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How to cite this thesis

Surname, Initial(s). (2012) Title of the thesis or dissertation. PhD. (Chemistry)/ M.Sc. (Physics)/ M.A. (Philosophy)/M.Com. (Finance) etc. [Unpublished]: University of Johannesburg. Retrieved from: https://ujdigispace.uj.ac.za (Accessed: Date). , GENDER AND SOCIAL IDENTITY AT THE , 1652-1795

by

LIZA-MARI COETZEE

Dissertation

submitted in fulfilment of the

requirements for the degree

MASTER OF ARTS

in

HISTORICAL STUDIES

in the

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

at the

UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG

SUPERVISOR: PROF. G. GROENEWALD

December 2014

Abstract

In recent years, historians of the Cape of Good Hope during the era when it formed part of the or VOC (1652-1795) have studied in detail the importance and operation of social identity to various groups of this nascent society. In particular, they have demonstrated that there existed close links between identity, status, reputation and the use and display of material goods. This study builds on this historiography, but aims to flesh it out by concentrating on a group of people who have hitherto received less detailed attention, namely women, and focusing on the consumption of one particular set of goods, namely clothing. This thesis aims to uncover the correlation between social identity and the consumption of clothing for women at the VOC Cape. It finds that clothing was used as a way of expressing the identity of an individual according to her perceived social status or the status that she aspired to. This conclusion was reached through a series of case studies which focused on particular segments of Cape society. Various chapters investigate different social groups, ranging from the wives and daughters of VOC officials, the elite members of Cape society, to a broad spectrum of women (both poorer and wealthier) from the free-burgher population, as well as women from the underclass at the Cape, viz. slaves and free blacks. In addition, a chapter is dedicated to sumptuary legislation, investigating how it affected conspicuous consumption among these various groups.

i Contents

List of Figures iii

Acknowledgements iv

1. Introduction, Literature Review and Methodology 1

2. The World of Clothing at the Cape of Good Hope 16

3. and the Women of the VOC Official Elite 37

4. Free-Burgher Women and the Quest for Status 66

5. Social Display and Sumptuary Legislation 88

6. Clothing and Status among Slaves and Free Blacks 112

7. Conclusion 137

List of Sources 141

ii List of Figures

3.1 Hierarchy of Offices at the VOC Cape 44

3.2 Ranks in the Administrative Section of the VOC 45

3.3 Painting of the Stranding of the Visch, 1740 52

5.1 Comparison of Batavian and Cape Sumptuary Legislation 94

6.1 Portrait of Anna de Koning (1657-1733) 134

iii Acknowledgements

I would like to humbly thank the following people for their help and support in the completion of this thesis.

To Professor Gerald Groenewald: Thank you for sharing your truly amazing knowledge with me in a way that helped to grow my love for the past through the passion you have for it.

Thank you to my parents whose support and love have helped me through all my years of study. Thank you for inspiring a respect for learning which I will one day teach my own children.

To my wonderful husband, Charl: Thank you for being the best person I know, for supporting me through the early mornings and late nights of writing this thesis. Thank you for being both my support system and my inspiration.

And finally I would like to thank my Creator for gifting me with the wonderful people in my life who made this thesis a reality and for giving me the means and ability to realise my full potential.

iv Chapter 1 Introduction, Literature Review and Methodology

Introduction

During the early modern period (c.1500 – 1800) interaction between Europe and what was regarded as the ‘New World’ in the West and the much-older world in the East increased rapidly. Different cultures and social groups came into contact with one another which resulted in the development of new social identities. These new social identities were formed due to the ‘negotiation between where one is placed and where one places oneself within social networks, working through what is possible and what is forbidden’. What is more, identity is not a stagnant concept but, rather, ‘a historic process, identity is tentative, multiple and contingent and its modalities change over time’. 1 Therefore it is important to understand that identity is not only something an individual can identify with for him or herself, nor is it only confined to one singe role, but it is an ever-changing, ever-evolving concept contingent on ever-changing relations with others.

During this process of ever-changing identity there are two important factors which influence the formation of an individual’s identity. These are: belonging to a certain group or groups, and physical belongings which are used to mark or portray the idea of belonging.2 The consumption of material goods was a way in which newly formed societies attempted to either affirm or re-affirm their identities, or a way in which individuals developed or claimed a different identity. Claiming a new or developing a different identity was particularly prevalent in colonial societies marked by high social mobility. As the consumption of certain material goods could denote association with a certain status group, material goods became status symbols associated with a particular segment or group within the society in question. In colonial societies this consumption was much more effective in allowing the

1 Wilson, K. 2003. The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century. London & New York: Routledge, 3. 2 Mitchell, L.J. 2009. Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial . New York: Columbia University Press, especially chapters 6-7.

1 individual to move to another status group than in the socially more rigid society of Europe.

Also, during the early modern period material culture increasingly started to serve as symbols of identity and status rather than merely fulfilling basic needs. One such belonging, which was particularly relevant for demonstrating social position, is clothing (which can include all forms of personal adornment, including jewellery, accessories, and most commonly clothing). Clothing was used as a visual form of consumption and could signify an individual’s position in the public sphere through a single glance. Because clothing was so openly conspicuous, the societal elite used fashion as a way to differentiate themselves from those who did not belong to the elite. According to Robert Ross, clothing has been used as a marker of identity and status throughout history, serving as a visual source of information for identifying an individual’s position in society.3 European expansion and global interaction resulted in an increase in the importance of clothing as a social marker of distinction and increased the emphasis placed on clothing in everyday life.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was founded in 1602 by Dutch merchants to conduct international trade with the East. The VOC thereafter established more than 100 colonial outposts in the eastern world. Because of the distance from Europe to the East Indies, it became necessary to establish a refreshment station where VOC ships could receive new supplies on their journeys across the oceans. What was particularly unique about the settlement at the Cape was the cultural diversity among the population that lived at the Cape. The society that developed there after 1652 consisted of a variety of status groups hailing from various European countries as well as indigenous Khoikhoi and slaves that were brought to the Cape in steady numbers from 1658 onwards. These slaves in themselves were not a homogeneous group, being imported from various places in Africa and Asia with different language and cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, the small number of slaves that were manumitted created yet another group within the Cape society, referred to as ‘free blacks’. This group of manumitted slaves and their descendants did not always stay distinct from the white colonists since, because of the extreme

3 Ross, R. 2008. Clothing: A Global History. Cambridge: Polity Press, chapter 3.

2 imbalance of the sexes during the early decades of the settlement, a number of them intermarried with white colonists. 4 This created a certain fluidity in society that increased the need for individuals to distinguish themselves through other means. 5 At the Cape this means of distinction was utilised by the societal elite which consisted of a small group of senior officials with the Governor at the head. The Governor was appointed by the VOC and in all cases but one was not locally born. 6 The rest of the European population consisted of the free burgher population and the soldiers and sailors in the Company’s employ. As the free burgher population grew in size and became more prosperous, the competition between VOC officials and the free burgher 7 elite increased as they clashed over issues of precedence and status.

As the settlement at the Cape grew, society became much more complex and hierarchical with the VOC senior officials at the , followed by the lower ranking VOC employees, the burgher elite, other burghers and finally an underclass that consisted of free blacks, soldiers, sailors and slaves. Because there was relative fluidity between these groups there was an increased emphasis on the use of status symbols such as clothing to distinguish to which group you belonged.8 The use of personal adornment to denote an individual’s position in society is shown in a series of sumptuary laws that were codified in 1755 by the VOC government in Batavia through which the Company tried to prevent free burghers from becoming too ostentatious, thereby threatening its power, at least in symbolic terms. These laws attempted to regulate the way in which status symbols were consumed by the different social groups, thereby seeking to control the perception of proper power relations.

4 Cf. Schoeman, K. 2007. Early Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1717. Pretoria: Protea. 5 Cf. Groenewald, G. 2012. ‘A Class Apart: Symbolic Capital, Consumption and Identity among the Alcohol Entrepreneurs of , 1680-1795’, South African Journal of Cultural History 26(1): 14-32. 6 Ross, R. & Schrikker, A. 2012. ‘The VOC Official Elite’, in Worden, N. (ed.) Cape Town between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town. Johannesburg & Hilversum: Jacana & Verloren, 26-44. 7 Cf. Dooling, W. 2005. ‘The Making of a Colonial Elite: Property, Family and Landed Stability in the , c. 1750-1834’, Journal of Southern African Studies 31(1): 147-62. 8 Groenewald, ‘A Class Apart’, 16-18.

3 The aim of this study is to determine what the correlation between social identity and the consumption of clothing was for women at the VOC Cape. In this context, clothing was used as a way of expressing the identity of an individual according to her perceived social status or the status that she aspired to. The motivation for looking particularly at women in the 18th century derives from the fact that there was a major sex imbalance during this period at the Cape of Good Hope – in all the different social groups. Because of this imbalance, women were highly visible individuals at the Cape, and they therefore played an important role in determining the cultural and moral matrix of the colony. Yet women cannot be viewed in complete isolation as the patriarchal society of the time dictated that there was a direct link between a woman’s status and the status of her husband or father. Therefore one of the few ways in which a woman could express her identity and status was through the use of clothing. For this reason it is particularly interesting to investigate particular women from different status groups and to see how they used clothing in a social setting. In short, then, this thesis investigates the following broad question: How was social identity performed by women of different status groups at the Cape of Good Hope through the use of clothing during the VOC period?

In order to answer the question as posed above, the following sub-questions will be addressed so as to gain a deeper and more rounded understanding of women in society at the Cape, as well as the various tensions involved in attaining and challenging status:

What clothing was available at the Cape and how did the supply influence demand? Because of its geographical position, the variety of clothing available at the Cape was relatively limited compared to Europe. By investigating what types of clothing was available the study can establish a baseline in order to determine whether some of the individual case studies (presented later) included extravagance in .

To what an extent did senior VOC women act as role models of fashion? The aim of this question is to determine how those women in the top echelons of society influenced and determined what types of fashion, dress and accessories were seen as status symbols. By establishing what these women wore, and how they did it, the assumption is that it can be determined what was viewed as status symbols in

4 fashionable Cape society, and therefore what those women who did not belong to the upper status groups of society could have aspired to.

Did burgher women, slave women and free blacks use clothing as a means of performing their social identities? This question aims to determine if women of the burgher class attempted to emulate the women belonging to the VOC official elite. As burgher prosperity grew, did these burgher women attempt to compete with those who traditionally belonged to the elite by displaying status symbols (i.e. dressing lavishly) in order to support their new- found wealth and social position? The second part of the question relates to the underclass of 18th century Cape society, particularly free black and slave women. Did these women strive to appear more conspicuous through their use of clothing in order to associate with a different status group?

Did women challenge or contest identities through the use of clothing? What is important to determine is whether women of the lower classes tried to defy the conventions of their social identity by using status symbols to transcend their status. By using certain markers of status could women in effect raise themselves to a higher social stratum or at least create the appearance of belonging to a higher status?

Did sumptuary legislation give more prominence to markers of social distinction? What effect did sumptuary legislation have on emphasising the importance of certain status symbols? Did these laws, which had the intention of curbing conspicuous consumption, perhaps do the complete opposite and increase the visibility and importance of certain objects and status symbols?

These and other related questions are explored in the five chapters which follow. Chapter 2 sketches the context in which the conspicuous consumption of clothing could take place by exploring what clothing was available at the Cape of Good Hope during the VOC period. It investigates the different sources of production in order to determine how clothing was made available to the different social and status groups at the Cape, and to provide a broad view of the cultural and material situation during this

5 time. This is followed by a chapter dealing with VOC women, the elite members of Cape society. The chapter aims to determine whether these women maintained their status through the use of status objects (in particularly clothing and items used for personal adornment) and what effect this had on social consciousness regarding the importance (or not) of particular objects. The following chapter looks at the effect conspicuous consumption had on the wives and daughters of the free-burgher population. The chapter attempts to establish if and how the use of status symbols trickled downwards to the free burgher and if they adopted the same principles of the consumption of luxury goods for personal adornment. As society became more and more complex with intermarriage between the VOC official elite and the burgher elite, what effect did it have on conspicuous consumption? The chapter also covers a broad spectrum of burgher society, looking both at case studies of less well-to-do women as well as very wealthy burgher women. Chapter 5 deals with a subject on which much has been written by historians in the past. The sumptuary legislation that was implemented by the VOC in 1755 was a large-scale attempt at regulating social display through determining what different status groups were allowed what types of conspicuous consumption. The chapter explores the reasoning behind the laws giving more credence to different items of conspicuous consumption, thereby encouraging rather than deterring individuals from consuming certain status symbols in order to be associated with a different social class. The chapter also compares the differences between the sumptuary legislation in Batavia and at the Cape. The final chapter looks at women of the underclass at the Cape during the VOC period. Both slave and free- black women made use of conspicuous consumption in order to challenge or identify with a social position. This chapter also looks at the way in which certain women managed to transcend the social divide between the life of a slave and that of a wife of a VOC official as an indication of how social position and status could and did change.

Literature Review

This investigation is done as part of the ‘new cultural history’ which has been very influential in the study of particularly the early modern period, especially over the last three decades. Cultural history aims to uncover the past experience; it is interested in the lived reality of ordinary individuals. Therefore cultural historians are interested in

6 performance – whether linguistic, behavioural or ritual – and the symbolic meanings people attached to this.9 The study of material culture and the consumption thereof fits in well within this the concept of a ‘new cultural history’. Since the ground- breaking volumes on the impact and meaning of consumption in the early modern world, edited by John Brewer and others in the mid-1990s, such as Consumption in the World of Goods and Early Modern Conceptions of Property, a slew of new studies have appeared which investigated various aspects of consumption and how it 10 transformed early modern society, both in Europe and the colonial world.

Historians of the were among the first to undertake in-depth studies of material culture, including the role of clothing, which inform this study regarding the Dutch background of the VOC Cape. 11 The thesis is also informed by other work on Dutch history such as that of Shama on the Dutch culture during the Golden Age. 12 Although relatively little work has been done on the domestic material culture of the VOC empire in general, Taylor’s recent work on how dress was used by creole women of Batavia in the development of an Eurasian elite is extremely useful in determining how ideas about fashion circulated in the VOC world. 13 This source is particularly interesting as it helps to illuminate the cultural perceptions of a Dutch colonial society which in turn aids this study of material culture at the

9 Rubin, M. 2003. ‘What is Cultural History Now?’, in D. Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 80-94 & Burke, P. 2008. What is Cultural History? 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity. 10 Bermingham, A. & Brewer, J. (eds) 1995. The Consumption of Culture, 1600-1800: Image, Object, Text. London & New York: Routledge; Brewer, J. & Porter, R. (eds) 1993. Consumption and the World of Goods. London & New York: Routledge, and Brewer, J. & Staves, S. (eds) 1996. Early Modern Conceptions of Property. London & New York: Routledge. 11 Cf. e.g. Dibbits, H.C. 2001. Vertrouwd Bezit: Materiële Cultuur in Doesburg en Maassluis, 1650- 1800. Nijmegen: Uitgeverij SUN; Kamermans, J.A. 1999. Materiële Cultuur in Krimpenerwaard in de Zeventiende en Achttiende Eeuw: Ontwikkeling en Diversiteit. Hilversum: Verloren, and Wijsenbeek- Olthuis, Th. F. 1987. Achter de Gevels van Delft: Bezit en Bestaan van Rijk en Arm in Een Periode van Achteruitgang, 1700-1800. Hilversum: Verloren. 12 Schama, S. 1987. The Embarassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. Berkeley: University of California Press. 13 Taylor, J.G. 2007. ‘Painted Ladies of the VOC’, South African Historical Journal 59: 47-78 & Taylor, J.G. 2009. The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia. 2nd ed. London & Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 37-42 and 62-68.

7 Cape. Additionally, Ross provides a synthesis of recent work on the topic of clothing and identity in a globalising world. The first three chapters of this book by Ross are very relevant to this study: they provide an overview of the link between dress, status and sumptuary laws, a discussion of the development of clothing as a means of status differentiation in early modern Europe, and a chapter on how these ideas were 14 transformed in the colonial world.

The driving concept of this thesis is considering identity as ‘a series of performances which an individual or group might improvise in different settings’.15 Gunn’s chapter provides a useful discussion of how historians have used a variety of techniques to analyse behaviour which will be used to guide the questions and approaches of this study. Two theoretical ideas that are used in this thesis are Veblen’s ‘conspicuous consumption’ – the consumption of highly conspicuous goods in order to display wealth and thus increase status – and Goffman’s notion of self-presentation as performance, which alters according to different surroundings or settings.16 These theoretical ideas have recently been applied with great success to the study of another VOC colonial outpost, Makassar in Indonesia, by Heather Sutherland. 17 Sutherland argues that ‘identity is born of interaction, and is either determined by ascribed or claimed membership in a class or through ascribed or claimed relationships. Both claims can be made more distinct by power plays (through imposition or aspiration), by notions of entitlement and status (claimed or denied), or by desires (individual or communal) for cultural self- realization. We can only “see” or “read” identity when it is expressed, in words or actions”.18 She proceeds to use this idea by locating various ‘stages’ where these performances took place – diplomatic exchanges, the working of

14 Ross, Clothing, chapters 2-4. 15 Gunn, S. 2012. ‘Analyzing Behaviour as Performance’, in S. Gunn & L. Faire (eds), Research Methods for History. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 190. 16 Veblen, T. 2005. Conspicuous Consumption. Harmondsworth: Penguin Great Ideas & Goffman, E. 1990. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 17 Sutherland, H. 2001. ‘The Makassar Malays: Adaptation and Identity, 1660-1790’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32(3): 397-421 & Sutherland, H. 2007. ‘Performing Personas: Identity in VOC Makassar’, in Worden, N. (ed.), Contingent Lives: Social Identity and Material Culture in the VOC World. Cape Town: Historical Studies Department, University of Cape Town, 345-70. 18 Sutherland, ‘Performing Personas’, 359.

8 various councils, and court cases – in all of which various status groups of Makassar contested or claimed status.

The ideas of cultural history, especially as it relates to material culture and social identity, have also recently influenced the development of the historiography of the VOC Cape.19 There are two sets of literature on which this study builds. Firstly, the study of material culture: Emanating from the Historical Archaeological Research Group at UCT in the 1990s, various historians have used household inventories to trace the impact of colonialism on the lived reality of both settlers and slaves.20 While Brink investigated how architecture and household layout can be read within context to discover underlying assumptions and identities, 21 Malan has produced a series of articles combining information from household inventories and archaeological data to discover more about issues regarding consumption and identity among both free burghers and free blacks. 22 The estate inventories were used extensively to shed light on the personal possessions of individuals at the Cape as the inventories are very detailed in some respects, even sometimes detailing the style and fabric of the clothing mentioned.23 In some instances these inventories are made even more useful by the fact that some estates were auctioned off and the records for some of these auction accounts can also be used to determine the value of objects relating to personal adornment.

