THEWHITEINVADERS
bound Dutch ship in 1713,
it ravaged the Khoikhoi. Not having previously
experienced the disease, they had no immunity and suffered more griev-
ously than the other inhabitants. Khoikhoi society, "already in precipitous
decline, had been virtually destroyed; and the people who had lived in it
had barely escaped annihilation."?
Bythat time, the settlement at the Cape was fulfilling its prescribed goal:
the company's fleets were being efficiently revictualed with fresh water,
wine, beef, mutton, bread, fruit, and vegetables. But the colony had also
become a far more complex society than the mere refreshment station that
the directors of the Dutch East India Company had envisaged in 1652, and
it had developed a wholly unforeseen dynamic.
The growing town on Table Bay was a miniature Batavia-
"a' seaward-
looking community, a caravanserai on the periphery of the global spice
trade,"10 where diverse religions, languages, and peoples jostled, and .life
focused on the outside world. The greatest events were the arrivals of the
fleets, bringing news from Europe or Asia and a period of brisk trade.
Abraham Bogaert, a Danish visitor, described the town in 1702.
The castle,
with its "bastions built of heavy stone and armed with large cannon" was