THEWHITEINVADERS
Town. Many soon gave up farming altogether and became artisans and
traders in Cape Town, where they catered to the needs of visiting French,
English, and Scandinavian ships, as well as to the outward bound and
homeward bound Dutch fleets that paused at the Cape each year. The most
successful of those who remained on the land acquired large holdings and
became mixed farmers, producing grain and wine but also pasturing sheep
and cattle far beyond the limits of their land grants.
Initially, the company did not envisage the use of slave labor in their
Cape settlement. However, van Riebeeck was soon requesting permission
to follow the example of the company's settlements at Batavia and else-
where in Asia. The die was cast in 1658, when the company imported one
shipload of slaves from Dahomey and another shipload of Angolan slaves,
whom it had captured from the Portuguese. After that, there was no look-
ing back. The company-government, the senior officials, and the free bur-
gher community all became dependent on slave labor. The Cape had be-
come a slaveholding society.6
By the early eighteenth century, slavery at the Cape had acquired dis-
tinctive characteristics. First, the Cape slaves came from more diverse