19 Worden, N. 2007a. ‘New Approaches to VOC History in South Africa’, South African Historical Journal 59: 3-18. 20 Hall, M. 2000. Archaeology and the Modern World: Colonial Transcripts in South Africa and the Chesapeake. London & New York: Routledge. 21 Brink, Y. 2008. They Came to Stay: Discovering Meaning in the 18th Century Cape Country Dwelling. : Sun Press. 22 Malan, A. 1997. ‘The Material World of Family and Household: The Van Sitterts in Eighteenth- Century Cape Town’, in L. Wadley (ed.), Our Gendered Past: Archaeological Studies of Gender in Southern Africa (Johannesburg: Wits University Press), 273-301; Malan, A. 1998. ‘Beneath the Surface, Behind the Doors: Historical Archaeology of Households in Mid-Eighteenth Century Cape Town’, Social Dynamics 24/1: 88-118, and Malan, A. 1999. ‘Chattels or Colonists? “Freeblack” Women and Their Households’, Kronos: Journal of Cape History 25: 50-71. 23 Cf. Cornell, C. & Malan, A. 2005. Household Inventories at the Cape: A Guidebook for Beginner Researchers. Cape Town: Historical Studies Department, UCT.

9 More recently, inspired by this material turn and the international historiographic move to cultural history and the study of identity, VOC historians have started to investigate the social identities of various hitherto ignored groups at the early Cape (e.g. urban free burghers, sailors, soldiers, convicts, free blacks and Chinese migrants), often using material culture to get insight into the identities of these groups. Contingent Lives is a major collection of this new work, which also includes many essays by experts in other parts of the VOC exploring the same theme.24 The more recent Cape Town between East and West offers a new look at the cosmopolitan early modern Cape in which a variety of social identities co- existed. 25 All of this recent work has been inspired by Ross’s pioneering study of status and respectability at the Cape in the 18th and 19th centuries.26 Ross was the first historian to apply insights from the new cultural history onto the complex colonial situation of the Cape. Although only the first chapter of this book deals with the VOC Cape, his ideas have been most fertile and have been developed further by scholars in the two volumes 27 edited by Worden.

Two gaps in the existing literature, which this study aims to redress, are evident in recent work on the VOC Cape within the new cultural history framework: firstly, although historical archaeologists have looked at a variety of material culture objects, clothing has received relatively little attention. Hall only briefly discusses the link between clothing and status and,28 like Ross and Groenewald;29 this is mostly done in relation to the 1755 sumptuary laws. Ross’s brief study of the Cape sumptuary laws

24 Worden, N. (ed.) 2007. Contingent Lives: Social Identity and Material Culture in the VOC World. Cape Town: Historical Studies Department, University of Cape Town. 25 Worden, N. (ed.) 2012. Cape Town between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town. Johannesburg: Jacana & Hilversum: Verloren. 26 Ross, R. 1999. Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750-1870: A Tragedy of Manners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 27 Worden, Contingent Lives and Worden, Cape Town. 28 Hall, M. 2000. Archaeology and the Modern World: Colonial Transcripts in South Africa and the Chesapeake. London & New York: Routledge, 72-74. 29 Ross, Status and Respectability, 9-14; Groenewald, ‘A Class Apart’, 22-23.

10 within its broader international context is,30 along with Groenewald,31 the only recent studies which have attempted to use this legislation to trace changing ideas about power, symbolism and display (via consumption) in the VOC Cape. Although older studies such as Strutt and Woodward do exist and are valuable for their details of changing fashion, they were written within the context of ‘ history’ and narrowly focus on the details of clothes without considering the cultural context or the 32 important nature of clothing as a symbol to portray a chosen message.

The second major shortcoming in the recent historiography of the Cape is the relative neglect of women. Not one chapter in Worden 2007 or 2012 is dedicated to women, although some VOC historians do consider women in their larger analyses, for example Mitchell in Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa and Groenewald in his work on the alcohol pachters of the VOC period.33 Malan’s call to use the study of material culture in the early Cape to gain greater insight into the role of gender in the colonising process has largely gone ignored,34 although she herself has made a major contribution in her study of the use of material culture by free black women to gain greater social status.35 And although slave historians of other societies have investigated the meaning of clothing to slaves, 36 the rich historiography of slavery at the Cape has thus far ignored this topic. One of the aims of this thesis is to build on the existing historiography of slavery at the Cape to

30 Ross, R. 2007. ‘Sumptuary Laws in Europe, the Netherlands and the Dutch Colonies’, in Worden, N. (ed.), Contingent Lives: Social Identity and Material Culture in the VOC World. Cape Town: Historical Studies Department, University of Cape Town, 382-91. 31 Groenewald, ‘A Class Apart’, 22-24. 32 Strutt, D.H. 1975. Fashion in South Africa, 1652-1900. Cape Town: A.A. Balkema; Woodward, C.S. 1983. ‘Clothes and Company Men at the Cape, 1652-1665’, Africana Notes and News 25/5. 33 Mitchell, L.J. 2009. Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa. New York: Columbia University Press; Groenewald, G. 2011. ‘Dynasty Building, Family Networks and Social Capital: Alcohol Pachters and the Development of a Colonial Elite at the Cape of Good Hope, c. 1760- 1790’, New Contree 62: 23-53, and Groenewald, ‘A Class Apart’. 34 Malan, ‘The Material World’, 293-98. 35 Malan, ‘Chattels or Colonists?’ 36 White, S. & White, G. 1995. ‘Slave Clothing and African-American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Past and Present 148/1: 149-86.

11 provide a deeper understanding of the social roles and pressures that were part of the everyday life of these individuals.

Methodology

This study is largely based on qualitative research in order to answer the questions posed. It therefore makes use of a variety of methods and techniques to the various sources which are used. Since the amount of sources from the early modern period is limited (due to the vagaries of preservation) it was essential to consult a variety of different sources in order to answer the posed questions posed and to achieve a comprehensive impression of the issues involved. Different types of qualitative data analysis are necessary because each source has requirements and shortcomings of its own which need to be taken into account. 37 The sources used in this thesis range from highly qualitative data such as the analysis of travel accounts and ego documents such as diaries, for which thematic and comparative analysis is necessary, to almost quantitative analysis based on a large number of household inventories and auction records from the period which are coded and counted. In most cases, in order to get as complete a picture as possible, I have utilised a combination of analytical tools related to the type of primary sources. With regards to ego documents dating from the VOC period I have taken into account the fact that such source material is, by and large, constructed by the writer who had his or her own prejudices which influenced the nature of the text. Each one of these texts was created under different circumstances, for different purposes and for different audiences.

The departure point for this study is an analysis of household (probate) inventories which were drawn up upon the death of householders. There are 75 archival volumes of this material which have all been transcribed into a searchable database, available both on CD-ROM and on the Internet.38 They contain thousands of inventories, many of which have detail about the clothing and other forms of personal adornment that

37 Dawson, C. 2009. Introduction to Research Methods. 4th ed. Oxford: How to Books, 116-19. 38 TEPC (Transcription of Estate Papers at the Cape Project) 2008. Cape Transcripts: TEPC – Two Centuries Transcribed, 1673-1834. CD-ROM. Cape Town: TEPC. Also available online: http://www.tanap.nl/content/activities/documents/index.htm

12 people owned, which is particularly enlightening for the study of material culture. In addition, the database also contains transcriptions of the five remaining volumes of auction records which contain information about prices of items in the inventories. These can be used in conjunction with the inventories to determine the 39 relative value of clothing.

In chapter 2 of the study, the estate inventories were systematically explored to identify all the inventories and auction lists containing information about clothing, as well as those which are particularly rich in detail for use in later chapters in conjunction with other sources. Since both inventories and auction lists are semi- structured records they were linked with each other in order to gain the relevant information and exported to Excel spreadsheets, filed by the names of owners.40 In using these probate inventories, I keep in mind the shortcomings of this type of document, as was established by historians of material culture who have made extensive use of them.41 Chapters 3, 4 and 6 focus on specific cases studies of individuals from various status groups in order to derive information through close- reading techniques. Since case studies depend on rich data, these chapters require a variety of different, but qualitatively rich, sources that supplement one another.

The approach of case studies was chosen since its key strengths include depth, close attention to context and process, and a focus on causality, linking causes and outcomes,42 all of which closely conform to the expectations of traditional history

39 As done by Randle, T. 2007. ‘Patterns of Consumption at Auctions: A Case Study of Three Cape Estates’, in Worden, N. (ed.), Contingent Lives: Social Identity and Material Culture in the VOC World. Cape Town: Historical Studies Department, University of Cape Town, 53-74. 40 See on this technique, Morris, R.J. 2012. ‘Document to Database and Spreadsheet’, in S. Gunn & L. Faire (eds), Research Methods for History. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 148-54. 41 E.g. Cornell & Malan, Household Inventories; Spufford, M. 1990. ‘The Limitations of the Probate Inventory’, in J. Chartres (ed.), English Rural Society, 1500-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 139-74. 42 Flyvberg, B. 2011. ‘Case Study’, in N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 314.

13

writing.43 A case study is ‘[a]n intensive analysis of an individual unit ... stressing developmental factors in relation to environment’ and has four defining factors:

(1) ‘the choice of the individual unit of study and the setting of its boundaries’, (2) the depth of the study, comprising ‘more detail, richness, completeness, and variance’, (3) a stress on ‘“developmental factors”, meaning that a case study typically evolves in time, often as a string of concrete and interrelated events’, and 44 (4) a ‘focus on “relation to environment”, that is, context’. Because a case study is a descriptive, exploratory analysis of individuals with a specific context, it is a very useful tool with which to gauge the underlying ideas and assumptions held by a society.

These factors guide the qualitative chapters of the thesis. The choice of individuals that are studied in the different chapters was determined by the availability of various supplementary sources of data which enrich the bare-bone information relayed in the inventories. Such data include the household accounts of a burgher woman as well as visual material such as portraits and paintings.

These sources were further enriched by the use of specific ego documents which comment on the clothing and appearance of the Cape’s inhabitants by visitors to the Cape who left eyewitness accounts.45 These sources are particularly enlightening as they give first-hand information on the lives of individuals during this time. In my thematic analysis of these sources, I have taken into consideration the conventions of ego documentation and travel writing and how these conventions and possible biases

43 Cf. Tosh, J. 2010. The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods, and New Directions in the Study of Modern History. 5th ed. London: Longman, 204-5. 44 Flyvberg, ‘Case Study’, 301. 45 Kolb, P. 1727. Naaukeurige en Uitvoerige Beschryving van de Kaap de Goede Hoop (2 volumes). Amsterdam: Balthazar Lakeman and Mentzel, O.F. 1921-1944. A Geographical and Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope (3 volumes). Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society.

14 influenced the information.46 Chapters 4 and 6 draw on material from court cases that pertain to clothing and the importance of personal adornment. In analysing all of these different sets of data, I applied both external and internal historical source criticism, paying careful attention to authenticity, reliability, and possible ideological influences which could affect the usefulness of the source. The role of bias, unwitting evidence and their different contexts were also considered when using sources for this 47 study.

In addition, since this study takes its inspiration from comparative work and aims to uncover an aspect of the history of the Cape of Good Hope not hitherto addressed, comparative analysis also takes place in several of the analyses.

46 Cf. Dekker, R. 2002. Egodocuments and History: Autobiographical Writing in its Social Context since the Middle Ages. Hilversum: Verloren and Guelke, L. & Guelke, J.K. 2004. ‘Imperial Eyes on South Africa: Reassessing Travel Narratives’, Journal of Historical Geography 30: 11-21. 47 Cf. Tosh, Pursuit of History, 122-38.

15 Chapter 2 The World of Clothing at the Cape of Good Hope

The Availability of Clothing

From about the 16th century fashion, in particular clothing, was an integral part of change in Western society, a change caused by the growth of commerce. Part of this change was brought about by the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformations which reshaped people’s ideas by making possible new identities to men and women which allowed for the development of a personal style and individual preference.1 The growth of the importance of clothing during this time coincided with its rise as a means of expressing individual identity, consumer preference and the structure of society as a whole.2 This was largely the effect of global trade between mainly Europe and the Near East (Ottoman and Persian Empires) and the Far East (China, India and Japan).3 European ships supplied Western markets with goods brought from Asia, a process that some scholars call ‘early modern globalism’ which led to an increase of consumption in Europe from at least the 15th century on.4 One of the most important imports brought to Europe after 1500 was printed cottons from India which resulted in a transformation in the design of clothing.5 Before this time cotton was virtually unknown in Europe where until then the materials used for clothing were mainly woollens and silks, and velvets for the upper classes. The patterns of these wools, silks and velvets were the result of a complex process of weaving and finishing.6 This was a time-consuming and costly technique compared to the cheap, brightly-coloured printed cottons imported from Asia. Because of its affordability and the bright colouring of these cottons they were very

1 Bilgen, S. 2003. ‘The Adventure of Fashion and Clothing: Shifts into Product and User Relations’, Journal of Asian Design International 1, 3. 2 Lemire, B & G. Riello. 2008. ‘East and West: Textiles and Fashion in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of Social History, 41(4): 887-916. 3 Wiggin, B. 2011. ‘Globalization and the work of Fashion in Early Modern German Letters’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 11(2),35. 4 Ibid., 36; cf. in general on this process, Parker, C.H. 2010. Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, chapter 3. 5 Lemire & Riello, ‘East and West’, 888. 6 Ibid., 893.

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much in demand across Europe and its colonies. Of these materials Francois Pyrard remarks in the 17th century that:

the principal riches [of this region] consists chiefly of silk and cotton stuffs, wherewith everyone from the Cape of Good Hope to China, man and woman, is clothed from head to foot. These stuffs are worked, and the cotton also made into cloths of the whiteness of snow, and very delicate and fine, and is also woven of a 7 medium and of a thicker stoutness for divers uses.

The East therefore had a great influence on the materials used for making clothing and consequently also on the fashion of the day. As Pyrard remarks, the use of these materials was not only confined to Europe but were also worn at the Cape of Good Hope, situated as it was along the trade route between the East and West. Growing demand for textiles from the East had a profound effect on the trade of the VOC. In 1620 pepper and spices comprised about 75 percent of the products brought from the East by the Dutch East India Company, a figure which declined significantly to only 33 percent in 1670 and even further to 23 percent in 1700. By this time textiles, however, formed 55 percent of all the goods imported from the East by the VOC. Between 1661 and 1670 the Company imported 88 000 pieces of textile, the number growing to reach a total of 348 000 between 1681 and 1690. It finally reached its zenith in the years between 1720 and 1730 when the VOC alone imported textiles to the worth of 23 million guilders to Europe.8 The small settlement at the Cape of Good Hope was only one port of call in this multi-national trade network.

In the 17th and 18th centuries Cape Town developed as a mercantile harbour town with distinct cultural influences from both the East and the West. From the 17th century onwards, when permanent European settlement occurred in South Africa, western dress included textiles sourced in the East.9 The Cape had a unique character due to a combination of European and Eastern influences which greatly influenced the clothing of the region. Trade in Eastern and European wares and textiles were conducted in Cape Town by the crews of calling ships, thus allowing for its inhabitants to access the articles needed for the production

7 Quoted in ibid. (The region Pyrard refered to is that of western India, specifically Gujarat). 8 Schoeman, K. 2009. Handelsryk in die Ooste: Die Wêreld van die VOC, 1619-1685. Pretoria: Protea, 162-63. 9 Moletsane, R., C. Mitchell & A. Smith. 2012. Was it Something I Wore? Pretoria: HSRC Press, 23.

17 of clothing at the Cape. Even more significant is the fact that besides procuring the articles needed for the production of clothing, the system of trade connecting the East with the West also allowed those individuals living at the Cape to access the from Europe, fashions which were readily copied at the Cape.

The textiles used for the making of clothing were silk, satin, tabby (which is a watered silk), poplin (a strong fabric in a plain weave of any fibre or blend), sarcenet (a soft silk in plain or twill weaves) and lute string (a silk fabric of high sheen), all of which were imported to the Cape as there was no production of textiles in the colony. During the 1770s and 1780s cotton, muslin and chintz became fashionable among the higher classes. Wool was only worn for riding and by the working classes because of its durability and warmth.10 Printed material was imported which allowed for a wide variety of colour for these materials although the wearing of black was reserved for mourning.

Dress Styles for Women

The textiles sourced from Europe and the East were used in the production of which had a basic style for a great part of the 18th century. Gowns of this period consisted of a robe over an open underskirt with the basic form of an X line, an inverted V decoration of the and an upright V for the .11 1720 marked a change with the appearance of the open skirt. As the 18th century progressed, the style of developed into what became distinctive designs or patterns for dresses for women. The was one of these styles, being a loose unboned worn with a buckle belt. This form of dress had an open skirt worn over and had a . It was suitable to wear for all occasions but fell out of 12 vogue in the second half of the century.

A second style of dress was the sacque, a French design which first appeared in around 1720 and was a large and shapeless dress falling over the hoop without any confinement. This style of dress was not initially very popular at the Cape but became more so later in the 18th century with many deceased estate inventories listing this style of dress. The alternative to

10 Strutt, D. 1975. Fashion in South Africa, 1652-1900. Cape Town: AA Balkema, 121. 11 Ibid., 64. 12 Ibid., 69.

18 the French sacque was the English robe, which became more popular towards the end of the 18th century and was different from the sacque in that the back of the bodice was boned. A style of dress that was not very common was the casaquin: a dress comprising a jacket and a . The petticoat was mostly plain and was worn over a hoop but this form of dress was not suitable for formal occasions. As such this style of dress was more often used by working 13 women or for riding.

With regards to the clothing of slave women, they often wore either a long or short jacket or a loose shirt of Eastern materials over some form of skirt.14 By the beginning of the 18th century it appears that a recognisable category of clothing which can be designated ‘slave clothing’ existed. This type of clothing was characterised by their practical cuts and the 15 strong, coarse and cheap materials they were made of.

