ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the white settler population of the Cape Colony, South Africa, in the first century of its existence. It describes settler demography in its regional and economic settings with a view to gaining a stronger understanding of the nature of colonial settlement and expansion. The pressure on women to marry early was intense, and females were married at extraordinarily young ages. Marriages of girls of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen were by no means uncommon, and fifteen was the mode for the first marriage of all white women recorded in the 1705 census for whom data were available. Men were far less likely to remarry than women. Approximately 10 percent of the men, married for the first time at the taking of the census, married again. The women settlers of the Cape had proportionally more second marriages than male settlers. This phenomenon is attributable to the early ages at which women married and the imbalance in sex ratios.
