The Slave Trade of the Dutch East India Company

In the middle 1600s, Jan van Riebeeck, a Dutch East India Company employee, founded what would one day be known as Cape Town. Although the area had been used for nearly 200 years as a place for traveling sailors to trade precious metals and tobacco for fresh meat from the local Khoikhoi natives, van Riebeeck and other members of the Dutch East India Company were sent by the company to establish a permanent way station for ships traveling from Europe and along the coast of Africa on their way to the Dutch East Indies. He was also charged with establishing a fort to protect the area from pirates and native attacks.

The settlement grew far too slowly for the Dutch East India Company. When Riebeeck was questioned about this, he blamed it on the lack of labor and requested slaves be sent to help build the town. The first slaves arrived a year after the way station’s founding, and within five years there were ten slaves in the area (out of a population of 144), most of which came from Madagascar. The slave population quickly increased in 1658 when 250 Angolan slaves arrived, followed by 228 slaves from Guinea. As time went on, the way station grew and settlers eventually began to colonize the area around Cape Town (then known as Fort de Goede Hoop and later known as The Castle of Good Hope). This displaced many of the native Khoikhoi, many of whom became servants or slaves to settlers.

 

 Illustration of a Slave Ship

This was just the beginning of the “slave culture” in what would become South Africa. While many indigenous people were undoubtedly sent around the world as slaves, many of South Africa’s slaves were actually transplanted from other areas rather than the area immediately surrounding Cape Town. When the British took control of Cape Town in 1795 as a result of victories against France during the Napoleonic Wars, they soon passed the Slave Trade Act. The Act, which took effect in 1808 (after being passed in 1807), prohibited slave trade to take place between colonies. Slaves were still permitted (and taken) in South Africa until 1820, and slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833; this resulted in the emancipation of all British slaves on August 1st, 1834. 

All of this diaspora creates a situation that makes it incredibly difficult to trace your origins if any of your ancestors came from (or even visited) South Africa. The traveling sailors inevitably fathered children with the Khoikhoi native women as well as with slaves; after all, the ships all male crews often went months without seeing a woman. Since the Dutch East India Company and other shipping companies kept very poor records of their crewmen’s life outside of the company’s employ, and the Khoikhoi were unable to keep records as they didn’t read or write. Determining if your ancestors were from this time is difficult if not impossible.

Although the Dutch East India Company kept decent records of all those arriving and departing from South Africa through Cape Town, records of slaves being born or dying were not necessarily kept accurately. When you add in the possibility of scandal associated with babies born out of wedlock (especially if the father or mother was a slave), this means that many births went unaccounted for. This is complicated by the fact that many of the slaves were imported from other areas, where records may have been shoddy at best. In addition, slaves often followed their masters when they left South Africa, meaning that your ancestors could have originally come from South Africa even though you thought you were British or European.

Finding and sorting through South African genealogy records for this time period (not to mention from all over the world) is nearly impossible for anyone that’s not a trained genealogist. Genealogists know how to translate different records and combine their results in order to get you an accurate picture of who your ancestors were and possibly where they came from. If you suspect that you came from the South African area (be it as an descendant of a slave or a colonist), then it’s best to hire a professional genealogist, who might have access to slave logs and colonial records that can at times be difficult for you to access, let alone interpret or translate.