Cape Good Hope 1652-1702

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Cape Good Hope
Volume One

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Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope

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Preface

This book covers the first fifty years of the Dutch colonisation at the Cape, as seen by callers.

During the years while it was in preparation I took the opportunity of having the ms read by various friends. The two most valuable criticisms made of it (in each case by more than one reader) were:

(1) that it would have been preferable to observe the strict chronological order, even at the cost of breaking up the account of any one writer into several sections. This has been done.

(2) that it would have helped readers if some idea had been given of what was going on at the time elsewhere in the world and especially at the Cape. Such a ‘background’ has been provided here, year by year, in the form of a very brief summary of European history (of course entirely superfluous to the historian - but not all readers are historians), followed by short extracts from official documents such as the Diary (‘Dagregister’, ‘DR’) kept at the Cape; Resolutions passed by the ‘Council of Policy’, the ruling body here; Letters from this to the ‘Lords XVII’, the Directors of the Honourable Dutch East-India Company in Holland, and vice versa; etc. All these are translated directly from the original text: it is a continual surprise to me how modern writers are content to rely on second-hand versions from, e.g., Theal, Leibbrandt, Moodie and even Walker when exceptionally good Archives are available at The Hague and in Cape Town. These extracts are not however intended to form a skeleton history of the Colony, but rather to confirm or contradict statements made by the writers of the items included.

Another type of ‘criticism’ was provided by comments such as: Why is ‘San Bras’ not identified as Mossel Bay? Is ‘Commelin’ a book or a document or what is it? The answer in all such cases is:

Look in the index

And here I will make an unorthodox suggestion to you, gentle reader of Prefaces: after reading page xiii spend a few minutes giving a cursory glance through the index of this book before you start to read the text, bearing in mind that the notes in that index replace

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a multiplicity of footnotes and superscript numerical (and often illegible) references to these, which would otherwise disfigure the pages of text.

Only the accounts of ‘callers’ are included, not those of wrecks (most outside the area covered, in any case); nor of residents (Schryver, de Neyn, Grevenbroek, etc.) with one exception, Schreyer, because of the outstanding importance of his account. Valentyn, although a ‘caller’, is not included in view of the fact that the Van Riebeeck Society intends to publish in 1971 his Dutch text with my translation into English, and my English notes translated into Afrikaans.

A considerable amount of this material, usually in a somewhat more condensed form, appeared in the pages of the Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Library and in Africana Notes and News; and I am grateful for the hospitality of those publications.

It would be impossible to thank even a fraction of those whom I pestered with my ignorant questions during the six years that this book has been in preparation; but I must at least mention with gratitude the Directors and Staffs of British Museum and India Office Libraries in London, the Colonial Archives at The Hague, the University Library at Leiden, the Cape Archives (and especially Dr. A.J. Boeseken there), the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, the South African Museum, the South African Library, the Johannesburg Public Library, and especially the Durban Public Library where most of the work was done. Acknowledgements for photographs, etc., will be found on page xv, and a few special acknowledgements are included in the introductory notes to the items.