This was to the situation for Company slaves, but those in private ownership were much more reliant on the benevolence of their owners. Besides the production of clothing for slaves, either ready-made or made by the slave herself, a slave woman may also have received second-hand clothing from her owner, which was either bought for this specific purpose or were cast-off items from family members. Schoeman refers to the inventory of Christina de Beer who left a dress of coarse striped woollen cloth along with a blanket to a slave woman.16 This process of giving second-hand items of clothing to slave women would have ensured a mix of both Eastern and Western dress among slave women at the Cape.

For outdoor wear women at the Cape made use of and for warmth as coats were impractical with hooped . The mantel was a velvet which buttoned down the front with slits for arms and a . Cloaks were made of a variety of materials but red was a popular colour. For warmth a pelerine was also worn – this was a short, shaped cape with long ends at the front which was crossed and tied behind the body. As warmer weather

13 Ibid., 72. 14 Schoeman, K. 2013. Here & Boere: Die Kolonie aan die Kaap onder die Van der Stels, 1679-1712. Pretoria: Protea, 280. 15 Schoeman, K. 2007. Early Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1717. Pretoria: Protea, 218. 16 Ibid., 217.

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required less protection against the elements Cape women wore shawls made of lighter 17 materials.

Keeping Clothing Clean

During the 18th century clothing were expensive possessions and most individuals would not possess a multitude of items for everyday use. For this reason it was important to have a means of cleaning clothing without damaging the material. Mentzel describes how the washing of clothing took place at the Cape during the 18th century. Clothing was washed at the foot of Table Mountain in a brook. According to him, one could often see slave women washing their masters’ clothing in fine weather. He writes: ‘there you will see, almost daily, especially in fine weather, more than a hundred slaves busy with the family washing.’18 Mentzel’s quote gives us some idea as to the extensive amounts of clothing that had to be washed if ‘more than a hundred’ slaves regularly busied themselves with the washing of clothing. Mentzel explains further how the process of washing works: first the clothing would be placed in the stream, held in place with large rocks until they were soaked through, after which the clothes were beaten to dislodge any dirt. Thereafter the clothing would be rubbed with soap and spread out in the sun to bleach. After a few hours the clothes were dipped into the stream again and beaten against a rock to dislodge the soap before spreading 19 it out once more to dry.

Accessories

To complete the ensemble of any style of dress, women at the Cape would have used various types of accessories for personal adornment. The first of these was certainly the apron, of

17 Strutt, Fashion in South Africa, 75. 18 Mentzel, O.F. 1925. A Geographical-Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope, part 2. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 141. Elizabeth Gryzmala Jordan has worked extensively on the history of washerwomen at Cape Town, most of whom would have been slave women washing either their owners’ linen or later, as an additional income, washing the linen of others. Much of her work is concerned with the archaeological evidence generated by these activities, see Jordan, E.G. 2007. ‘It All Comes Out in the Wash: Engendering Archaeological Interpretations of Slavery’, in G. Campbell, S. Miers & J.C. Miller (eds), Women and Slavery, Volume 1: Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval North Atlantic. Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 335-57. 19Mentzel, Geographical-Topographical Description, part 2,141.

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which there were both practical and decorative varieties. The former was worn by working women and would have been made from Holland or another form of strong material, with a bib and pockets and varied in length. The second form of the apron was made without the bib and was made with a variety of materials, often embroidered or lined with gold or silver lace 20 and .

Headwear included a white round called a pinner which was bordered with lace and frills. In the second half of the 18th century the mob cap became fashionable which was made with a puffy with wider frills. Women also wore over their which would be secured with ribbons and scarves and tied under the chin or at the back of the neck.21 Slave women tended not to wear hats as the use of hats was strictly forbidden by the Statutes of Batavia unless a slave could clearly speak and understand Dutch; instead it seems that slave 22 women at the Cape wore cloths or scarves as a form of .

At the opposite end of the body, shoes were made of brocade, silk, leather or vellum and for decorative purposes could be trimmed with gold or silver. The toes of shoes were sharp up until the 1730s when toes became shorter and round but higher heels dominated the fashion. Another form of shoe also worn were slippers or mules which were for dancing but were only different from other shoes in that they had no backs.23 Short boots were worn for driving and riding.

Smaller accessories were the same as in Europe: women wore gloves which were kept in place by ribbons and muffs throughout the winter, of which fur muffs were the most prized. Flowers, ribbons and pearls were often worn to adorn the of the ladies of the Cape, strings of pearls being among the most favoured jewellery pieces. Women also wore miniatures hung on ribbons or chains as necklaces or bracelets and pate jewellery; buckles 24 and girdles were often worn for .

20 Strutt, Fashion in South Africa, 72. 21 Ibid., 74. 22 Schoeman, Early Slavery, 219.

23 Strutt, Fashion in South Africa,75. 24 Ibid., 121.

21 Producing Clothing

There were different ways in which clothing could be acquired in 18th-century Western Europe, ways which would have been very similar in practice in the Cape during this era. According to Ross, the 18th century individual could acquire clothing firstly through making it within the household, mainly by its women.25 Thus women would hand-make clothing for themselves or have servants, and in the case of the Cape, slaves, do it for them. In so doing women and slaves were the sources of production for clothing in the Cape, a reality which is reflected by the vast amounts of cloth that was imported to the Cape for this particular use. The deceased estate inventories of the Cape include some instances in which slaves with particular skill as tailors are mentioned. Thus, the inventory of Andries Brink from the year 1789 makes mention of a male slave, ‘September van Nias, zijnde een kleedermaker’ (September of Nias, being a tailor).26 The same is the case in the inventory of Jan Hendrik Christoffel Smit, dating from the same year, where December van Ternaten is likewise listed as a ‘kleedermaker’.27 One must take into account that not all slaves who were capable of making clothes were listed as such in the inventories. Mentzel writes of clothing production at the Cape, mentioning the importance of slave women in the process. Through his writing it becomes obvious how important these women were in the production of clothing and how highly they were thought of as needlewomen. He writes: ‘Female slaves from Bengal or the coast of Coromandel, from Surat and Macassar, are in great demand because they have a reputation as skilful needlewomen.’28And later he adds:

The ladies of the Cape value their services because they take a pride in fine needlework, knitting and crocheting, and are very fond of hand-made lace. I have known some ladies who always employ two or three women in that work only; I speak from experience since I have, from time to time, earned some money in 29 drawing designs for them.

25 Ross, R. 2008. Clothing: A Global History. Cambridge: Polity Press, 27-29. 26 TEPC, MOOC 8/19.76 27 TEPC, MOOC 8/19.80

28 Mentzel, Geographical-Topographical Description, part 2, 125. 29 Ibid., 126.

22 From Mentzel it becomes clear that the making of clothes was predominantly a home industry during the 18th century, employing numerous slaves, wives and even soldiers in the case of Mentzel’s reference to his own role in drawing designs for clothing. Despite the presence of some professional tailors at the Cape it is clear from the writings of contemporaries that most clothing was made at home by the women and slaves of the household. Mentzel’s comments on the making of clothing by slave women are supported by other accounts from this period. In both Franken’s study of the estate of Von Dessin as well as in the kasboek (cash book) of Johanna Duminy there are references to materials purchased 30 for slave women to sew slave clothing.

A second method of acquiring clothing would be through the use of individuals professionally trained in making clothes, such as tailors and dressmakers. Although there were numerous slaves that were skilled to make clothing they fall within the realm of the production of clothing as part of the household tasks. Besides these skilled slaves, there were however also free burghers who practised as makers of clothes. Thus the muster rolls of the VOC for the year 1658 make mention of two tailors, Hendrich Hendricksz from Zurwurde and Elbert Dircksz from Emmerich. Both are mentioned in the muster rolls as ‘Vrijborger en cleermaecker’.31 Free-burgher tailors are also mentioned in the inventories of the deceased estates at the Cape, for example Jacob Fieman. The 1779 estate inventory of Jacobus Lievenberg records an outstanding debt of 185 rixdollars to Fieman ‘over kleedermakersloon’ (for tailor wages).32 Among the free burgher population there were many individuals who practised as tailors, particularly Germans, with 82 cases mentioned in Hoge’s Personalia of Germans at the Cape of Good Hope as ‘kleremakers’ (tailors). This obviously excludes tanners, shoemakers, jewellery smiths and other professions who were all involved in the industry around personal adornment, as well as individuals of other nationalities since Hoge only documents information about Germans at the Cape. This suggests that there were a very

30 Franken, J.L.M (ed.) 1938. Duminy-Dagboeke. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 335 and Franken, J.L.M. 1940. ‘’n Kaapse Huishoue in die 18de Eeu: Uit von Dessin se Briefboek en Memoriaal’. Argief Jaarboek vir Suid-Afrikaanse Geskiedenis 3. Cape Town: Cape Times, 17. 31 CA, Verbatim Copiën (herafter VC) 39 volume 2, 23.

32 TEPC, MOOC 8/17.68

23 large number of individuals who practised as tailors at the Cape, whether full-time or as an 33 additional source of income.

A third method of acquiring clothing was through the purchase of clothing as second-hand items. In Western Europe there was an extensive second-hand market for clothing which provided an outlet for stolen clothes, or of clothes of wearers in desperate need of money, and from the auctions of deceased estates.34 An example of clothing auctioned from a deceased estate is that of Christina Does in 1703. Does was a wealthy woman, married to Lieutenant Adriaan van Reede at the time of her death. Her eldest daughter was the wife of the then fiscal of the Cape, giving some indication of her family’s social standing. Three chintz dresses were sold at her estate auction, as well as numerous pieces of cloth and lace.35 Clothing bought as second-hand items would be altered to fit the purchaser or in order to adapt it to the current fashion. Besides the legal trade in second-hand clothing there also existed more underhanded ways in which clothing was sold and bought at the Cape which need to be taken into account.

Mentzel, who himself had been in the employ of the VOC as a soldier, refers to the fact that it often happened that sailors and soldiers who visited the Cape actively contributed to the second hand trade:

When flushed with wine these young men speedily part with their spare cash in visiting merry houses of entertainment in the company of female slaves. Before the period of leave has expired, some of the men find it necessary to part with any spare clothing they may have brought with them, even with the very coats on their backs. The host [the boarding-house keeper where these men stay] is a ready purchaser; as

33 Hoge, J. 1946. ‘Personalia of Germans at the Cape, 1652-1806’. Archives Year Book for South African History 9. Cape Town: Cape Times, 3, 8, 12, 17, 22, 32, 34, 35, 38, 54, 66, 67, 73, 74, 84, 90, 99, 100, 102, 104, 106, 107, 113, 114, 127, 129, 139, 140, 146, 155, 160, 184, 185-201, 203, 207, 208, 209, 218, 220, 226, 229, 233, 245, 250-52, 257, 258, 270, 274, 275, 282, 292, 297, 299-306, 309, 347, 369, 384, 389, 391, 395-401, 406, 435, 437-39, 450, 452, 453, 462, 466, 469, 478 and 495. 34 Ross, Clothing, 29. 35 TEPC, MOOC 10/1.27

24 part of payment for the board and lodging. These articles are sold at considerable 36 profit to farmers and thus the innkeeper makes a profit both ways.

A final way of acquiring clothing was through buying ready-to-wear items which in the early part of the 18th century was still scarce but would grow in popularity as time progressed.37 We know of at least one individual who did import ready-made clothing to the Cape during the 18th century. Christiaan Daniel Persoon was initially a tailor for the VOC at the Cape but after the ending of his contract in 1754 he established himself as a free burgher and tailor. By 1760 he was involved in trade, importing various items for resale at the Cape, in fact he might be viewed as an early ‘general dealer’. However, he apparently focussed to a large extent on the importation of clothing and seems to have found it more profitable to import clothing than to make it. Among the items of ready-made clothing that Persoon imported are mentioned: ‘een groene gerege greyne rok’, ‘een witte geborduurde rok’, ‘reyg off Cuers 38 lyfties voor kinders van 8, 10 & 12 jaar’.

Besides the vast amounts of cloth and the ready-made clothing Persoon imported, he also imported a large variety of stockings. There were stockings for people of all ages and tastes. Some of the descriptions are stockings of: ‘Fijne swart met werke, peper en zuit nuutste mode, groote vrouwe roose rood, scharlaken, swarte mans met streepies’ and so on.39 Although Persoon imported stockings, women at the Cape also often made their own stockings, or had them made by their slave women. Daphne Strutt mentions that black stockings were extremely unfashionable during the 18th century and were only worn during mourning, but from the above quote it would appear as if there was some exception for black 40 stocking that were embroidered with different patterns or were knitted with stripes.

Shoes formed an important part of the ensemble of 18th-century wear, often decorated with elaborate and expensive buckles to which there are numerous references in the estate inventories of those living at the Cape. During the first 30 years of the 18th century shoes had

36 Mentzel, Geographical-Topographical Description, part 2, 81. 37 Ross, Clothing, 29. 38 Franken, J.L.M. 1937. Uit die Lewe van ‘n Beroemde Afrikaner: Christiaan Hendrik Persoon. Annale van die Universiteit van Stellenbosch, Jaargang XV, Reeks B, Afl. 4, 14. 39 Ibid, 12 40 Strutt, Fashion in South Africa, 121.

25 very pointed toes and heals of between 5 and 7 centimetres high. Heels were carved out of wood and covered with the same material as was used for constructing the upper part of the shoe. The shoes of the higher classes were made of velvet and satin and because they were made from these delicate materials shoes would be worn with clogs or pattens for walking outside in bad weather.41 These were wooden platforms with leather sides and latches to tie over the shoe in order to protect it from dirt and water. Leather shoes were almost always worn by the lower classes. During the 1750s the style of shoes changed somewhat, becoming pointed at the toe with a high heel and small base, and once again towards the 1780s when low heels were prevalent.42 Ladies often wore shoes referred to as mules or slippers for general indoor wear and for dancing.

The deceased estate inventories contain some information on the making of shoes at the Cape during the VOC era. For example, it mentions a man by the name of Abraham Staal who died towards the end of 1708 and while there is no mention of his profession, it is easily gleaned from the content of his estate. The first items are mentioned under the heading; ‘Schoenmakers gereetschap als ingelijx de materialen tot deselve behoorende’ (cobbler tools as well as the materials necessary for it), and indeed the inventory contains a large number of animal skins of which the leather would have been used for making shoes. In addition to the various tools in Staal’s inventory, it refers to the skins of 5 hartebeest, 23 cattle, 3 half- prepared ox skins and 6 white prepared sheepskins.43 It is obvious that Staal used leather in the making of his shoes and that he most probably prepared the leather himself. There is also some evidence to suggest that Jasper Raats who died in 1729 was a cobbler. Among his possessions there are a few items used for the making of shoes but what is perhaps more telling is the reference to a certain Jacob Bruijns who owed Raats 1.2 Rixdollars for a pair of shoes.44 During the same year another burgher by the name of Johannes Smuts died and among the items in his estate there is reference to an entire shoemaker’s workshop valued at around 800 rixdollars, a considerable amount which suggests that the tools inside were not only for personal but also commercial use.45 In Hoge’s ‘Personalia of Germans at the Cape’ there are 95 references to shoemakers, but it is important to keep in mind that these were only

41 Ibid., 75. 42 Ibid., 121. 43 TEPC, MOOC 8/2.14 44 TEPC, MOOC 8/5.6 45 TEPC, MOOC 8/5.8

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Germans and that the total number of people in this profession would have likely been much higher.46 References to debt to shoemakers appear numerous times in the estate inventories throughout the VOC period at the Cape, indicating a lively trade in shoes.

Accessories were equally important in the ensemble of an 18th century woman at the Cape. Pearls were extremely popular as they were worn around the neck or threaded through the hair.47 Imitations of pearls were already present during the 18th century as is indicated in the inventory of Aagien Keijsers who died in 1715, which lists among her jewellery ‘1 snoer valsse perlen’ (1 string of false pearls).48 Besides pearls, gold chains with lockets or pendants and gold earrings were the usual accessories of a well-to-do woman of the time. The inventories make mention of a few individuals who were involved in the smithing of gold and silver and it is certain that jewellery would have been among the items they made. The inventory of Debora de Koning, who was during her lifetime on of the wealthiest women at the Cape, bears testimony to the activities of jewellers and silver and gold smiths at the Cape during the 18th century. Among the items in her inventory are a large collection of jewellery which the Orphan Chamber had valued upon her death by two individuals, Matthijs Lutter and Frederick Bach, who are referred to as gold and silver smiths and jewellers. These men had the task of weighing and valuing De Koning’s extensive collection of jewellery and silver and gold work.49 Christiaan Ackerman, who died in 1751, is listed as having a silversmith workshop on his property which contained the necessary tools for making a variety of silver articles. The large amount of silver and gold items included in his inventory also indicates the industry Ackerman was in. Among these are 47 pairs of silver shoe buckles, 12 dozen silver buttons and a variety of other silver items. As for gold items, his inventory lists 31 gold rings, 11 pairs of gold earrings and various other items, as well as 24 loose diamonds and a variety of different Eastern stones which would have been used in the making of

46 Hoge, ‘Personalia’, 5-7, 10, 22, 23, 25, 39, 43, 44, 47, 50, 75, 92, 97-101, 104, 109, 129, 131, 132, 134, 148, 151, 159, 166, 168, 17, 172, 174, 175, 185, 187, 194, 198-201, 214, 215, 220, 236, 237, 240, 248, 250, 259, 260, 263, 271, 278, 283, 287, 295, 299-306, 311, 318, 330, 332, 340, 341, 342, 357, 362, 364, 373, 393, 399, 403, 406, 408, 413, 416, 419, 422, 426-28, 436, 439, 441, 447, 452, 454, 460, 464, 468, 471, 474, 476 and 483. 47 Strutt, Fashion in South Africa, 121. 48 TEPC, MOOC 8/3.20 49 TEPC, MOOC 8/7.71 3/4c

27 jewellery.50 From the numerous accounts of silver and gold smiths at the Cape it seems that 51 the trade in these forms of accessories were equal if not surpassing that of shoes.

Trade in shoes, clothing and jewellery would all have occurred from the homes of retailers during the VOC period. A certain Mrs Parker who visited the Cape in 1791 provides a practical example of how trade in cloth was conducted at the Cape. She writes:

There are not any public shops as in other towns, the merchants dispose of their goods, both by wholesale and retail, in the following manner: if you wish to make a purchase, you send for a large book, upon the leaves of which are pasted patterns of edgings, dimities, silks, muslins &c with the prices annexed, and if you make any 52 large purchase you go and view the different articles in the parlours.

