Apart from its strategic value, the settlement at the tip of Africa did not offer much. It had no great staple products, such as rice, sugar, tobacco, wool or timber, which could integrate the colony into the world’s trade systems. Beyond its coastal mountains the climate was harsh and the soil mostly poor. Apart from livestock, the prospects for trade with the indigenous Khoikhoi and the San who populated a large part of the subcontinent, were limited. They were much less developed culturally and technologically than the peoples the Dutch had encountered in the East.
But the Company was never very interested in the hinterland. What counted was that Table Bay, named by Joris van Spilbergen in 1601, and Saldanha Bay were ideal halfway stations to the main destinations of the VOC: the spice archipelago of Java and Sumatra.
In 1650 the VOC’s directors, called the Heren XVII (Lords Seventeen), decided to establish a ‘rendezvous and stronghold’ at the Cape. Their objectives were modest. It was to be a refreshment station to victual passing ships with fruit and vegetables from a modest garden and with meat bartered from the Khoisan. It was to exist for the Company’s benefit and the interest of the mother country. Its territory was to be kept as confined as possible to save expenses.
In terms of the VOC’s instructions the officials would associate amiably with people belonging to the ‘wild nations’ for the sake of the cattle trade, but otherwise would keep to themselves and their task of making the outpost self-sufficient. The settlement in Table Bay became known as the Cape. The name Cape Town became common only in the next century. It would be largely people from Europe who would settle at the Cape as colonists.
