ABSTRACT
In 1652 the Dutch East India Company occupied the Cape of Good Hope as a refreshment station for its ships plying between Europe and Asia. The small settlement formed the nucleus of a European-dominated colony that grew, at the expense of the indigenous Khoikhoi and San, to encompass a substantial portion of South Africa. Although the Cape Colony had been founded by Europeans, the society which developed within its borders differed from anything to be found in Europe. First, the mix of peoples and cultures was different. The colony was not a colony of Europeans, but a colony in which a European administration, the Dutch East India Company (VOC), ruled over a mixed population of white settlers and their servants, African and Asian slaves, Khoikhoi and San peoples. Second, the economy was different. This difference had less to do with the crops and livestock raised than it had to do with the way agriculture was practised. The predominantly white settlers created a new extensive system of plantation and pastoral agriculture dependent on Khoikhoi and slave labour. Third, the society was different. The Europeans brought with them to the Cape ideas about race, religion and status which, in the concrete circumstances of colonial life, formed the basis of a distinctive new white-dominated multi-racial society.