There were various people involved in this form of small-scale trade, two examples of which were Catharina Elisabeth van Rhenen (died 1755) and Susanna Justina d’Aillij (died 1794), whose activities are discussed in the next section.

Two Case Studies: Catharina Elisabeth van Rhenen and Susanna Justina d’Aillij

The deceased estate inventories of Catharina Elisabeth van Rhenen and Susanna Justina d’Aillij contain some information as to their positions at the Cape of Good Hope. Van Rhenen was married to the burgher Willem van Schoor, while d’Aillij was married to Jan Adolph Kuuhl, the Commissioner of Civil and Marriage Affairs for the Company. Although d’Aillij’s husband held a relatively prominent position at the Cape, trade was not an uncommon occupation for the higher classes of colonial society during this period, neither was it uncommon for a woman to trade in goods, as becomes clear from the contents of the inventories of both these women.

50 TEPC, MOOC 8/6.69 51 Cf. Erasmus, G.J. 1986. ‘Die Geskiedenis van die Bedryfslewe aan die Kaap, 1652 tot 1795’. PhD thesis, University of the Orange Free State, 173. 52 Quoted in Schoeman, K. 1997. Dogter van Sion: Machtelt Smit en die 18e-Eeuse Samelewing aan die Kaap, 1749-1799. Kaapstad: Human & Rousseau, 75.

28 Van Rhenen’s inventory specifically refers to a room called the ‘negotiecamer’ (trade room) which indicates that this room was specifically used for the selling of various goods. The items held in this room futher suggest that van Rhenen conducted retail activities from it. The most significant articles found here are the large amounts of textiles included in her inventory.53 These include:

36 p:s Haarlemmerstreep 1 p:s aangebrokene Haarlemmerstreep 22 p:s Bengaalse streep 2 p:s blaauwe zaaij 3 p:s roode zaaij 1 p:s aangebroken roode zaaij 17 p:s heele blaauwe bafftas 1 p:s groen spiegel damast 156 p:s wit Bengaals linnen in z:t 2 rollen gebloemde diemet 2 p:s Lichtermans zaaij 14 p:s voerchitsen in zoort 12 p:s Bengaals gestreept en geruijt 43 p:s chelassen 1 p:s chitse spreij 13 lappen zaaij in z:t 19 lappen grijn in z:t 4 lappen calamink in z:t 3 lappen duvelssterk 3 lappe roode trijp 1 aangesnedene stuck lamfer 1 pakje met 1 p:s aangesneede gebloemde capers 1 partij lappen aangsneeden divers wit goet 10 lappen trielje 3 p:s heele trielje 5 p:s neteldoeken

53 TEPC, MOOC 8/8.9.

29 1 partij lappe neteldoeken 1 partij enk: neusdoeken 1 partij swarte zijde 23 fijne goeden 1 p:s rood linnen 1 lapje groen fluweel 10 lapje laken in zoort 1 lap swart gewaterd stoff 1 partij lappe teijk 1 partij lappe divers 1 lap Flaams linnen 1 groote kist, waarin 79 stucke wit linnen in zoort 67 stucke blaauw linnen in zoort 1 gr: kist, waarin 55 stuck blaauw linnen in zoort 2 stuck blaauw zijldoek 40 stuck blaauw gestreept 43 stuck: wit zijldoek 76 stuck ruw linnen in zoort 1 lap ruw linnen

Besides the large quantities of textiles, van Rhenen’s inventory also contains some ready- made items to be sold to the public. These items include 82 hats which are not specified for any particular gender, 28 white shirts which were also worn by both men and women, and 41 handkerchiefs.

The inventory of d’Aillij lists a large number of items in ‘de voor kamer ter regter hand’ (the front room on the right hand side) which would not normally have been found in this space in a house where trade was not conducted. It seems as if d’Aillij used this parlour in the way as was described by Mrs Parker for clients to visit and to view the merchandise she had available. Besides the ready access of this room for clientele, the quantity of certain items strongly suggests that they were not for personal use. The parlour contained an extraordinary th amount of fans and gloves. The fan was an essential part of a woman’s outfit in the 18

30 century and the correct handling thereof seen as an accomplishment for a woman. Fans varied in size, changing from small fans in 1700 to larger ones by the 1740s.54 Although d’Aillij would certainly have possessed a few fans of her own, one can conclude that the fans included in her inventory were for retail purposes since a prominent woman of the 18th century usually possessed around 15 fans, while Susanna d’Aillij’s inventory lists 86 fans. Another item which turns up in excessive amounts is what is described as leather and ‘cabrette’ gloves, of which there are 36 pairs mentioned in the inventory.55 Gloves tended to be knitted by slaves by using fine white cotton, or were otherwise made of kid or other soft sink, and silk.56 There is no indication if the gloves were imported as ready-made items or made at the Cape, but the number of pairs of gloves suggest that they were manufactured before being put up for sale instead of being made to order. Furthermore d’Aiilij’s inventory contains 24 pairs of stockings which were produced by knitting in cotton, worsted or silk and were mostly white although in winter black stockings were also worn.57 Once again these stockings were pre-made and not produced to order. 27 different types of handkerchief are also mentioned of which the majority were red – a very fashionable colour during the 18th century.

The inventory of d’Aillij contains a large number of ribbons which was a useful item for a Cape woman during the VOC era. Ribbons were used as hair ornaments and could be worn twined through the hair and studded with pearls, beads or gems.58 They were also used in the decorating of bonnets, to secure stockings and for decorating clothing. This was done by both the higher classes as well as those women belonging to the working class. An item of note in the inventory of Susanna d’Aillij is the mention of ‘twee doosjes met gemaakte bloemen’ (two small boxes with manufactured flowers), the use of real or fake flowers or th 59 nosegay to dress a woman’s hair was common practice during the 18 century at the Cape.

According to the inventory of Susanna Justina d’Aillij, she owned a number of slaves but one slave in particular, Abraham of the Cape, is listed as a tailor. Having a slave skilled in making

54 Strutt, Fashion in South Africa, 77. 55 TEPC, MOOC 8/20.22 56 Strutt, Fashion in South Africa, 77. 57 Ibid., 121. 58 Ibid., 75. 59 TEPC, MOOC 8/20.22

31 clothing was not uncommon at the Cape where ladies either made their own clothing or used their slaves for this purpose. It is however possible that this particular slave was involved in the production of ready-made items such as the silk stockings and gloves for retail mentioned in the inventory. Besides this possibility, Susanna d’Aillij’s inventory also contains a large amount of cloth, among which were yellow Chinese linen, Italian gauze and gauze printed with flowers.60 The materials were likely used in the making of clothing for the ladies of the Cape who either did not own slaves to do it for them or had no inclination to do so themselves.

The large amounts of certain articles included in her inventory indicate that d’Aillij ran a shop from her home, a practice which was common during this time. It seems probable that she supplied clothing and pre-made items to the women of the Cape. This would account for the fact that her inventory includes a large amount of material, various packets of lace, a box of needles for sewing and numerous packets of thread. Susanna d’Aillij would have played an important part in directing the fashions at the Cape of Good Hope in the second half of the 18th century.

Changes in Clothing and Fashion

‘What is fashion? It is a lady…of the strangest unconstant Constitution…who changes in the 61 twinkle of an eye…’

Before the 17th century there were relatively few changes in the style of women’s clothing and what change occurred happened slowly. A particular style of dress could be fashionable for decades and even in some instances centuries.62 Over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries this changed, as fashion became a more and more important factor of European society. The growth in importance of fashion can be accounted for by two phenomena, viz. growing urbanisation and the rise of the bourgeoisie.63 The Cape bore witness to both these phenomena in the late 18th century as the economy of the Cape expanded.

60 Ibid. 61 Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. VIII (April, 1738), 191. Quoted from Freudenberger, H. 1963. ‘Fashion, Sumptuary Laws and Business’, The Business History Review, 37/1-2, 38. 62 Ibid., 39.

63 Ibid.

32

Due to the French support for the American War of Independence, which was recognised by the United Provinces of the Netherlands, Great Britain declared war against the United Provinces in 1780. News of this support did not arrive at the Cape until 31 March 1781 with the arrival of the French corvette La Sylphide.64 French troops under Colonel Conway arrived on 3 July 1781, catalysing a period of great prosperity for the people of Cape Town. Cape Town became known as ‘Little Paris’ as French soldiers stationed at the Cape made French 65 fashions and habits popular.

Changes in fashion influenced the style and the length of dresses. In 1750 the skirts of gowns were short, even at times showing the ankles, but this changed during the 1760s when petticoats nearly touched the ground. This contravened the stipulations of the Sumptuary Legislation of 1755 which stated that women’s dresses were not to touch the ground, a stipulation which was particularly enforced in the Cape, as we shall see in chapter 5 below.66 By the 1770s skirts became shorter once more.67 There is a clear correlation between political power and fashion as is visible from the dominance of French fashion during the 1780s. In 1780 the French sacque or sack came into vogue at the Cape although this style of dress has also been encountered earlier in the 18th century. Regardless of the style or cut of dress, the ladies of the Cape followed what was essentially the French fashion of wearing dresses with extreme décolletage without a modesty covering; this was seen on every type of gown. The change in fashions during the 18th century is clearly outlined by Mentzel as he th writes of the style of the women at the Cape during the 1730s. In the first half of the 18 century, it appears from Mentzel’s writings, women at the Cape had a less affected outlook on fashion and the need to dress extravagantly. In the quote below, although there is some indication that trends did exist, the majority of women had ‘simple and quiet tastes’:

‘In dress the South African women have simple and quiet tastes; their dresses are neither expensive nor elaborate; the fickleness of fashion does not trouble them since they are not fashion’s slaves. For head covering they prefer a small cap ‘a la maniere

64 Theal, G.M. 1888-1900. , 1486-1872. London: Sommeschein, Lowery, vol. 3, 187. 65 Worden, N., van Heyningen, E. and Bickford-Smith, V. 1998. Cape Town: The Making of a City. Cape Town: David Philip, 81-83. 66 Cape Archives (CA), Council of Policy (C) 133, Resolusies van die Politieke Raad, 15.07.1755.

67 Strutt, Fashion in South Africa, 102.

33 de Madam Fontange,’ a former mistress of the King of France. They leave the more fashionable high peaked caps, such as are worn by Austrian grenadiers, the so-called ‘towers of Babel,’ severely alone. They wear dresses of good East Indian calico, starched , and chintz skirts; these suffice for week-days as well as Sundays. Silks are worn on holidays, at weddings, and on similar state occasions. The women love to look neat and pretty but care not for extravagance in style and 68 ornament.’

This was not to remain so; in fact the 1780s ushered in a period of rapid change in the fashions for both men and women at the Cape. The presence of the French garrisons was perhaps the most important factor to influence the change in clothing at the Cape during the late 18th century. Exposure to other Europeans brought the inhabitants of the Cape into greater contact with what was the fashionable dress of the day. Even more important was the identity of the Europeans with which the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War brought the small settlement at the Cape in contact. The French had a reputation for style and fashion, and Paris had become the centre of fashion during the 17th century.69 While Spanish and Dutch styles were still the vogue during the earlier part of the 17th century, the second half brought on the domination of French fashions inspired by the court of Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’. Every month Parisian mannequins called ‘Pandoras’, dressed in the latest fashions, toured the European capitals to exhibit what the current fashions were.70 Another aspect which set the stage for Paris as the fashion capital of the world was the publication of influential French journals such as the first fashion magazine, Mercure Gallant, which was founded in 1672. The 18th century saw the full blossoming of this trade as more and more journals appeared, such as the Galerie des Modes and Courier des Modes in the 1770s. Initially this was all somewhat removed from the small colony at the Cape, but when the French were stationed there in 1781 the world of French fashions was essentially opened up through the presence of a large number of fashionably dressed officers A space in which these new fashions could be exhibited were the regular balls held in Cape Town. French visitors such as Francois le Vaillant, who visited the Cape during this period, remarked on how ‘mad about dancing’

68 Mentzel, Geographical-Topographical Description, part 2, 110-11. 69 Freudenberger, ‘Fashion, Sumptuary Laws’, 42. 70 Ibid.

34 Cape women were so that ‘rarely a week passes without several balls taking place’.71 Le Vaillant also commented that he ‘was surprised to see that the women dress and adorn 72 themselves with the same fastidious elegance as our French ladies.’

Mentzel wrote his account of the Cape more than forty years after returning to Europe in 1737, which explains the following remark on the ladies of the Cape, with reference to his quote above:

But, from what I can gather, this is no longer the case to-day. The Cape is no longer what it was; the presence of a French garrison has proved disastrous to the simple 73 tastes of the Cape ladies.

Commissioner J.A. de Mist also later complained that the French had ‘entirely corrupted the standard of living at the Cape, and extravagance and indulgence in an unbroken round of amusements and diversions have come to be regarded as necessities. . . It will be the work of 74 years to transform the citizens of Cape Town once again into Netherlanders’.

Conclusion

Due to the position of the Cape as a halfway station between the East and the West there was an abundance of influences on clothing and the means of making it available during the VOC period. This allowed for women at the Cape to indulge in fashions from Europe with the added advantage of being on the trade routes from the East from where women in Europe and in the Cape were supplied with printed cottons and silks that were much in vogue throughout the 18th century. The strategic positioning of the Cape ensured that women at the Cape were fashionable by the standards of the 18th century, while the use of slave labour ensured that there was an active industry of making clothing at the Cape. Most households produced their

71 Le Vaillant, F. 2007. Travels into the Interior of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, translated and edited by Ian Glenn with the assistance of Catherine Lauga Du Plessis and Ian Farlam.Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, vol. 1, 17. 72 Ibid., 16-17. 73 Mentzel, Geographical-Topographical Description, part 2, 111. 74 Walker, E.A. 1947. A History of South Africa. London: Longmans, Green, 109. De Mist made these comments to the Batavian government in 1802, shortly before the Cape reverted back to Dutch control.

35 own clothing by means of the women of the household’s labour, either burgher or slave women. As discussed, there were also instances of ready-made clothing but this was by no means common. During the 18th century fashion in Europe developed as a means of showcasing not only position but individuality, which led to a growth in the fashion industry of cities such as Paris. Towards the end of the 18th century, with the stationing of French garrisons at the Cape, the trend of expressing individuality through being fashionable or trendsetting was also established at the Cape which greatly influenced both the culture and the clothing of people here.

36 Chapter 3 Fashion and the Women of the VOC Official Elite

Fashion, Status and Elite Women in the Dutch World

As of about 1630 the apparel of women became an important factor in European society.1 As the desire for outward show of wealth increased, wealthy burghers had their wives wear clothing that emphasized the leisure which her husband’s wealth gave her.2 Did the same phenomenon also occur in the Cape colony where the society and social roles were complicated due to the presence of slaves? According to an influential article by Georg Simmel, fashion arose as a form of class differentiation in a relative open class society so that the elite could set themselves apart by markers such as a distinct form of dress. This in turn had the effect that subordinate classes would copy these markers in their attempt to identify with the superior class.3 These trends were quickly followed as the wealth of the colony increased in the course of the 18th century due to the expansion of the local economy. This resulted in a series of sumptuary legislation with the most comprehensive set promulgated in 1755 by Governor Rijk Tulbagh. These measures were passed to control the display of pomp and thus regulate the ‘proper’ order of society.4 These regulations were in answer to circumstances in which excessive display led to individuals to ‘lose respect for their betters, and above all those who, through a higher and more prominent station than they, are not possessed of greater means and so must bear the insupportable from such wastrel Company servants, burghers and other inhabitants’.5 Therefore the aim of sumptuary legislation was to draw a clear line between those inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope and other VOC territories whose positions allowed for pomp and show and those who had illusions of grandeur, the nouveau riche of the day.

1 Freudenberger, H. 1963. ‘Fashion, Sumptuary Laws and Business’, The Business History Review, 37(1-2), 40. 2 Ibid. 3 Blymer, H. 1969. ‘Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection’, The Sociological Quarterly, 10(3):275-91. 4 Ross, R. 2004. Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750-1870: A Tragedy of Manners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 9. 5 Van der Chijs, J.A. 1885-1897. Nederlandsch-Indisch Plakkaatboek, 1602-1811 (16 volumes). Batavia & The Hague: Landsdrukkerij & M. Nijhoff, vol. 6, 773-74.

37 Dutch Women in the Colonial World

The settlement of Dutch trading posts in the East and at the southern tip of Africa meant that these ideas about the role of fashion in displaying status were exported to other parts of the world. Dutch culture and social practices remained, initially at least, similar to what they had been in the Netherlands. In the early days of settling these colonial territories, there was a huge sex imbalance. Few women accompanied their husbands to the colonies, and most of those who did returned with their husbands to Europe after their period of service. In the establishment phases of the Dutch colonies there were no family ties that bound either Dutch men or women to the colonies. This, however, changed over time. By the mid-17th century in Batavia the wives of senior officials were often from among the immigrant society, born to European parents or to European fathers and local or slave women.6 What is important however is that both the locally born women of European parentage and the women who formed part of the ‘mestizo’ population grew up in a society governed by Dutch practices. In the colonies Roman-Dutch law remained applicable, as were many of the cultural practices of the Dutch along with some locally adopted practices. Women and men born in the Dutch colonial world would therefore have followed Dutch social practices while having strong economic and family bonds to the colonies. It is this development of a uniquely local population with Dutch governance and a settled character in which led to a more established society essential for the development of social hierarchy.

The colonial elite in Batavia were an example of this intermixing of the local society with the colonial official elite. Nicolaus de Graaff noted of the elite women in Batavia:

The extreme splendour and hauteur with which the women in Batavia – Dutch, Mestiza and Half-caste too – display especially upon going to and from church…for on such an occasion each is decked out more expensively than at any other time…Thus they sit by the hundreds in church making a show like lacquered dolls. The least of them looks more like a Princess than a burgher’s wife or daughter, so that Heaven itself is filled with loathing, especially as they go and come from church, when even the most inferior has her slave follow behind to carry a parasol or

6 Taylor, J.G. 2004. The Social World of Batavia: Europeans and Eurasians in Colonial Indonesia. 2nd edition. London & Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 35.

38 sunshade above her head against the fierce heat. Many of these have great hanging 7 silk flops embroidered with golden dragons and ornamental foliage.

As colonial society became more settled, the importance of social hierarchy became more pronounced as can be seen in de Graaff’s quote above. He stresses that these women were not only Dutch but were also of mixed race. Under Dutch law all women acquired the nationality and status of their husbands which is why women of Asian parentage could gain European status when marrying European men. The same holds true for the Cape where 8 women of mixed parentage were taken up in European society.

