"A Whole Ox for an Old Bread Knife?" Dutch Trade and Khoikhoi Consumption at the Cape of Good Hope during the VOC Era

The globalization of consumer desires which developed in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries also affected the isolated Khoikhoi communities in the southern and western parts of South Africa. From the 1590s, the Khoikhoi traded their livestock with passing European ships in exchange for a variety of European consumer goods. With the establishment of a Dutch trading post in Table Bay in 1652, the balance of power between the Khoikhoi and the VOC rapidly changed and within 50-60 years the Khoikhoi of the Southwestern Cape lost their wealth and independence and became laborers for Dutch settlers.

This paper provides a panoptic discussion of Khoikhoi interaction with Dutch material culture (a topic hitherto ignored) during the period when the Cape of Good Hope formed part of the Indian Ocean world of the VOC. It traces how the consumer goods used in trade with the Khoikhoi not only reflect the trade patterns and interests of the Dutch (with Eastern fabrics becoming more popular in the 18th century), but how the Khoikhoi desire for certain consumer goods reflected their own locally motivated needs. Thus, while in the early 17th century, the Khoikhoi demanded iron and brass for use in making weaponry, this was later replaced by the desire for ornamental goods (e.g. beads and fabrics). In particular, this paper aims to trace how the Khoikhoi's loss of independence in the early years of the 18th century led to a change in consumption patterns: participating in a moneyed economy, they increasingly sold their labor in exchange for items of European clothing and narcotics. The paper is based on primary sources, including travel accounts, reports of trade missions, visual sources and the individual contracts Khoikhoi entered into as laborers.