Nigel Penn is a senior lecturer in the history department at the University of Cape Town. He is the author of Rogues, Rebels and Runaways: Eighteenth-Century Cape Characters.
Listed in: African Studies · South Africa · History · Africa · Khoisan · Southern Africa · 18th century · African History
The Forgotten Frontier
Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape’s Northern Frontier in the 18th Century
By Nigel Penn
Traditionally, the Eastern Cape frontier of South Africa has been regarded as the preeminent contact zone between colonists and the Khoi—“Hottentots”—and San—“Bushmen.” But there was an earlier frontier in which the conflict between Dutch colonists and these indigenous herders and hunters was in many ways more decisive in its outcome, more brutal and violent in its manner, and just as significant in its effects on later South African history.This