Although the earliest stage of colonisation of both the East and the Cape resulted in the miscegenation of races, this decreased over time as more and more women of European birth moved to the colonies or were born there to settler parents. Scholars like Anne Stoler have argued that another important characteristic of women in a colonial set-up was the fact that European women were agents of imperial culture in their own capacity, even if they did not have any political position. Therefore, these women, either born in the colonies and raised with Dutch values or newly settled within the colonies, would act as ‘regulators of culture’ in society, whether it be regarding economic, social or any other values important to them. Therefore, the arrival of larger numbers of European women directly coincided with the bourgeoisie-ment of colonial society.9 This means that European women in effect became regulators of social status and hierarchy, establishing what and who was socially acceptable. As such they hugely influenced social practices in the colonies.

As society became more settled in the colonial world the importance of social hierarchy became more pronounced as can be seen in the quote from Nicolaus de Graaff above. He specifically mentions that the women were not only Dutch but were also of mixed race. Under Dutch law all women acquired the nationality of their husbands which is why women

7 Taylor, Social World, 41. 8 Ibid., 49. 9 Stoler, A.L. 1997. ‘Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth- Century Colonial Cultures’, in McClintock, A., Mufti, A. & Shohat, E. (eds). Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 351.

39 of Asian parentage gained European status when marrying European men. The same holds 10 true for the Cape where women of mixed parentage were taken up in European society.

Legal Status of Dutch Women

17th-century Dutch women were in some respects an oddity of their time. Compared to women of other European countries, Dutch women were allowed a much freer existence in both a social and legal sense. So different was the social conduct of 17th-century Dutch women that Fynes Moryson, an English traveller who travelled across Europe, was shocked to find that Frisian women were allowed to assume control over the family budget amongst other things.11 What was perhaps even worse was that Dutch women were allowed many more social liberties than their European contemporaries. Moryson comments Dutch women who feasted through the night at taverns far from their homes, saying:

This they do without any suspicion of unchastity, the hostesses being careful to lodge and oversee the women. In like sort, mothers of good fame permit their daughters at home after they themselves go to bed, to sit up with young men all or most part of the night, banqueting and talking, yea with leave and without leave to walk abroad with young men in the streets by night. And this they do out of customed liberty without prejudice to the fame whereas the Italian women, strictly kept, think it folly to omit 12 every opportunity they can get to do ill.

This greater social liberties allowed to Dutch women can be attributed to many different things, one being the legal status of Dutch women compared to other European women. Thus Joseph Shaw in 1709 opined during his travels in the Netherlands that ‘being better provided for by the laws of their country than in other nations [they] are not forced to trust to their wits, nor put on those poor pitiful shifts to jilt mankind and bubble their husbands for 13 money’.

10 Taylor, Social World, 49. 11 Schama, S. 1987. The Embarassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 403. 12 Ibid, 403. 13 Ibid., 404.

40 The legal provisions made for Dutch women as referred to by Shaw date from the Middle Ages, enabling women to, amongst other things, inherit property in their own right. Although Dutch thought on the legality of private property was not as liberal as today, there were provisions made for the protection of a woman’s possessions. For example, although the property of a Dutch woman formally came under her husband’s legal authority, women retained the right for a reversion of property ownership. This would happen in situations where the husband died and a woman could retain her possessions as well as those personal items belonging to her such as clothing. Furthermore it usually so occurred that the law saw property acquired during the marriage as having joint ownership, i.e. belonging to both the 14 husband and wife.

A woman’s property was also protected from a husband who squandered her part of the estate or if she felt that he was mismanaging it or abusing his right as guardian of the property. Furthermore, unmarried women who fell pregnant could sue the child’s father, either to get the father to marry the pregnant woman or to provide a dowry for the pregnant woman in order to marry someone else, pay the costs for the delivery of the child and could even be 15 obliged to pay towards the upkeep of the child.

Dutch women were also very much part of the merchant system. They had the authority needed to make commercial contracts and notarise documents. This was even more so amongst widows who took over their family’s business dealings upon the death of their 16 husbands.

Yet, although the Dutch were relatively forward-thinking with regards to the position and privileges of women during the 17th and 18th centuries compared to many of their European neighbours, it should not be misconstrued as equality. Schama also writes of the Netherlands that : ‘There was a great deal of subjugation, women were excluded from all political offices – but within these limits they managed nonetheless to assert themselves, both individually

14 Ibid., 405. For a fuller discussion of this, see Schmidt, A. 2001. Overleven na de Dood: Weduwen in Leiden in de Gouden Eeuw. Amsterdam: Prometheus / Bert Bakker, chapters 3-4. 15 Schama, Embarrassment, 405. For more on this topic, see van der Heijden, M. 1998. Huwelijk in Holland: Stedelijke Rechtspraak en Kerkelijke Tucht, 1550-1700. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, chapter 6. 16 Schama, Embarrassment, 407.

41 and collectively, in public life.’17 Instead Dutch women seemed to have made use of the liberties that were allowed them to further their own causes.

The VOC Official Elite at the Cape

Sumptuary legislation had far reaching practical implications, to the point that these laws regulated not only the display of wealth but even the apparel of people. These regulations were not completely alien but emanated in part from the social structure of colonial Dutch society. There were various attempts to regulate display throughout the history of VOC settlements, although at the Cape this would only become a problem in the second half of the 18th century.18 During this time there was a growth in the consciousness of rank and status in the Netherlands, a fact which filtered through to the small community at the Cape.19 The influence of Dutch ideas and culture on the colonial outposts of the VOC is supported by a recent analysis of the Dutch culture in Asia which demonstrated that being culturally Dutch remained the most important elite qualifier throughout the 18th century.20 Elite status could not be bought but could be acquired through conspicuous consumption of goods associated with elite Dutch culture. As most of the VOC official elite at the Cape of Good Hope were not born here, and many first served in the East before coming to the Cape and returned to the Netherlands upon retirement, there is reason to suggest that the display of Dutch (as opposed to colonial) culture was an important qualifier of belonging to the elite. Schutte writes that ‘[e]ven when certain official families had settled at the Cape, sometimes for generations, they retained the stamp of belonging to the Company rather than to the citizenry. This was particularly true of officials in higher ranks; among the lower ranks there seems to have been 21 a stronger inclination to settle.’

17 Ibid., 404. 18 Ross, R. 2004. Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750-1870: A Tragedy of Manners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 14. 19 Schoeman, K. 1997. Dogter van Sion: Machtelt Smit en die 18e-eeuse Samelewing aan die Kaap, 1749-1799. Kaapstad: Human & Rousseau, 29. 20 Ross, R. & Schrikker, A. 2012. ‘The VOC Official Elite’, in Worden, N. (ed.) Cape Town between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town. Johannesburg & Hilversum: Jacana & Verloren, 27. 21 Schutte, G. 1989. ‘Company and Colonists at the Cape, 1652-1795’, in Elphick, R. & Giliomee, H. (eds). 1989. The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 297.

42 At the Cape there were a large number of VOC officials (including soldiers) who outnumbered the number of adult male burghers until well into the 18th century. In fact it is only around 1755 that the number of male adult free burghers exceeded the number of officials.22 There was great differentiation in rank and status among the officials at the Cape. According to Schutte the gap was pronounced between the different officials with an enormous gap existing between a councillor of India and a bookkeeper, and a colonel and a surgeon; even if all of them had the prestige of being listed on the Roll of the Qualified (Rolle 23 der Gequalificeerden).

The number of high and middle ranking officials at the Cape increased threefold from about 30 to 90 in the 18th century. The highest position a Company servant could attain was membership of the Council of Policy, a body consisting of the secunde (deputy governor), the fiscal, cellar master, the secretary of the council, the cashier and the warehouse master, all of 24 whom were presided over by the Governor.

The VOC divided its employees according to rank as well as position. An individual’s rank refers to a combination of his work, function, salary and status. For example, was head of the Cape settlement and was referred to as the Commander (Commandeur). His rank, however, was that of a merchant which refers to his position in the Company hierarchy, as well indicating his salary bracket. Below is a table of the main positions that Company officials could hold at the Cape. In reality there were three groups or hierarchies, reflecting the various branches of the VOC’s activities: from soldier to general, 25 from sailor to captain at sea, and from scribe to governor-general.

22 For example, in 1732 there were 1 016 VOC officials (including soldiers) but only 717 adult male free burghers at the Cape, ibid., 295. 23 Ibid., 296. 24 Ross & Schrikker, ‘Official Elite’, 28. 25 TANAP, ‘Introduction to the Resolutions of the Council of Policy of the Cape of Good Hope’, www.tanap.net (accessed 8 April 2014).

43

Title Responsibilities Governor (Gouwerneur) Responsible for the managing of Company affairs in a designated area, such as the Cape governor who managed all affairs of the VOC at the Cape. Most senior official at the Cape. Secunde (Secunde) Second in command at the Cape. Fiscal (fiskaal) Judicial power, in charge of the implementation of laws in the Cape Colony. Third-highest rank at the Cape. Secretary (of the Council of In charge of all the Policy) (secretaris) correspondence and compiling of documents. Master of the Orphan Chamber Manager of the orphan chamber (Weesmeester) which oversaw the distribution of inheritances to orphans. Accountant (Boekhouder) In charge of Company finances at the Cape. Warehouse-master (Dispensier) In charge of the warehouses at the Cape. Cellar-master (Keldermeester) In charge of the Cellars at the Cape. Harbour-master (Hawemeester) In charge of the Cape Town harbour. Military commander of the Head of the garrison at the garrison (Kapitein) Cape.

Figure 3.1 Hierarchy of Offices at the VOC Cape

44

Member of the Council of India (Raad van India)

Chief Merchant (Opperkoopman) Merchant (Koopman)

Junior Merchant (Onderkoopman)

Figure 3.2 Ranks in the Administrative Section of the VOC

The occupants of these posts and their families were the top of the elite in Cape society and were treated accordingly, and in later years their position as such was protected by the sumptuary legislation. The status of high-ranking officials was further reinforced by the day- to-day rituals and practices of society. An official with the rank of Merchant or Senior Merchant could immediately be recognised by his dress.26 Senior Merchants were allowed to wear velvet clothing and Junior Merchants were allowed to wear silver or gold shoe buckles. More important for the purpose of this study is the dress of the wives of high-ranking officials. Ladies of high social ranking could also be distinguished by the clothing and jewellery she wore which after 1755 was also regulated by Sumptuary Legislation. According to Ross it is ‘perhaps because the public world of the Cape was so exclusively male [that] the distinctions of rank were stressed particularly by the elite women of the Colony.’27 Because women could not hold public offices they instead expressed their rank through the use of highly conspicuous goods such as clothing. Women could not break away from the status of the men in their lives, be it fathers or husbands, except in the event of 28 widowhood when they could become the heads of their own independent households.

26 Ross & Schrikker, ‘VOC Official Elite’, 35. 27 Ross, Status and Respectability ,15.

28 Ibid.,16.

45 Women and Status at the Cape

The dependency of women in Cape society on the rank of either their husbands of fathers is expressed in O.F. Mentzel’s writings on the culture of the Cape Colony. Of the women he writes:

Should a woman meet a number of other women whom she did not know before, she would talk affably with them, but sooner or later impress upon them, unconsciously perhaps, that she must be treated with the consideration that her husband’s rank, or 29 perhaps her own conceit, entitle her to.

He later adds:

A & B were, as girls, the closest friends – more than sisters to each other. Both were daughters of under-merchants [i.e. junior merchants], but A had social precedence over B because her father was senior in rank to B’s father. Both married under- merchants but B’s husband was senior in standing to A’s. All at once B’s presence became hateful to A. Their long friendship was at an end. A avoided B whenever she could; she would not go to any function were B was expected. Nothing that B had done was responsible for this change in A’s attitude. The fact was that by marriage their social status had changed. B had now precedence over A because of her husband’s rank, and A could not become reconciled with the change. Most ladies hold that A’s conduct was right and proper; that there was no other way; to me it all 30 seems very petty.

A final example of the importance of rank to especially women is this description by Peter Kolb, who lived in the Cape between 1705 and 1713:

dat’t ceremonieel wegens den rang alhier, en door gantsche Indie, veel stipter nagekomen word als in Europa; aangezien niemand den anderen zal wyken als zyn

29 Mentzel, O.F. 1925. A Geographical-Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope, part 2. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 108. 30 Ibid., 107.

46 rang hem de bovenhand geeft; de wyfjes zyn voornamelyk in dit stuk oplettende, en ten eersten op haar paardje als zy zien dat eene andere aan’t hogerend zit die zo hoog 31 in rang niet is als zy.

Mentzel sheds further light on the social interaction between women:

…formality governs the interchange of visits among the ladies of the town. Among them social distinctions are sharply graded; pomp and circumstance play a leading role in determining rules of etiquette. Before one lady will visit another due notice of her intentions is given; etiquette demands that as well as common sense, since the other party must be given an opportunity to receive her visitor in proper state. At no place, however, in the whole world are the minutiae of calling so elaborately worked 32 out and so slavishly followed as by the ladies of the Cape.

Mentzel writes that although society at the Cape was relatively small and for that reason different social classes mixed freely, he was still conscious that ‘social distinctions are sharply graded’. As is illustrated in Mentzel’s description of the deterioration of relationship between girls A & B, consciousness of social position was strictly adhered to. Furthermore, although it is not mentioned directly, the piece suggests how important appearance was to someone who received a visitor since she needed proper notice in order to receive her guest in the ‘pomp and circumstance’ of the day. The importance of a woman’s appearance is impressed upon the reader when Mentzel subsequently writes that upon the caller’s return 33 home she would report on ‘how her friend looked’.

Senior VOC officials were, with the exception of , never born at the Cape, and rarely settled there after they retired from their posts.34 These senior officials tended to be closely linked to networks in the East and the Fatherland which made them different from the settled burgher society at the Cape. These trade networks placed senior VOC officials and their wives in a position of acting as the gatekeepers of European goods,

31 Kolb, P., 1727. Naaukeurige en Uitvoerige Beschrijving van de Kaap de Goede Hoop. Amsterdam: Balthazar Lakeman, vol. 2, 301. 32 Mentzel, Geographical-topographical Description, part 2, 107. 33 Mentzel, Geographical-topographical Description, part 2, 107. 34 Even Swellengrebel moved to the Netherlands with his family upon retirement.

47 news and fashion at the Cape. VOC officials and their wives used this access and knowledge of European fashion and goods to reaffirm their dominance in the social hierarchy. According to Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption, which is that highly conspicuous goods are used in order to gain status, there are two motives for consuming conspicuous goods. The first is individual comparison, which is the use of conspicuous goods by members of a higher class in order to distinguish themselves the lower classes. That this form of consumption was practised at the Cape regarding clothing and other forms of personal adornment is clear from the Sumptuary Legislation of 1755 which limits the consumption of certain types of clothing to the VOC official elite.

The second motive for the conspicuous consumption of goods is ‘pecuniary emulation’, which is the consumption of conspicuous goods by members of a lower class in order to be associated with the members of a higher class. Sumptuary Legislation at the Cape suggests that this form of conspicuous consumption through emulation must have occurred as restrictions are placed on the types of materials the lower classes were allowed to wear. The Sumptuary Legislation of 1755 determined that:

No women below the wives of junior merchants, or those who among citizens are of the same rank, may wear silk dresses with silk braiding or embroidery, nor any diamonds nor mantelets [a short cloak]; and although the wives of junior merchants may wear these ornaments, they shall not be entitled to allow their daughters to wear them. All women, married or single, without distinction are prohibited, whether in mourning or out of mourning, under penalty of 25 rixdollars, to wear dresses with a 35 train.

The importance of fashion to women who did not belong to the elite can be gleaned from the writings of the burgher woman, Hester Venter, who was born in 1750. Her family lived on what was then close to the frontier of the colony but even in this isolated location her writing demonstrates how pervasive the importance of clothing was, and that there was a deep-rooted belief that a person’s appearance went hand in hand with their status.

35 Naudé, S.D. & Venter, P.J. (eds). 1949. Kaapse Plakkaatboek III (1754-1786). Cape Town: Cape Times, 12.

48 Namate my jare van twaalf en dertien verbygaan, het die weke gemoedsgesteldhede van my kinderjare verdwyn. Ek het so sonder gedagte in die wereld voortgegaan, ja, sou ook al die prag en die modes wou nagevolg het as my geringe staat so iets toegehelp het, maar ek kon dit nie rekry nie. My ouers was arm, en my vader het my 36 skerp verbied om mee te doen en ons streng in orde gehou.

This desire of the lower classes to emulate their social superiors is further supported by the evidence in a letter written from an unknown writer to Hendrik Swellengrebel junior in 1779. In the letter the writer complains that:

…No one is interested in work and everyone, even in the lowest classes, wants to live in luxury. This cannot last. Money is getting scarcer and scarcer. Wealth consists in paper money, houses, slaves and furniture, and frivolous French finery among the 37 women…

Women, Prestige and Fashion

That the wives of senior officials saw themselves as of superior social position is suggested by Mentzel when he writes: ‘Wives of lesser officials and of wealthy burghers are not so narrow in their outlook as the ladies of high degree.’38 The distinction between the ‘ladies of high degree’ and those who were socially below them was acted out through the dress and possessions of the socially influential. In order to maintain the social hierarchy it was important for the men and women of the VOC official elite to assert their position through the use of highly conspicuous goods, a privilege which was protected through sumptuary legislation. The most important aim of the protection of status and rank for the Dutch East India Company was to maintain the impression of the power and prestige of the Company in

36 Schoeman, K. (ed.). 2002. Die Suidhoek van Afrika: Geskrifte oor Suid Afrika uit die Nederlandse Tyd, 1652- 1806. Pretoria: Protea, 80. Translation: ‘As my twelfth and thirteenth year passed, so did the weak feelings of my childhood. Without thought I went through the world, yes, I would have liked to follow the beauty and fashions of the day if my poor state allowed it, but I could not. My parents were poor and my father strictly forbade me to take part in it.’ 37Schutte, G.J. (ed.).1982. Briefwisseling van Hendrik Swellengrebel Jr. oor Kaapse Sake, 1778-1792. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 318. 38 Mentzel, Geographical-topographical Description, part 2, 108.

