour of the white man.

Moreover, an examination of Khoisan responses to the Dutch certainly does not seem to bear out some of the stereotypes generally held about the relationship of social structure to responses to colonial rule. Professor Ranger's dictum that 'resisting societies are not necessarily different in structure, motive or atmosphere from co-operating ones' is certainly borne out; his rider that 'the foremost among the societies engaged either in resistance or in collaboration had more in common with one another

I1S J. H. Wellington, South West Africa and its Human Issues (Oxford, 1967), 152 114 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 Hewe Heer', (our dear Lord) appears to have tried to play the role of the Messiah.

115 P. Kolbe, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, 1, 210-14, 264, 267, 324, 326. 118 This is the subject of Macmillan's The Cape Coloured Question.

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80 SHULA MARKS

than with those small-scale societies that could neither resist nor exploit colonial rule' would seem to need modification.117 The complex range of responses of the Khoisan to the Dutch seems to suggest that there are few societies, however small-scale, whether one is referring simply to size or to social organization, that have not responded to conquest by at times collaborating, and at times resisting, though undoubtedly the nature of both the accommodation and the resistance has in part to be related to social structure. Khoisan social structure, moreover, perhaps because of its very simplicity, showed a marked ability to adapt and change under the pressures of colonial rule. In many ways, what is striking about the Khoisan reactions to the Dutch are the similarities to the reactions of other African peoples in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries rather than the differences.

SUMMARY

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.

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

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