THEWHITEINVADERS
The Dutch Cape Colony, I652-I795:
Cape Town and the Arable Southwest
The seventeenth century was the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic
(map 2).3 Its merchants were the most successful businessmen in Europe;
their Dutch East India Company was the world's greatest trading corpora-
tion. Founded in 1602, the company was a state outside the state. 'Operat-
ing under a charter from the States-General (the Dutch government), it had
sovereign rights in and east of the Cape of Good Hope, and by midcentury
it was the dominant European maritime power in southeast Asia. Its fleet;
numbering some six thousand ships totaling at least 600,000 tons, was
manned by perhaps 48,000 sailors.
Modern South Africa began as a by-product of the enterprise of these
Dutch merchants. In sending Jan van Riebeeck to occupy Table Bay, the
directors of the company intended the colony to serve a specific and limited,
role as a link between the Netherlands and their eastern empire, centered on
Batavia, Java. They had no intention of creating anything more than a small
fortified base, where the annual fleets bound to and from Batavia could ren-
dezvous, take in fresh water, fruit, vegetables, and grain, and land their sick