49 the eyes of its lower-ranking officials.39 In order to do so, the use of conspicuous goods by those of lower rank was restricted. Clothing, being one of the items restricted by the sumptuary legislation, was an important tool for the establishing of the social precedence of the VOC official elite and their wives. Besides this, the wives of VOC officials had greater opportunity of accessing the newest fashions from Europe via the VOC’s extensive trade network. This enabled high-ranking women to acquire the latest fashions, which would trickle down to the lower ranks as affluent members of society attempted to imitate the newest styles. Since much of the clothing worn was hand-made at the Cape, copying the newest style of dress did not depend on importing ready-made clothes, instead it relied on the skill of the individual. John Barrow gives some insight into this process when he writes of Cape women in the 1790s:

They are expert at the needle, at all kinds of lace, knotting and tambour work, and in general make up their own dresses, following the prevailing fashions of England 40 brought from time to time by the female passengers bound to India.

In the same way other visitors en route to the East would aid the diffusion of fashions from Europe, especially French styles which were particularly favoured by the women at the Cape during the last quarter of the 18th century, as was discussed earlier. Cornelis de Jong, who resided in the Governor’s house at the Cape in the 1790s and subsequently came into contact with the highest echelons of Cape society, later writes of the women of the VOC official elite:

…alles is te rijk; wetende dat zij zooals alle vrouwen, tooisel noodig hebben, vindt men haar zelden ongekapt of zonder opschik. De strikjes, de linten en gazen zijn met 41 veel zorg en overleg geplaast.

Despite the relatively small size of the settlement at the Cape, there was occasion enough for prominent women to show off the newest fashions. Celebrations were held at the Castle on special occasions, among them the birthday of the Governor and the Prince of Orange. These

39 Schoeman, Dogter van Sion, 29. 40 Quoted in ibid., 234-35. 41 Ibid., 242.

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occasions would be attended by high-ranking officials and prominent free burghers and would be grand affairs with a feast, music and dancing. Of the women, le Vaillant writes in 1790 that he was ‘surprised to see that the women dress and adorn themselves with the same fastidious elegance as our French ladies, but they have neither their style nor their graces.’42 Le Vaillant adds further that the women at the Cape were ‘mad about dancing; thus rarely a week passes without several balls taking place’43, thus ensuring that sufficient social occasion existed for display by the elite. The social precedence of the VOC official elite and their wives ensured that they took precedence at all social and state occasions at which times they used clothing as qualifier of their status, and it is for this reason that we find excessive amounts of elaborate clothing in the primary sources pertaining to the VOC official elite.

Juffrouw Anna van Kervel: The Governor’s Daughter

One of the few visual sources we have of the clothing of important individuals at the Cape is a scene of the sinking of the ship the Visch on 5 May 1740 (see figure 3.3). The ship entered the bay at night and was wedged between the rocks it struck. According to Mentzel, as soon as it was light the Governor and the other chief officials hastened to the spot where the ship was. The most notable members of Cape society were congregated on the beach, among them the daughter of the late Governor van Kervel, Anna van Kervel, who is referred to by Mentzel as the jonge Juffrouw, ‘Juffrouw’ being a title that was only given to daughters of socially prominent families.44 Besides Anna van Kervel, the picture captures the backs of various other notable individuals. It was painted from a sketch made on the spot by a painter in the employ of Governor Swellengrebel, making it a valuable source for shedding light on th 45 the clothing of influential individuals at the Cape in the 18 century.

42 Le Vaillant, F. 2007. Travels into the Interior of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, translated and edited by Ian Glenn with the assistance of Catherine Lauga Du Plessis and Ian Farlam.Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, vol. 1, 17. 43 Ibid. 44 Mentzel, O.F. 1919. Life at the Cape in the Mid-Eighteenth Century: Being the Biography of Rudolph Siegfried Allemann. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 126. 45 Strutt, D. 1975. Fashion in South Africa, 1652-1900. Cape Town: A.A.Balkema, 78.

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46 Figure 3.3 Painting of the Stranding of the Visch, 1740

Governor van Kervel arrived at the Cape in 1708 and served in a variety of high-ranking positions here. Upon the death of Governor Noodt in 1729, was named Governor and van Kervel was promoted from the position of Pakhuismeester and Merchant to that of Secunde.47 In 1736 de la Fontaine applied to resign his post as Governor at the Cape and return to the Netherlands. This permission was granted on 20 July 1737. Subsequently van Kervel was named as Governor of the Cape and took over the position on 1 September.48 Unfortunately his term of governorship was short-lived and van Kervel died after only four weeks in his post. Although his wife died soon afterwards, it would seem some members of his family remained in the Cape for a few years. His eldest daughter, Anna van Kervel who is depicted in figure 3.1 only returned to Holland in 1741 where she married Jacob van Meerdervoort. Although Anna van Kervel was not the current Governor’s daughter, she still retained a position of social precedence as befitted her rank at the Cape. Also Mentzel suggest that Governor van Kervel was a popular man, and the respect due to her father would no doubt have accrued to Anna. At the time of the sinking of the Visch, Hendrik Swellengrebel was the Governor at the Cape but as his children were still very young, it is very probable that Anna van Kervel was still one of the higher ranking women in

46 Sourced from: Strutt, Fashion, 100-101. 47 Mentzel, Rudolph Siegfried Allemann, 92. 48 Ibid., 105.

52 the colony. This is indicated by the fact that over her head a slave holds a kiepersol, a type of sun shade that was seen as a rare symbol of status. Its general use was in fact forbidden by in 1687.49 The Sumptuary Legislation of 1755 limited the use of parasols such an extent that out of a population of around 12 000 Europeans at the Cape, no more than 50 men and their wives were allowed to use one.

Despite the fact that Anna van Kervel did not remain in the Cape for long after the painting of the sinking of the Visch, her presence in the portrait gives a great amount of insight into the dress of a fashionable woman of the day. Born in 1717 while her father was posted at the Cape, Anna van Kervel would have been 23 at the time of the sinking of the Visch, an age at which she could influence fashion and dress – an influence that Mentzel underscores when he writes of her that she ‘possessed such unusual understanding that one could not but regard her with the utmost esteem and admiration’. Comparing her to other girls and women at the Cape, Mentzel claimed that she ‘surpassed them all’.50 The painting of the sinking of the Visch is however not the first reference to Anna van Kervel. In the diary the Lammens sisters of Zeeland kept of their stay-over at the Cape in 1736, they refer to receiving an invitation from Anna van Kervel whose father was at this time still the Secunde. The sisters were picked up by the van Kervels’ carriage and taken to the Secunde’s house for tea. In their diary they refer to the 19-year old Anna as ‘a most dear and pretty young girl’. It seems as if these women got along very well as Anna ‘honoured’ them with a return visit the next evening, playing away at card games till late in the night, and also on the following night before the Lammens sisters continued their journey to Batavia.51 Clearly, then, by the turn of the 1730s, the young juffrouw van Kervel was at the centre of fashionable society in Cape Town, such as it existed in the small outpost.

Anna van Kervel and the other women depicted in the scene were in vogue with fashions all over Europe. All the women seem to be wearing hoops beneath their dresses. The hoop replaced the rump (), moving away from the back of the gown to form a voluminous

49 Botha, C.G. 1926. Social Life in the Cape Colony in the 18th Century. Cape Town: Juta, 61-62. 50 Mentzel, Life at the Cape, 105. Cf. Pretorius, C. 1998. Al Laggende en Pratende: Kaapse Vroue in die Sewentiende en Agtiende Eeu. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 58-59. 51 Barend-van Haeften, M.L. (ed.) 1996. Op Reis met de VOC: De Openhartige Dagboeken van de Zusters Lammens en Swellengrebel. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 101.

53 skirt which was stiffened by the insertion of cane or whalebone.52 The hoop only appeared in England in 1711, when a writer for the English Spectator mockingly wrote that he thought the woman wearing a hoop of whalebone ‘near her time [of giving birth]…but soon discovered all the modish part of her sex as far gone as herself.’53 Although thought something of a ridiculous fashion at the time by some, the fashion spread quickly and widely, in fact so much so that by 1736 Joachim von Dessin ordered whalebone hoops for his wife and seven-year old daughter.54 The painting of the sinking of the Visch suggests that the fashion of wearing hooped skirts was already firmly entrenched by 1741. The women in this painting wear clothing that would have been in fashion in Europe the same year with the exception of the French sacque which was popular in Europe between 1710 and 1750.55 Instead it would seem that elite women at the Cape preferred the equally fashionable alternative to the sacque, which was a dress with a fitted bodice worn over a hooped skirt. Aprons were very popular at the Cape in the first half of the 18th century with many of the women in the painting wearing them as items of ornamentation rather than utility items.56 Aprons could be both long and short and could accompany almost any style of gown.

Anna van Kervel is dressed in a green and white striped dress with pleated cuffs across the bend of her arm. Striped material was popular for at the time.57 Although we cannot see the front of Anna van Kervel’s ensemble, all women of the time wore some form of kerchief to cover the décolletage of their gowns. Her entire outfit suggests the peak of fashion at the time.58 On her head she wears a pinner with lappets, decorated with green ribbons and a red bow which matches her red stockings and shoe ribbons. The style of the wide pinner with lappets that Anna van Kervel is wearing is copied by the three other ladies depicted on the painting, a fact which according to Daphne Strutt might suggest that Anna 59 van Kervel made the particular form of headwear fashionable.

52 Strutt, Fashion, 67. 53 Ibid. 54 Franken, J.L.M. 1940. ‘’n Kaapse Huishoue in die 18de Eeu: Uit von Dessin se Briefboek en Memoriaal.’ Argief Jaarboek vir Suid-Afrikaanse Geskiedenis 3. Cape Town: Cape Times, 18. 55 Ibid., 78. 56 Ibid., 117. 57 Ibid., 78. 58 Pretorius, Al Laggende, 59. 59 Strutt, Fashion, 79.

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From the painting of the Visch it would appear that the elite of Cape Town were up to date with the fashions in Europe. The fact that the women all wore similar clothing suggests that they either copied visitors to the Cape or women who were exposed to the prevailing fashions in Europe, which would not have occurred in Europe where there was a greater variety of styles and fashions to influence their choice.

Anna Fothergill-Swellengrebel: Second Lady of the Cape

Johannes Balthasar Swellengrebel was the son of a German merchant who was born in Moscow in 1671, entered the service of the VOC in 1692 and was stationed at the Cape in 1697. He was very successful in the employ of the VOC and became a member of the Council of Policy at the Cape, which is indicative of the position and status he held here. Swellengrebel was married at the Cape to Johanna Cruse.60 Johanna Cruse was the daughter of Jeronimus Cruse who was also a member of the Council of Policy earlier. Their eldest son, Hendrik Swellengrebel was born in 1700, entered the VOC service in 1713 as an assistant and was nominated to the Council of Policy in 1724. He became Governor of the 61 Cape in 1739 and served in this position until 1751 before retiring to the Netherlands.

Individuals born into burgher society were not easily taken up into the VOC official elite. According to Schutte, ‘[o]f the ninety-four officials employed in the central administration in Cape Town in 1779, forty-eight were of Cape birth; however, they were all sons of VOC officials.’62 This fact in itself illustrates the importance of family ties for the promotion of individuals in the Cape. The Swellengrebel family is a prime example of one of the few Cape families who were able to convert their colonial wealth into a position of governing elite when Hendrik Swellengrebel became the first and only locally born Cape Governor. What is however significant is that his father and cousin were both employed by the VOC, his father

60 Schutte, Briefwisseling, 26. 61 De Kock, W.J. & Kruger, D.W. 1972. Dictionary of South African Biography, volume 2. Cape Town & Johannesburg: Tafelberg, 726-26. 62 Schoeman, K. 2013. Here & Boere: Die Kolonie aan die Kaap onder die Van der Stels, 1679-1712. Pretoria: Protea, 157.

55 as a junior merchant, while his cousin acted as Secunde at the height of his career, an 63 illustrious position for another Cape-born son.

Wealth, which was commonly associated with the VOC elite, opened the way for the Swellengrebel family into the VOC elite. The use of wealth in conspicuous ways was necessary for establishing the status of an individual and with the familial background of the Swellengrebels it would have played even more important role in validating the position of Governor Swellengrebel and his family. During Hendrik Swellengrebel’s term as Governor the importance of public display and ritual is underscored by the number of people he employed in his personal retinue, as well as the functions these individuals fulfilled. Hendrik Swellengrebel’s retinue consisted of a chef, a baker, a painter, three hunters, two tailors, a shoemaker and a household servant.64 What is interesting to note is that three out of the nine servants mentioned here were involved in the outfitting of the Governor’s person, a fact which gives some insight into the importance of clothing to an individual of high rank.

Hendrik Swellengrebel was not the only one of his family to invest in clothing. Sergius Swellengrebel, cousin to Hendrik Swellengrebel and Secunde at the Cape, and his wife acquired a large amount of clothing throughout their lives.

In order to investigate the social and economic aspects of a member of this family, probate inventories are used which contain detailed information on the material life of the individual. The deceased estate inventory of Sergius Swellengrebel’s wife, Anna Fothergill contains detailed information on the clothing of a woman who belonged to the VOC elite. As wife to the second highest-ranking official in the Cape, Anna Fothergill would have played a prominent role as purveyor of fashion. Upon her death in 1764 her inventory includes 30 linen aprons, which during this time were worn as part of everyday wear, three silk aprons, two with white embroidery and one decorated with gold lining. In addition her inventory includes 16 pairs of cotton stockings, 67 handkerchiefs, 8 lace caps, 3 bonnets, fans, and a few capes in different materials. Also included are 35 dresses referred to in the inventory as sacken, a style of dress called a sacque in French which during this time was very

63 Ross and Schrikker, ‘VOC Official Elite’, 37. 64 Schoeman, Dogter van Sion, 29.

56 fashionable.65 Her inventory makes provision for her son to inherit a further 3 dresses which brings the total number of dresses in Anna Fothergill’s inventory to 38. The presence of the sacque dresses in Anna’s inventory indicates how fashions diffused from Europe to South Africa via not only the extensive trade networks of the VOC but also family connections, and how the women of the VOC official elite continued to dress according to current European fashions.

Underneath her dresses, Anna Fothergill would have worn some form of corseting and for this reason her inventory also contains six stays which were made with whalebone or wood with elaborate fronts to bridge the gap between the bodice robbing of her dresses.66 Other underwear includes 56 which were made of fine soft linen, worn beneath the or stays. The excessive number of these chemises suggests that Anna Fothergill was very particular about her person.67 Her neckwear, also referred to as handkerchiefs, consist of 67 assorted pieces as well as a black gauze handkerchief, one with fringes and five with embroidery. If it is taken into account that handkerchiefs and aprons could be mixed and matched for different outfits, it would suggest that Anna Fothergill had a remarkable amount of clothing for her time. Four pairs of shoes and 15 fans complete her wardrobe. That Anna Fothergill was left a wealthy woman after the death of her husband, Sergius Swellengrebel, is clear from the amount of clothing she possessed upon her death. Clothing was valuable and would not easily be discarded, rather it would be repaired or altered to suit the latest fashions, and upon the death of an individual would be bequeathed to relatives or friends. In the case of Anna Fothergill’s deceased estate, the value of her clothing was enough to bequeath most of it to her sister-in-law, Jennij Raper, who at that time was living in London, while some individual pieces were given to her son at the Cape. He inherited:

1 blue and silver dress 1 dress with coloured flowers 1 white sacque with flowers 1 unfinished pink dress 1 white mantel

65 Pretorius, Al Laggende, 61. 66 Strutt, Fashion, 112. 67 Cf. ibid., 115.

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1 brown handkerchief with gold embroidery 1 white handkerchief with gold embroidery 1 white handkerchief with silver embroidery 1 pair of white shoes with silver and gold flowers 1 fan Hunting and horse riding clothing

Besides the various items of clothing included in Fothergill’s inventory there are two sets of caps made of lace as well as three mourning caps. In addition to these the inventory contains eight caps with lace, two flowered gauze caps and three unidentified caps. Besides these head coverings, Fothergill also possessed six bonnets, six hoods and a black velvet calot, as 68 well as four hats.

Clothing was mostly made by the women themselves, or as was the case for the more well-to- do women of the day by handy slave women. Mentzel refers to embroidery done by slave women in the 1730s:

The slave women from Bengal, Suratta and other places can work and embroider (…) most beautifully, so long as the designs are provided for them. These slaves are for this reason very valuable, and a housewife who possesses any of them keeps them 69 employed upon work of this kind the whole year long.

Anna Fothergill’s inventory also included a significant amount of material which was used to make clothes. The material included in the inventory:

Green Chinese gauze Chinese linen Fine hamans dimet with flowers Blue calmink Red moeris

68 TEPC, MOOC 8/12.15 a-e. 69 Schoeman, Here & Boere, 257.

58 Red saaij 1 piece blue carsaaij Blue linen Chintz Fine blue striped material Blue linen 1 role of Flemish linen Green silk

According to Schoeman, jewellery in early estate inventories are surprisingly simple and would probably have been viewed as an investment rather than a showpiece. By comparison, the remarkable amount of jewellery found in Anna Fothergill estate supports her elite status and remarkable wealth. The inventory lists the following pieces:

1 gold ring with 1 diamond 1 gold ring with 5 small diamonds 1 gold ring with 5 small diamonds 1 gold ring with 11 diamonds 1 gold ring with a blue sapphire and 12 small diamonds 1 gold ring with 7 diamonds 1 gold ring with 1 ruby and 2 diamonds 1 gold thumb ring with 9 diamonds 1 pair earrings with 22 diamonds 1 pair gold earrings, each with 3 diamonds 1 gold pocket watch with hook 1 pocket watch 1 pair of gold suspenders 1 small gold bar 1 piece of gold 3 gold rings 1 pair of gold earrings 1 gold buckle 2 buckles with stones 1 gold ring with 1 green emerald and 2 diamonds

59 1 gold watch clasp 1 gold signet ring 1 red signet set in gold 1 large stone set in gold as pendant 1 pair of shoe buckles with stones 1 pair of calf buckles with steel inlay 1 pair of buckles with ribbon 2 pairs of silver shoe buckles 2 pairs of silver calf buckles 1 pair of green stone earrings 2 strings of pearls 1 pair of earrings 1 string of pearls and earrings

According to Strutt, a woman of this time would favour the wearing of strings of pearls as necklaces which could also be worn intertwined in the hair.70 Paste or jewelled buckles for shoes and neckbands were also worn. Anna Fothergill has numerous buckles in her inventory, among them one gold buckle which would probably have been worn with a neckband, bracelet or girdle.71 Anna Fothergill possessed a small fortune in jewels. In 1739, 25 years before her death, a gold ring with 9 diamonds fetched 60 rixdollars in the auction of Johannes Heufke’s estate.72 Diamond jewellery was very expensive at the Cape and there are numerous pieces included in Fothergill’s inventory which would have been very valuable. Anna Fothergill would have been exquisitely dressed for her time, completing her ensembles with precious jewels and accessories that would have made her a fashion icon for her circle at the Cape.

