The Founding of Cape Town

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb explores the story of a shipwreck that led to the creation of a city and a nation. Exactly 375 years ago, on 25 March 1647, a Dutch cargo ship Nieuw Haarlem foundered in Table Bay’s shallow waters. While 58 crew members were taken back to the Netherlands, 62 remained at the southern tip of Africa. If they had not stayed, says our guest Professor Gerald Groenewald of the University of Johannesburg, the history of colonial South Africa could have turned out very differently.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Today we're telling the story of a shipwreck that created a city and a nation.
0:14.0	Some 375 years ago this year in 1647, a Dutch East India company ship called the New Harlem
0:23.0	was wrecked off the coast of present day South Africa just north of the Cape of Good Hope.
0:30.0	The experience of its survivors laid the path for the settlement of southern Africa by Europeans
0:37.0	and all its attendant consequences. For the indigenous Koi Koi people who were gradually
0:42.7	erased, for the West Africans who were enslaved and imported and for the many Dutch and French
0:49.4	Ugonos who would struggle to survive in this pioneer society but succeeded.
0:56.4	My guest is Dr Gerald Greenwald. His research focuses on the development of Cape Town during
1:01.8	the 17th and 18th centuries when it formed part of the empire created by the Dutch East India
1:06.9	Company or VOC. Dr Greenwald has written a number of academic journal articles in English
1:12.6	and Afrikaans exploring this history and is therefore the go-to person when it comes to
1:17.9	thinking about the very foundation of this unique society.
1:30.2	Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm not just the tutors to talk about this important
1:34.8	anniversary and this fantastic, if often quite terrible story, could you start off by telling
1:43.3	us who the inhabitants of present-day South Africa were in the early 17th century?
1:50.3	Yes, I'll restrict myself to the western part of South Africa because that's really what
1:55.9	concerns the 17th century history of South Africa. The main inhabitants were the Koi Koi
2:02.1	which some people pronounce quite well and they were also groups called the Sun or the Bushmen.
2:08.3	The word Koi Koi is actually something that came from the Old language. It means the
2:13.1	men of men or the people of the people but the word Sun is not sure where it comes from.
2:18.1	Some people believe it's actually a pejorative term from the Koi for the Sun and that's
2:22.5	why people still sometimes used the word Bushmen. So these two groups were interrelated. They
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