Representasies van Nederlandse kontakte met kusbewoners van Afrika, 1475-1652.

Abstract

Representations of Dutch contacts with coastal inhabitants of Africa, 1475-1652. Prior to 1996, South African Dutch studies had largely been determined by traditional rigid historical and geographic boundaries set in 1933. The framework exclusively focused on the period after the arrival of Van Riebeeck in 1652 to 1925 (when Afrikaans replaced Dutch as an official language) and on topics regarded as typically South African. Siegfried Huigen in 'De Weg naar Monomotapa' (1996) not only questioned these limitations but introduced a revised time frame including the period “about 1596 to 1652”. The revised framework has provided an opportunity to study texts prior to 1652 including both the earliest recorded Dutch contacts with the coastal inhabitants of Africa as well as the significant 1595 record of the initial Dutch cross-cultural encounters on the coast of Southern Africa. Where the role of the Dutch East India Company after 1602 had previously been considered foremost, the maritime forces of the Dutch States General and independent Dutch traders before 1602 and the activities of the Dutch West Indies Company after 1621 on the entire African coast had attracted little attention. Contact between the Dutch and coastal inhabitants of Africa and the textual representations of such contacts had contributed to a more extensive Dutch frame of reference than had previously been presumed. Previous assumptions attributing the nature of representations to the frequency and length of contacts had somehow not accounted for similar factors not influencing representations of coastal inhabitants elsewhere in Africa nor had the actual extent of the Dutch frame of reference been fully considered. Since the initial 1595 textual representation of Willem Lodewycksz describing the contact between the Dutch and Khoikhoi in Mossel Bay, the texts have had a profound influence on the South African discourse. Comparative studies of the initial representations and early 20th century compilations of the primary texts indicate that the elucidation prevalent in the more recent works has been the source of questionable interpretations and conclusions that have erroneously been attributed to the late sixteenth century seafaring scribes.