Changes over Time

As the 18th century wore on, the function that women of the VOC official elite played as role models and gate keepers of fashion at the Cape changed. Fashion represents outward proof

70 Strutt, Fashion, 121. 71 Cf. ibid. 72 TEPC, MOOC 10/5.26.

60 of an affluent society. The relative growth in affluence over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries would have resulted in the growth of the conspicuous use of fashion. As was the case in Europe, the lowest classes aped their betters through dress, the main competition being between the elite (in the case of the Cape, the VOC’s high-ranking officials) on the one hand and those members of burgher society who would come to be known as the landed gentry. The newly wealthy members of the burgher society attempted to imitate the VOC official elite through conspicuous consumption.73 In essence Thorstein Veblen’s theory of ‘conspicuous consumption’ is the acquisition and display of possessions with the intention of gaining social status.74 Social comparison theory suggests that people tend to compare themselves with others in order to determine how well they are doing.75 People can engage in both upward and downward comparison, but upward comparison will occur faster which can lead to feelings of inferiority, resulting in motivation to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ 76 through the attaining and public display of the same level of possessions.

There was a marked income inequality between different Company servants, an inequality that would continue during the early settlement of free burghers at the Cape. As the 18th century progressed, a service economy emerged in Cape Town that catered for the circulating population of sailors and provided maintenance and supplies for passing ships.77 This developing economy included taverns, lodging houses, shops, bakeries, breweries and building works, amongst others.78 The expanding economy offered opportunities for enterprising free burgers resulting in a rise of living standards of many of the burghers and their wives, who used status symbols such as clothing as a way of portraying this new-found wealth. The modes of dress had changed due to the economic boom at the Cape, a fact that was accounted for by two factors, urbanisation and the rise of the bourgeoisie.79 Both these th phenomena were seen at the settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in the course of the 17

73 Freudenberger, ‘Fashion’, 40. 74 Ordabayeva, N. & Chandon, P. 2011. ‘Getting Ahead of the Joneses: When Equality Increases Conspicuous Consumption among Bottom-Tier Consumers’, Journal of Consumer Research, 38(1), 27. 75 Ibid., 29. 76 Ibid., 30. 77 Du Plessis, S. & Du Plessis, S. 2012. ‘Happy in the Service of the Company: The Purchasing Power of VOC Salaries at the Cape in the 18th Century’, Economic History of Developing Regions, 27(1), 126. 78 Cf. Erasmus, G.J., 1986. ‘Die Geskiedenis van die Bedryfslewe aan die Kaap, 1652 tot 1795’. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of the Orange Free State. 79 Freudenberger, ‘Fashion’, 39.

61

and 18th centuries. According to Du Plessis & Du Plessis, a study of the evolution of real wages in the Cape of Good Hope suggests that the market economy at the Cape expanded steadily throughout the 18th century, culminating in a boom period during the 1780s due to the expansion of the market with the stationing of the French garrison at the Cape.

As we saw in the previous chapter, the Fourth Anglo-Dutch war greatly influenced the Cape economy and society. French troops under Colonel Conway arrived here in July 1781, creating the catalyst for starting a new period of great prosperity for the people of Cape Town. The influence of the affluent times brought on by the stationing of the French garrison at the Cape on the fashions worn at the Cape could not be reversed. In fact it would seem that as time went by the importance of dress increased. At the New Year’s dance of 1793 at the Company post in Soetmelksvlei in the Overberg, a Moravian missionary writes: ‘The pride of the women here is astonishing. They are farmer’s daughters, but I have seldom seen 80 a lady in Germany walk about more elegantly dressed and with headgear more grand.’

Although the importance of VOC women as purveyors of fashion was established during the very early years of the colony when all the Europeans at the Cape were still in Company employ, this was to change over time. Initially there were very few women at the Cape, serving to detract from the social competition between the classes. After the first free burghers were released from Company employ they were relatively poor and could not at first compete with the grandeur of the VOC official elite. But as the colony expanded, so did the income of the burghers and the number of women at the Cape. A small number of free burghers became extremely wealthy and by the 1780s the Cape Colony experienced an economic boom due to the stationing of French and Swiss garrisons at Cape Town. As the economy boomed and the wealth of burghers increased, so did their tastes for fashion and status symbols. and as the free burgher populations’ consumption of these status symbols grew, so too did the competition between wealthy burghers and the VOC elite. The economic stations of the burgher elite were levelled with those of the VOC official elite, and burghers could afford to dress themselves lavishly. In doing so, the power of the VOC officials as role models of fashion diminished.

80 Quoted in Schoeman, Dogter van Sion, 242.

62 An example of how the women of the VOC official elite gradually lost their role as role models of fashion can be seen from the deceased estate inventory of Wilhelmina Zeeman which was compiled in 1793. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a global increase in the awareness of luxury and display.81 Wealthier people increased their consumption of items such as clothing and fashionable objects became increasingly associated with status. Clothing, which has been qualified as one of these status objects, were objects of displaying one’s status and rank in society, especially for women. Wilhelmina Zeeman was the wife of Captain Johannes van der Plas which placed her among the slightly lesser women of those men in VOC employ, although her husband was considerably better off both in terms of status and wealth than many members of society. Divided into the three groups of divisions within the Company structure, Wilhelmina Zeeman’s husband held the highest rank he could within his own category, viz. the military. Despite the fact that she was not part of the small group of the elite members of society as defined by the administrative hierarchy, her inventory contains an impressive amount of clothing which may be attributed to the changes in fashion caused by the stationing of the French garrison at the Cape during the 1780s. Wilhelmina Zeeman serves as an indicator of how society changed towards the end of the 18th century when the VOC was in financial ruin and society had become more independent from Company rule. Women who were not part of the VOC official elite competed with those who still held the position of the foremost women in the colony. Among which a new generation of women adopted the accessible French fashions imported to the Cape during the 1780s. Wilhelmina Zeeman must have been a very fashionable woman for her time. Her inventory includes fifteen dresses in the French sacque style, twelve dresses of different styles, one unfinished chintz dress, seven jackets, 21 pairs of cotton stockings and 29 chemises. Her accessories include three pairs of shoes, one pair of mules for the protection of her shoes, four women’s hats and one gauze . Three fans complete the ensemble.

It is however Wilhelmina Zeeman’s jewellery that is truly interesting. Her inventory contains two gold pocket watches, four gold brooches, three pairs of gold buttons set with stones, one of which was set with rubies. Other jewellery included in the inventory:

81 Fourie, J. & Uys, Y. 2011. ‘A Survey and Comparison of Luxury Item Ownership in the Eighteenth Century ’, Stellenbosch Economic Working Papers 14/11, 2.

63 3 pairs of gold earrings 1 gold ring set with pearls 2 gold ring set with stones 1 gold ring set with 7 diamonds 1 gold ring set with 1 large and several small stones 1 gold ring set with an amethyst 1 gold thumb ring 1 silver buckle mounted in gold with stones 1 silver hair 1 gold ring set with jewels 1 gold watch chain 1 pair of small hand bracelets brasseletjes 1 silver braaijhoutje [clasp?] 1 ivory braaijhoutje 1 gold dragonfly 1 gold ring set with pearls 1 pair of arm bracelets brasseletten 82 1 pair of gold hand bracelets handbrasseletje

From the items in Wilhelmina Zeeman’s inventory it would seem that a woman who was of a lower social rank at the Cape could by the late 18th century dress excessively for the time. A remarkable occurrence in the inventory of Wilhelmina Zeeman is a chest filled with 34 women’s hats. Despite the excessive number of hats the other items in the inventory do not indicate any form of shop keeping on the part of Wilhelmina Zeeman. Perhaps she was merely a woman who enjoyed a variety of head-gear. As the wife of a Captain, Wilhelmina would probably not have set the fashion trends had she lived 50 years earlier but as the world opened up and the Cape was brought into closer contact with Europe and prosperity grew amongst all classes, the importance of social position as a prerequisite for being fashionable changed. Role models of fashion could now be found amongst the wives of those who were not part of the high VOC official elite.

82 TEPC, MOOC 8/20.44 & MOOC 8/20.47.

64 Conclusion

The wives of the VOC official elite acted as role models, purveyors and to some extent gate- keepers of fashion at the Cape of Good Hope during the 18th century. Fashionable items of clothing were used as items of distinction between the social groupings at the Cape, distinguishing those who belonged to the upper echelons of society from those who were not. As the century progressed, however, and prosperity grew among the burgher class this distinction was contested through those individuals who had the financial ability to be fashionable, diminishing the role of the ladies of the high VOC official elite as role models of fashion.

65 Chapter 4 Free-Burgher Women and the Quest for Status

Free-Burghers and Cape Society

In 1652 the VOC founded a small settlement in Table Bay with the sole aim of producing fresh produce for its fleets sailing between Europe and Asia. The original VOC plan for the settlement in Table Bay included nothing more than the building of a fort and the laying out of a garden to supply passing ships with fresh produce. Jan van Riebeeck made the first exception to this initial plan, granting the right to keep a tavern next to the fort to Annetje Boom, the wife of the Company gardener.1 This tavern provided the men of passing ships with refreshments and lodging, although no doubt those who belonged to the garrison at the fort also frequented Annetje Boom’s tavern. In 1657 the VOC created a class of free burgers with the mandate of producing enough fresh produce for the demand created by this inter- continental trade. Although the VOC provided these early burghers with land and slaves this 2 new policy was not very successful as European style farming techniques failed in the Cape.

The free-burgher population settled into one of two roles. The first were urban free burghers (although the Cape remained rural in appearance) who made a livelihood from calling ships by running taverns or selling wares. In 1657, the year that the VOC created the free-burgher population, there were four taverns alongside the fort and other burghers employed as a tailor, a baker and a carpenter.3 The second group consisted of free burghers who farmed, providing the VOC with the fresh produce needed to restock passing ships. The annual opgaaf rolls do not make any distinction between those free burghers who lived in urban areas and those who settled in the immediate rural areas. Despite this, many of the wealthier settlers were initially farmers who made their money in agriculture before investing in urban properties. This movement between the urban and rural spaces of many of the wealthier settlers is suggested by a complaint made by the burgher councillors in 1708 that a number of farmers from

1 Bosman, D.B. and Thom, H.B. (eds). 1952-1957. Daghregister Gehouden by den Oppercoopman Jan Anthonisz van Riebeeck. Cape Town: A.A. Balkema. Volume II (1656-1658), 39; Böeseken, A.J. 1957. Resolusies van die Politieke Raad. Cape Town: Cape Times. Volume I (1651-1669), 73-74.; 2 Guelke, L. 1988. ‘The Anatomy of a Colonial Settler Population: Cape Colony, 1657-1750.’ The International Journal of African Historical Studies 21(3), 5. 3 Bosman and Thom, Daghregister, Volume II (1656-1658), 155, 180, 197-8 and Volume III (1659-1662), 158.

66 Stellenbosch and Drakenstein evade urban militia duty even though they have houses in town 4 and conduct many of their business affairs in town.

When Mentzel wrote his recollection of the time he spent at the Cape in the 1730s, he divided the free-burgher population into four classes determined by their economic well-being. The fourth class was made up of the cattle farmers or trekboers in the rural interior who barely made a living from their toils. The second and third classes consisted of a range of farmers who produced some surplus from their agricultural endeavours. The first class, and the class particularly important in terms of this study, comprised those members of the burgher population who managed to live comfortably in Cape Town while also possessing a farm or various farms in the countryside.5 It is this class of free burghers which eventually developed into what Ross has labelled the ‘landed gentry’.6 It is members from this group who attempted to contest their social position by using their newly acquired wealth in conspicuous ways.

Gavin Williams now argues that the term ‘landed gentry’ should be discarded as it is not applicable to the situation at the Cape.7 The term refers to a group of burghers who lived in luxury due to economic success while in possession of land and slaves and who held high social status. It is however not the same as the traditional landed gentry of, for instance, England where land is inherited and wealth depended on the farming of arable land by peasants while also holding political power. In the Cape this was not quite the case: although those members of the burgher society that Ross called the ‘gentry’ did hold some public offices at the Cape they were ultimately under VOC political power.8 Added to this is the fact that many examples of prominent members of the burgher elite did not necessarily acquire wealth through farming activities but through other avenues such as marriage, the

4 Jeffreys, K.M. & Naudé, S.D. (eds), 1948. Kaapse Plakkaatboek II (1707-1753). Cape Town: Cape Times, 7- 8. 5 Cf. Groenewald, G. 2007. ‘Een Dienstig Inwoonder: Entrepreneurs, Social Capital and Identity in Cape Town, c. 1720-1750’. South African Historical Journal 59(1), 126-27. 6 Ross, R. 1983. ‘The Rise of the Cape Gentry’. Journal of Southern African Studies 9(2), 193-217. 7 Williams, G. 2013. ‘Who, Where and When Were the Cape Gentry?’ Economic History of Developing Regions 28(2), 83-111. 8 Free burghers were called thus because they were freed from their original contracts with the VOC. They did, however, remain subjects of the Company.

67 meat and alcohol pacht systems, and other entrepreneurial enterprises. It is true that many of these wealthy entrepreneurs diversified their property and interests by acquiring a number of farms, such as Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen did, but their initial wealth did not derive from farming. As Groenewald states, Eksteen was ‘not a typical example of gentry living off the land, but an excellent example of an entrepreneur who takes on risks, grasps opportunities 9 with both hands, and who builds up and uses social capital in the process’.

Naturally property was a major investment for many of these nouveaux riches of the Cape settlement and, as mentioned above, many of these wealthy farmers and entrepreneurs came into possession of one or more farms as well as urban property. Yet, until the 1750s there was no spatial separation between the poorer and wealthier residents within Cape Town. In fact, it often happened that people of widely different socio-economic positions lived in the same block. This was mainly due to the fact that Cape Town was not nearly big enough to allow this type of spatial differentiation.10 The only form of spatial separation was that of some of the VOC employees who lived within the central part of the Castle while the garrison live in the surrounding barracks. So if not by spatial separation, people who newly acquired wealth attempted to display that wealth through the conspicuous use of status symbols, examples of which were mentioned in earlier chapters. For the purpose of this study we look at clothing and other forms of personal adornment, such as jewellery, as signifiers of status and social position. The hypothesis therefore is that urban women belonging to the free burgher population would make use of clothing as status symbol in order to perform their social identity as part of the elite of burgher society.

Urban Elite and the Landed Gentry

During the early part of the 18th century the Cape was already divided into three areas, Cape Town, its immediate rural hinterland and the frontier areas. Naturally Cape Town was the urban hub of the Colony where merchants and the urban elite played the most significant economic role in the free burgher population. The rural districts comprised cultivated farms near Cape Town and were home to the landed gentry of the Cape, while the Frontier areas

9 Groenewald, ‘Een Dienstig Inwoonder’, 150 n. 104. 10 Worden, N. 1998/9. ‘Space and Identity in VOC Cape Town’. Kronos: Journal of Cape History 25, 80.

68 consisted of thinly settled livestock farmers.11 Although there were different social and economic statuses in all three of these districts the richest settlers lived exclusively in urban Cape Town and the immediate agricultural hinterland. Both Groenewald and Williams have also argued that the group that Ross has referred to as the ‘gentry’ and the urban elite were not mutually exclusive if in fact there is any concrete way of differentiating between the two.

The appearance of new elites was part of the colonisation process which developed into two different avenues: the Cape gentry who invested in slaves and land, which Ross has termed the landed gentry; and the urban elite which developed from mercantile activities such as the alcohol pachten which Gerald Groenewald has written widely about. The retail of alcohol and meat was regulated by the VOC which issued pachten (leases) yearly. These pachten were bought by the highest bidder who then acquired the right to retail various types of alcohol or meat.12 The alcohol trade was very successful and profitable and served to create a relatively stable class of wealthy burghers who were urban based but often with extensive interests in agriculture. Between 1680 and 1795 the VOC sold alcohol pachten to 198 individuals, a substantial number of people who formed a large part of the urban elite.13 A second, even more profitable trade was the meat pachten for the supply of meat to the VOC which however required extensive capital investment and was thus harder to enter. In some senses the alcohol pacht was easier to enter, less risky and with quicker profits since it did not require as much start-up capital.14 But the urban elite did not only consist of those free burghers who managed to accumulate the necessary money to purchase either an alcohol or a meat pacht. In fact, this group consisted of people of various professions and skills while others individuals combined the identity of landed gentry with that of the urban elite by partaking in the accumulation of land as well as investment in retail or acting as credit providers.

Robert Ross describes the rich free burgers in the immediate hinterland of Cape Town as the ‘landed gentry’.15 Ross bases this claim on the expansion of viticulture and grain production

11 Guelke, ‘Anatomy’, 18. 12 Groenewald, G. 2011. ‘Dynasty Building, Family Networks and Social Capital: Alcohol Pachters and the Development of a Colonial Elite at the Cape of Good Hope, c. 1760-1790’. New Contree 62, 2. 13 Groenewald, ‘Een Dienstig Inwoonder’, 130. 14 Ibid., 131.

15 Ross, ‘Cape Gentry’.

69 between 1720 and 1750, with a concomitant growth in territorial agriculture and the economy. He argues that these enterprising farmers who managed to bring more land under production were the ones who became prosperous by the 1780s. It is these people who elicited comments from visitors to the Cape about the wealth and luxury in which they lived. Thus, in 1783 Commissioner Hendrik commented on these farmers:

…on various farms, that I expressly visited, I found a far from simple life, and nothing except signs of prosperity, to the extent that, in addition to splendour and magnificence in clothe and carriages, the houses are filled with elegant furniture and 16 tables decked with silverware and served by tidily clothed slaves.

Gavin Williams does not disagree with the prosperity of many of the households on farms in the rural hinterland of the Cape by the second half of the 18th century, but he does contend the source of their prosperity and the ability to classify the individual as belonging to one group or another. Williams argues that all wealthy farm owners did not necessarily acquire their wealth from farming activities, but rather that there were a multitude of ways for achieving economic prosperity. He states that the richest farmers at the Cape accumulated wealth from their marriages to widows who inherited property, as well as from trade, Company contracts, the pacht system and other entrepreneurial enterprises.17 Some of the individuals who have been classified as belonging to the landed gentry such as Hendrik Eksteen originally made their fortune through commercial activities such as the alcohol pachten after which he invested in land and slaves, eventually acquiring seven farms, six town properties, seven loan farms and 100 slaves.18 Therefore there is not always a clear dividing line between the ‘landed gentry’ and the ‘urban elite’ as they were not mutually exclusive, and increasingly th 19 intermarried in the second half of the 18 century.

