Open Immigration To The Dutch Cape Colony

Clearthor

Banned
The Cape Colony was founded by Jan van Riebeeck as a re-supply and layover port for vessels of the Dutch East India Company trading with Asia. Much to the dismay of the rulers of the Dutch East India Company, who were primarily interested in making profit from the Asian trade, the colony rapidly expanded into a settler colony in the years after its founding.

A long term policy of the VOC was to limit the growth of the colony to a small clearly defined area. Initially the VOC had hoped to employ a small number of servants and employees to produce food close to the fortress whilst obtaining cattle from the local Khoikhoi. However repeated crop failures convinced company officials to release nine servants to become semi-independent burgers who would produce food on free hold farms.

The Company stopped the colony's policy of open immigration, monopolised trade, combined the administrative, legislative and judicial powers into one body, told the farmers what crops to grow, demanded a large percentage of every farmer's harvest, and harassed them.

None the less, by the late 1700s the Cape Colony was one of the best developed European settlements out side Europe or the Americas.


So my question is: How do we make it that by the very latest mid 1700s the colony is allowed to expand and grow more on the level of Colonial America?

These dates, but roughly 50 years earlier.
260px-Nederlandse_Kaapkolonie.svg.png


By 1797 the colony's population (non-whites included) stood at a mere 60 thousand.
 
The Cape Colony was founded by Jan van Riebeeck as a re-supply and layover port for vessels of the Dutch East India Company trading with Asia. Much to the dismay of the rulers of the Dutch East India Company, who were primarily interested in making profit from the Asian trade, the colony rapidly expanded into a settler colony in the years after its founding.

A long term policy of the VOC was to limit the growth of the colony to a small clearly defined area. Initially the VOC had hoped to employ a small number of servants and employees to produce food close to the fortress whilst obtaining cattle from the local Khoikhoi. However repeated crop failures convinced company officials to release nine servants to become semi-independent burgers who would produce food on free hold farms.

The Company stopped the colony's policy of open immigration, monopolised trade, combined the administrative, legislative and judicial powers into one body, told the farmers what crops to grow, demanded a large percentage of every farmer's harvest, and harassed them.

None the less, by the late 1700s the Cape Colony was one of the best developed European settlements out side Europe or the Americas.


So my question is: How do we make it that by the very latest mid 1700s the colony is allowed to expand and grow more on the level of Colonial America?

These dates, but roughly 50 years earlier.
260px-Nederlandse_Kaapkolonie.svg.png


By 1797 the colony's population (non-whites included) stood at a mere 60 thousand.

Maybe Irishmen come to the Cape Colony in great numbers.
 
allowing all people with atleast 3/4ths european ancestry to be socially and legally white would basically draw the mixed race "elite" from throughout the world. VOC barred them but allowing them a foothold in an expanding colony would basically bring together the best of the best.
 

Clearthor

Banned
It's less to do with race. You could be a citizen by simply being baptised as a Christian. The Khoi (once baptised) had voting rights in the Cape Colony.

The bigger thing is that the VOC was a company, and thus a company tries to hire as few workers as possible and reduce maintenance costs. Hence why they limited the expansion of the colony.


Only two things I can think of from the top of my head:

1. The VOC expands further than it did in OTL, thus the demand for produce from the Cape increases. This means they'll have to employ more people and expand the frontiers of the colony for more farmland.

2. The VOC is nationalised much earlier than OTL and the Cape becomes a normal colony long before the Napoleonic wars.


Any of these two remotely possible? Perhaps something occurring in Europe or Indonesia to encourage either?
 
It's less to do with race.

this is patently false given the history of Oorlams & Griqua, race was a major push for mixed race marksmen and labour/farmers to move into the hinterlands and settle amongst themselves. You're ignoring racialized slavery and although Simon van der Stel was the Cape Colony's first governor racialized social orders quickly became common place as the reality set in that South Africa would be settled.
 

Clearthor

Banned
this is patently false given the history of Oorlams & Griqua, race was a major push for mixed race marksmen and labour/farmers to move into the hinterlands and settle amongst themselves. You're ignoring racialized slavery and although Simon van der Stel was the Cape Colony's first governor racialized social orders quickly became common place as the reality set in that South Africa would be settled.

Touche. But I still don't understand what the point of your previous post is.

"3/4ths european ancestry to be socially and legally white would basically draw the mixed race "elite" from throughout the world."

There wasn't a shortage of whites who could immigrate to the colony, the problem is the VOC purposefully restricted the colony's growth. That is what we need to change.
And "mixed race" people did not inhabit the world at a large scale. The Oorlams and Griquas were created in the 1700s.

I don't understand the relevancy as I'm talking about immigration from Europe not retaining a few thousand Coloureds.
 
You would need a fundamentally different train of thought to exist for the Dutch colonialist enterprise. The VOC and later WIC were both for-profit companies held by shareholders and expected to return dividends to their investors each year. The raison d'etre for the Cape was simply as a supply base, and they only brought the minimum of necessary colonists to establish a supply base. During the entire period of Dutch rule just over 2,000 Europeans settled in the Cape. Their numbers grew due to a lack of tropical disease and an abundance of land which led to large farms being spread out, also preventing the spread of disease. By the mid-18th century over 90% of the Europeans in the colony had been born in the colony, showing the strength of natural growth. There was pressure to add more settlers, but they preferred a "natural progression" being miserly with assisted passage. Simply put the cargoes of goods arriving from the East were much more valuable than settlement colonies.
 
In 1716 if the Dutch East India Company had decided to encourage white immigration rather than slavery you could have had a much bigger settler population, which would have had all sorts of butterflies for South and Southern Africa.

https://johanfourie.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/three-hundred-years-of-firm-myopia/

While it is certainly possible, I think the major issue was that Dutch colonisation was that the colonies were run by private companies more focused on immediate profits. Whereas subsidising settlers passages, providing them with homesteads, clearing land etc would require capital with little initial return. You would need to fundamentally alter the nature of Dutch colonialism as they provided few emigrants to settler colonies, with fewer than 25,000 Dutch emigrating to overseas areas between 1600 and 1800.

The United Provinces were relatively prosperous and tended to attract immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, England, France, Portugal. Many of these were refugees escaping for the religious tolerance in places like Amsterdam, but many others were economic migrants as wages there were the highest in Europe.

It would not be out of the realm of possibility that some 5,000 to 10,000 settlers could arrive during the first two decades of colonisation. I imagine that more Huguenots and particularly Germans fleeing war could be encouraged to settle.
 
While it is certainly possible, I think the major issue was that Dutch colonisation was more focused on immediate profits, whereas subsidising settlers passages, providing them with homesteads, clearing land etc would require capital with little initial return.

The United Provinces were relatively prosperous and tended to attract immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, England, France, Portugal. Many of these were refugees escaping for the religious tolerance in places like Amsterdam, but many others were economic migrants as wages there were the highest in Europe.

It would not be out of the realm of possibility that some 5,000 to 10,000 settlers could arrive during the first two decades of colonisation. I imagine that more Huguenots and particularly Germans fleeing war could be encouraged to settle.

Did you read the link?
 
Did you read the link?

I did and reaffirms what I have read about Dutch colonisation during the pre-1800 period. I found even earlier documentation with company officials debating whether or not to bring more settlers to the Cape in the mid-17th century. It seems that while there were some dissenting voice, they were by and large disinterested in establishing large settler colonies. The approval for the Huguenot settlement took over two years and they were settled with the condition that they not engage in trade.
 
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