The Dutch East India Company, known by its Dutch initials VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), was a trading company that ruled the Cape from 1652 to 1795 [IC]. It came to the Cape to supply its ships sailing to and from Asia, and stayed to build a colony [IC]. For almost 150 years it shaped what happened in this valley. It traded for the cattle of the Chainoqua and Hessequa, gave out their grazing land as farms, and decided whether missionaries could work among the Khoekhoe.
What the letters in square brackets mean
Facts on this page are followed by a tag that shows where they come from.
- [IC] Independently Corroborated. Confirmed by at least two sources that do not depend on each other, or by an official record.
- [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from the records or statements of one side only. For the peoples of the early Cape, almost every written record was made by outsiders: Dutch East India Company officials, travellers, and missionaries. None of it was written by the people it describes.
- [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.
At a glance
| Founded | 20 March 1602, in the Netherlands [IC] |
| At the Cape | From 1652, when Jan van Riebeeck set up a station at Table Bay, to 1795 [IC] |
| What it was | A chartered trading company owned by shareholders, with the right to make war, sign treaties, and govern territory [IC] |
| Ended | Dissolved on 31 December 1799 [IC] |
A company that governed
The VOC was founded in the Netherlands in 1602, one of the first companies in the world to sell shares to the public [IC]. The Dutch state gave it a monopoly on Dutch trade with Asia, and the power to govern the places it took [IC]. Over almost two centuries it sent nearly a million Europeans to Asia and carried spices, silk, porcelain, tea, textiles, and enslaved people [IC].
The Cape station
In 1652 Jan van Riebeeck set up a station at Table Bay for the company, to grow food and supply its ships [IC]. From 1657 the company allowed some of its former servants to farm as “free burghers”, selling their crops to the company at fixed prices [IC]. As more colonists took land, the company let them hold large “loan farms” in return for a yearly fee [IC].
Farming for the company depended on forced labour. The company brought enslaved people to the Cape from 1658, from West Africa, Madagascar, Mozambique, India, and South-East Asia [IC]. By the 1790s there were between about 17,000 and 26,000 enslaved people in the colony, depending on the source and the year counted [IC].
The company and the Khoekhoe
The company needed Khoekhoe cattle, and at first it traded for them [IC]. As colonists took grazing land, the Khoekhoe fought the colony in 1659 to 1660 and in 1673 to 1677 [IC]. In the Overberg, the company traded with the Chainoqua from 1657, and agreed a cattle trade with their leader Soeswa in 1661 [IC]. From 1662 to 1713 the Chainoqua and Hessequa were its largest suppliers of cattle and sheep [IC]. The Chainoqua leader Dorha served as its go-between from 1679 to 1693, until Governor Simon van der Stel sent him to Robben Island [IC].
The company’s expeditions found rich grazing at the Huis River, where Greyton now stands, in 1669 [IC]. By 1727 it was farming timber and cattle at a post between present-day Greyton and Riviersonderend [IC]. In 1745 it set up a magistracy at Swellendam to govern the colonists moving east [IC]. On the northern frontier in the late 1700s, its commandos killed many San, and in 1777 it officially backed a policy of wiping them out [IC].
Almost everything written about the Khoekhoe and San of the early Cape comes from the company’s own journals and letters [IC]. They are the main source for pages such as Soeswa and Dorha, and they show these peoples through the company’s eyes.
The company and the mission
In 1736 Georg Schmidt went to Amsterdam to get the company’s permission before sailing to the Cape [MS]. When he began to baptise Khoekhoe in 1742, the Cape’s Dutch Reformed ministers objected, and on 4 September 1742 the company’s Council of Policy banned him from baptising any more [TBV]. He left the Cape in 1744 and was not allowed to return [IC].
The company kept Moravian missionaries out for almost fifty years. When the missionaries of 1792 reopened the mission, the company would not let them build a church [IC]. They could build only after the British took the Cape in 1795 [IC]. The company also granted the loan farm Weltevreden, where Greyton now stands, to Marthinus Theunissen in the early 1790s [IC].
The end of the company
By the late 1700s the company was deep in debt, weakened by corruption, smuggling, and the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of 1780 to 1784 [IC]. Britain occupied the Cape in 1795 [IC]. The company was dissolved on 31 December 1799, and its possessions passed to the Dutch state [IC]. The Dutch held the Cape again from 1803 to 1806, after which it became a British colony for good [IC].
What is still open
- What the company’s records in the Cape Archives and the Netherlands say about the Chainoqua and Hessequa of this valley, and about Stoffel Koekson.
- The text of the Council of Policy ruling of 4 September 1742.
Related
References
- Wikipedia. Dutch East India Company. Its founding, powers, trade, the Cape station, slavery at the Cape, decline, and dissolution.
- Wikipedia. Dutch Cape Colony. Free burghers, enslaved people, smallpox, the Swellendam magistracy, and the end of Dutch rule.
- Wikipedia. Khoikhoi–Dutch Wars. The wars of 1659 to 1660 and 1673 to 1677.
- Wikipedia. San peoples. The frontier commandos and the policy of 1777.
- The Digging Stick, volume 6, number 3 (November 1989). Archaeological Society of South Africa. The company’s contact and cattle trade with the Chainoqua.
- Muatze (Mansell Upham). Moravian missionary Georg Schmidt prohibited (1742) from baptising (2022). The Council of Policy ruling of 4 September 1742, citing Cape Archives C 120.
- CapeNature. Riviersonderend Complex Protected Area Management Plan 2021 to 2031, section 2.5. The company’s Overberg expeditions and cattle posts.