The Cape of Good Hope was settled in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company. Like the British East India Company, the VOC held a monopoly on Dutch trade in the ‘East Indies,’ which covered all of South and Southeast Asia. In Smith’s time, the Cape was the site of competition between the Dutch and British, and Britain would finally take control of the colony during the Napoleonic Wars, when the Netherlands fell under French control.
The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies, by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.’ (WN IV.vii.c.80, 626).
Cape Colony – which stretched from Good Hope to modern-day Cape Town — was designed as a refreshment station for ships sailing onto Asia. At Table Bay, ships were able to restock on food, wheat, and wine, while offloading manufactured goods such as tobacco that ships like The Nassau would buy from ships like The Clyde which made the Atlantic crossing. Yet the Cape did not turn a profit for the VOC. In most years, the government spent more than double its revenue paying for the salaries of its employees, as well as funding further development of the town. Part of the reason for this was its ban of large-scale manufacturing. Instead, almost all manufactured goods were imported into the Cape.
The Cape was a slave society, but a different one from the ones our sailor encountered in West Africa and the Caribbean. The VOC were forbidden from enslaving the indigenous Khoe-san peoples of Southern Africa (though this ban was frequently broken), and instead imported enslaved workers from elsewhere in the imperial trading world: from Mozambique, Indonesia, India and Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka). When the British took over the port, increasing numbers of Madagascans, Persians, and Chinese workers were also forcibly trafficked to the Cape.
By the time of our sailor’s visit, a majority of enslaved people in the colony were Cape-born, and slightly outnumbered settlers. In 1776, Cape Town might have housed 9000 settlers, 1500 VOC employees, and at least 12,000 slaves. Some 7000 Khoe-san people remained on the peninsula, even after devasting outbreaks of small pox in 1713 and 1757, but most had moved away from Cape Town for the interior of the colony, and many had been conscripted into indentured labour on settler farms.
For ships traveling back to Europe, the Cape represented a last stop to sell slaves purchased in Asia. Throughout Smith’s lifetime, debates about abolition raged in European capitals. Though many countries, including Britain, would not abolish slavery itself until well into the 19th century, the sale of slaves was already banned in many European ports to which returning ships were headed. Even in Cape Town, where the VOC tried to restrict manumission, a growing free Black community of formerly enslaved people was emerging, poor but ekeing out a living running small businesses.
The Cape our sailor would encounter was politically and economically volatile, as British and Dutch settlers and traders fought for control, but it was also the most ethnically diverse place in the early modern world.
Image: “Cape of Good Hope” by Samuel Rowle. Etching, public domain, courtesy Yale Center for British Art