Khoikhoi and the Founding of White South Africa

The Khoikhoi - popularly, loosely, and pejoratively known as "Hottentots" - were once among the most widespread peoples of Africa. Today, at least in the Cape area, they are extinct. Using many sources, including linguistic evidence and early Dutch records, the author follows the decline of the Khoikhoi from the precolonial period to 1720. His is the first complete and systematic account of this story. In 1625 Dutch mariners founded a supply station at the Cape of Good Hope. Within sixty years the Cape Khoikhoi had witnessed the collapse of their traditional order and most had become landless labourers on Dutch farms. Then, in 1713, they were nearly annihilated by a terrible epidemic of smallpox. Examining the causes of their decline with both anthropological and historical techniques, Elphick finds that certain characteristics of the precolonial society and economy left Khoikhoi peculiarly vulnerable to the colony’s expansion even though the Dutch settlers were few in number and had recourse to arms only rarely. His analysis, drawn with care and imagination from unusually recalcitrant source materials, will interest scholars as a perceptive account of the dynamics of a traditional society. But it has a broader relevance: for the fatal confrontation of Dutch and Khoikhoi began the long and often bitter story which has since formed the main theme of South African history.