16 Quoted in Naude, S.D. 1950. ‘Willem Cornelis Boers’, Archives Year Book for South African History 13(2), 413. 17 Williams, ‘Who, Where, and When’, 97. 18 Groenewald, G. 2009. ‘An Early Modern Entrepreneur: Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen and the Creation of Wealth in Dutch Colonial Cape Town, 1702-1741.’ Kronos: Southern African Histories 35, 9. 19 Cf. on this development, Groenewald, ‘Dynasty Building’, 38-42.

70 The Role of Burgher Women in Elite Formation

Writing about Cape society, Martin Hall claims that ‘the emergent elite of the colonial countryside formed a web of economic and social relationships around connections between women who were marked out by their claim to racial purity and superiority.’20 Hall suggests that women formed an integral part of early colonial society at the Cape, serving as the stabilising factor in a society that was ever-changing due to the influx of immigrants from Europe and elsewhere. The importance of women in Cape society, especially with regards to economic relationships can be seen in the work of Groenewald on the alcohol pachters. Groenewald argues convincingly that male immigrants often used marriages to Cape-born women in order to gain financial and social capital which was then used for the expansion of 21 their entrepreneurial interests.

These marriages to Cape-born women allowed immigrant men use marriage to tap into an existing network of ‘social capital’, which is the support an individual can gain from those in his social circle, his friends and family, and which can be translated into financial gain.22 By marrying a Cape-born woman, an immigrant man also married into an existing social circle with all the benefits that went with it. For this reason, Cape burgher women were essential to the development of an elite burgher class. The same process also occurred on the frontier with marriage strategy being used to create family dynasties and control over land and 23 resources.

Burgher Women, Clothing and Status

Burgher women during the VOC period were part of a culture which was clearly defined according to rank and social status. This social hierarchy was evident from the occurrences of special occasions such as the birthday of the Prince of Orange or that of the Governor where high-ranking officials and prominent free burghers would take part in the celebrations;

20 Hall, M. 1994. ‘The Secret Lives of Houses: Women and Gables in the Eighteenth-Century Cape.’ Social Dynamics 20(1), 3. 21 Groenewald, ‘Dynasty Building’, 23. 22 Groenewald, ‘Een Dienstig Inwoonder’, 141. 23 Cf. Mitchell, L.J. 2009. Belongings: Propety, Family and Identity in Colonial South Africa (An Exploration of Frontiers, 1725-c.1830). New York: Columbia University Press, esp. chapter 5.

71 the funerals of high ranking officials and ceremonies regarding the visits of high ranking VOC officials.24 The upper echelons of the burgher elite therefore seem to have been, if not equal, close in status to the VOC official elite, sharing in the official festivities and dining at the Governor’s table. Mentzel refers to the fact that the Governor held two big events each year, the first was in February on the eve of the sailing of the homeward bound fleet, which was mainly held for naval and military officers. But the second was on 20 October,

when the burgher mounted and infantry forces have completed their annual week of military exercises. On the last day the burgher companies draw up in front of the Castle gate, which is barred, and each Company fires three musketry salvoes. The salvoes are answered by cannon shots from the Castle. The Companies then draw off and the men separate until the next year. In the evening all the burgher officers are entertained by the Governor, and to this banquet, as well as to the earlier one, all local 25 people of distinction are invited…

Mentzel writes that at the Governor’s table ‘there would always be present some of the senior officials or some prominent burghers’,26 indicating that some of the members of the free burgher society managed to cross social lines. Members of the free-burgher elite such as the burgher councillors and their wives were also received at the Castle for New Year’s festivities, while the association between the VOC elite and elite free burghers was further encouraged by intermarriage between these groups,27 as well as dances and receptions held at the homes of some of the wealthier inhabitants of the town. A particularly prominent example of the intermarriage between the VOC official elite and members of the burgher elite is the marriage between Governor Rijk Tulbagh and the sister of Hendrik Swellengrebel. Late in the 18th century during a period when the inhabitants of Cape Town was known for their imitation of European culture and fashions, le Vaillant refers to this association when he writes of the Cape:

24 Worden, ‘Space and Identity’, 12 and Ross, R. 2004. Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750- 1870: A Tragedy of Manners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19-26. 25 Mentzel, O.F. 1919. Life at the Cape in the Mid-Eighteenth Century: Being the Biography of Rudolph Siegfried Allemann. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 112. 26 Mentzel, O.F. 1925. A Geographical-Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope, part 2. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 100. 27 Cf. Groenewald, ‘Dynasty Building’, 40-41.

72

Almost all the women play the harpsichord; it is their only talent. They like to sing and are mad about dancing; thus rarely a week passes without several balls taking place. The officers of ships calling in the bay often give them the occasion for offering a ball. When I arrived, the Governor used to give a public ball once a month, 28 and the people of importance followed his example.

It becomes clear, then, that there existed quite a few instances where the VOC elite and the burgher elite could interact socially at the Cape; a contributing factor being the small size of the settlement. Another social situation where people of different statuses could interact was provided by weddings. Mentzel refers to them as being ‘very mixed affairs; higher and subordinate officials as well as common burghers meet on the same plane.’29 Naturally, too, people of different social strata also interacted through being members of the same church congregation. The interaction between VOC officials and the free burgher elite is evident in the fact that the church council at the Cape consisted of both high VOC officials and members of the free burgher elite. According to Biewenga, 50% of the church council comprised free burghers who would serve for a two-year period before they were replaced by a democratic nomination which was forwarded to the Council of Policy. The latter body, however, had the final say in the appointment of a new member of the church council.30 Social ties between members of the VOC official elite and the burgher elite would either be established by their interaction as members of the church council or would be perpetuated by the appointment of friends or family members by the Council of Policy.

Friendships also seemed to have spanned the social divide. Mentzel testifies to this, stating that ‘…girls of the best families will, before their marriage, be intimate with respectable girls of much more lowly origin’.31 Yet the same seems not to be true of married women; in fact,

28 Le Vaillant, F. 2007. Travels into the Interior of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, translated and edited by Ian Glenn with the assistance of Catherine Lauga Du Plessis and Ian Farlam.Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, vol. 1, 17. 29 Mentzel, Geographical-topographical Description, part 2, 105. 30 Biewenga, A.W. 2002. ‘Kerk in een Volksplanting: De Kaap de Goede Hoop’, in Schutte, G.J. (ed.), Het Indisch Sion: De Gereformeerde Kerk onder de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie. Hilversum: Verloren, 208. 31 Mentzel, Geographical-topographical Description, part 2, 105, my emphasis.

73 Mentzel rather suggests that married women were the members of society who were most conscious of their social status. He writes that ‘formality governs the interchange of the ladies of the town. Among them social distinctions are sharply graded; pomp and circumstance play a leading role in determining the rules of etiquette.’32 And only a little further he adds: ‘unwritten laws define the attitude of women to women on different social 33 levels.’

The suggestion is therefore that although on one level there was much interaction between firstly the VOC elite and the burgher women of different statuses, often these self-same women would be the regulators of this interaction, determining the way in which the interaction took place through strict protocol. The same protocol would not apply to an unmarried woman who could still acquire either a higher or lower status through marriage. For this reason we will look mainly at married women in the following case studies as their social status became relatively fixed upon marriage although, as in the case of Wilhelmina de Wit, that too could alter upon a later marriage. Through the following case studies I will attempt to explore the ways in which women of the burgher society used their clothing as a means of displaying their social status.

Josina van Dam: Entrepreneur and Business Woman

The case of Josina van Dam is particularly interesting when looking at the development of Cape society and the role of women in it. The reason for this is that Josina van Dam was one of very few women who possessed an alcohol pacht in her own right which, while not unknown, was by no means a common occurrence. Josina van Dam also exemplifies the role of women in the acquisition of social capital as can be seen from her marriage to Jan van der Swijn on 8 July 1731. He was a Dutch immigrant from The Hague who arrived aboard the ship the Wolplaarsdijk in 1723 as an adelborst (midshipman). In 1731, the same year as his first marriage, he became a free burgher.34 His marriage to Josina van Dam was particularly beneficial as she was the widow of the alcohol pachter, Jan Jacob Stokvliet, which placed

32 Ibid.,107. 33 Ibid. 34 De Wet, G.C. 1971. Resolusies van die Politieke Raad. Johannesburg: Government Printer. Volume 7, 438, n. 169.

74 both herself and van der Swijn within the social circles of the alcohol pachters and allowed for their own economic advancement.

Groenewald states correctly that although the figures of women officially participating in the alcohol trade are low (in fact fewer than five percent of all pachters at the Cape were women), one should take into account that women widely participated in the trade, although not necessarily in their own names.35 Many women were involved in the running of the business although their position was not officially recognised. Josina van Dam was exceptional in that she was in possession of five alcohol pachten in the years 1730 and 1731, all in her own name. Not only did this make Josina van Dam a remarkable burgher woman but the suggestion is that she was an able entrepreneur, being one of only five pachters who 36 were in possession of three to five alcohol pachten in the 1730s.

That Josina van Dam was a very wealthy woman cannot be disputed. The alcohol pacht was a very lucrative trade, so lucrative that burghers were prepared to pay huge amounts to enter it. Furthermore, her social connections established her husband, Jan van der Swijn, putting him in a position to further his own social and entrepreneurial ambitions. Van der Swijn became a large scale alcohol pachter following Josina’s death: he owned 19.67 alcohol pachten between 1732 and 1747, averaging 1.31 pachten per year. The exploitation of these alcohol pachten made Josina van Dam (initially in her own capacity) and her husband exceedingly wealthy; wealthy enough to form part of the urban elite, a group of people whose ostentations use of conspicuous goods would eventually cause great concern for the VOC 37 government.

The inventories of both Josina van Dam and that of her husband suggest the luxury they lived in. Jan van der Swijn, who died some years after Josina, was in possession of 21 slaves although he only owned town properties. This extravagance suggests that van der Swijn was more concerned with the social prestige of slave ownership than the necessity of their labour. This was excessive in the Cape where slaveholding rarely exceeded 10 slaves showing that

35 Groenewald, ‘Een Dienstig Inwoonder’, 135. 36 Ibid. 37 Groenewald, G. 2012. ‘Entrepreneurs and the Making of a Free Burgher Society’, in Worden, N. Cape Town between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town. Johannesburg & Hilversum: Jacana & Verloren, 55.

75 these slaves were likely acquired not to labour on farms but rather to serve as servants in an urban landscape. A second example of van der Swijn’s extravagance is his ownership of five horses meant to pull the ‘chaise with four horse-harnesses’ inventoried in his estate account. This is rather a show of prestige than necessity as at the Cape horse drawn carriages were excessively rare with most farmers opting to use ox wagons in the harsh terrain. Another factor that supports this argument is suggested by the sumptuary legislation of 1755 which limits the use of such carriages to the use of senior Company officials. Although these laws were only implemented some years after his death, it was this growing use of conspicuous goods by the urban and landed elite that necessitated the implementation of sumptuary legislation, as will be discussed later in this thesis. Van der Swijn’s inventory suggests that he was conscious of the way in which he appeared to the public, making use of highly conspicuous goods in order to gain recognition and social prestige.38 There is therefore no reason why he should not have wanted for his wife to be one more symbol of his social prestige.

By examining Josina van Dam’s own inventory, which was compiled in 1732, we can gain even further knowledge of the way in which the urban elite lived. The details of her estate suggest that van Dam was not only well dressed and well adorned with jewellery, but that her possessions would have rivalled many of those belonging to women of the VOC elite.

Josina van Dam’s inventory contains the following pieces of jewellery:

one string of pearls with diamond clasp one string of pearls with black gitte two diamond bracelets gold bracelets een diamante coulang in ’t silver geset two diamond earrings set in gold een diamante cintuur gespen een goude cintuur gespen one diamond ‘bow’ ring pair of gold earring set with diamonds

38 Paragraph based on ibid., 54.

76 one diamond clasp 39 one pair of gold and one pair of silver buttons

But what is rather more impressive than the individual pieces is the price some of these pieces fetched on the auction following her death. Although the amount of jewellery is not exceedingly extravagant for the time, there is no question as to the value and quality of these items. The string of pearls with a diamond clasp sold for 149.2 rixdollars at van Dam’s estate sale.40 This is the highest amount fetched for a string of pearls in the auction lists ranging from 1691 to 1748 – auction lists which include prominent women such as Debora de Koning who was one of the wealthiest women of her day. Josina van Dam’s pearls were therefore the most expensive string of pearls sold at auction for 57 years. No doubt the value of the pearls was reflected in the way they appeared which in itself suggests the prominence and wealth of the urban elite. The wealth of the burgher elite would no doubt have been emphasised by the conspicuous use of such an expensive item which in turn would have reflected the social status of both Josina and that of her husband.

But it is Josina’s clothing which is of particular interest as her inventory contains large numbers thereof and clothing in itself is an indicator of the character and status of the individual. What is particularly interesting is the fact that although Josina was, if not a working woman, then at least a business woman, her clothing rather reflects the life of an idle woman of high status. Her inventory lists the following items among her clothing:

41 women’s dresses One women’s corset One women’s bonnet 3 vrouwe balijne rocken 11 pairs of women’s silk gloves One unfinished linen women’s dress 29 women’s shirts 20 women’s aprons 3 women’s shirtdresses

39 TEPC, MOOC 8/5.110. 40 TECP, MOOC10/4.116

77 12 handkerchiefs Miscellaneous women’s caps and handkerchiefs 41 4 fans

Unfortunately her inventory does not contain a description of the materials used for the making of her dresses and neither were they sold on auction so one may not learn the value of the individual items but the sheer quantity thereof is an indication of van Dam’s social status. Her inventory contains 45 dresses if one counts the one unfinished dress, a number which is excessive for the time when it is compared to that of Anna Fothergill who was effectively the woman with the second highest social status at the Cape. Fothergill’s inventory, compiled in 1764, contains 38 dresses – this at a time when the Cape was experiencing large-scale economic growth. Furthermore, even the number of Fothergill’s dresses is rarely paralleled. Therefore it appears as if the urban burgher elite were very much attempting to affirm their position as part of the social elite, even perhaps contesting social position through the use of extravagant amounts of clothing and by wearing expensive items of personal adornment. Van Dam obliviously chose to use her money in such a way as to display herself as a prominent woman, whether in the business world or as a means of showing her social status.

Clothing and Social Position

The consumption of luxury goods was an essential way in which members of Cape society expressed their social and economic status. As society was relatively fluid and individuals could move from one status group to another, either through marriage or through hard work, the material possessions an individual displayed was an indication of their social and economic identity. Furthermore there is no reason to believe that the power and the position of the VOC were in any way threatened at the Cape until the latter half of the 18th century. But one can argue that the social perceptions regarding VOC officials were influenced by the steady process of intermarriage between the free-burgher population and those in the employ of the VOC. Members of the VOC elite were no longer just separate office-bearers but became son-in-laws, brother-in-laws, uncles and so forth, occupying a familial position to many of the burghers. Regarding the conspicuous consumption of clothing to then indicate

41 TEPC, MOOC 8/5.110.

78 and contest social status, the process would most likely have been one of natural competition between humans to indicate their position in society as part of a wider need for acceptance and position. As has been mentioned before, clothing was an indicator of social position and, in fact, to a great extent one’s social worth. It is therefore not farfetched to argue that women of the free burgher elite used their clothing to compare or indeed compete with one another.

The following case study looks at exactly this, how someone from the free burgher society used her clothing as a means of portraying her social position in free burgher society.

Wilhelmina de Wit

Wilhelmina Adriens de Wit was born around 1670 in in the Netherlands and some misfortune must have befallen her family for she was finally sent to the Cape in 1688 as one of the eight orphan girls sent from the Netherlands in an attempt to increase the number of European women at the Cape.42 The ship on which she travelled along with her companions and 28 was the China which arrived in the Cape on 4 August 1688. Wilhelmina and her seven orphan companions were sent to the Cape following requests by Jan van Riebeeck in 1659 and Simon van der Stel in 1685 that the Heren XVII should send between 20 and 40 marriageable girls to the Cape, and that these girls should be able to assist in the farming activities of their prospective husbands. Once at the Cape, Wilhelmina de Wit was first married to Diedelhof Biebault. Records state that they both stood witness to the baptism of their first child, Hendrik Bibault in 1690, only two years after her arrival at the Cape. Her first husband was very poor and after his death in 1695 he left only meagre possessions to his wife and three children.43 Besides a house that according to the estate account was run down and one slave, the family was left with:

1 old horse 4 pots, 2 copper kettles Some tin items One pistol Old bedding

42 Cf. Heese, J.A. 1976. ‘Die Hollandse Weesmeisies’, Familia 3. 43 TEPC, MOOC 8/1.14.

79 Old kitchenware One old kist One old table 44 20 teacups and saucers

These possessions indicate that the family were not well-off, but Wilhelmina de Wit’s life is an indicator of how marriage could change the socio-economic status of a woman at the Cape. Sometime before 1700 she married Jacob Pleunis for in 1700 a son, Johannes Pleunis, is born to the couple.45 The second marriage must have been greatly different from that of her first if one is to judge from the numerous luxury items found in her inventory only 27 years later. That some of the wealthier burghers dressed extravagantly is not to be contested. The estate inventory of the burgher Wilhelmina de Wit shows to what extent the elite of the burgher society dressed, while many of the items included in her inventory were the very same items that sumptuary legislation later attempted to regulate. Her inventory contains not only large numbers of clothing but also clothing that is of extremely high value such as seven silk dresses. Although there is no particular description of these dresses, silk was only worn by very wealthy burghers and members of the VOC elite. Silk was in fact such a prised material for clothing that the 1755 sumptuary legislation regulated the use thereof in women’s clothing. This legislation determined that silk dresses were the reserve of the wives of members of the VOC who held a position of junior merchant or higher.46 Therefore these dresses would have been both an expensive and conspicuous item in the 18th century. Besides the seven silk dresses inventoried, Wilhelmina de Wit was also in possession of 32 chintz dresses as well as two woollen dresses. This is unusual as one learns from the inventory that Wilhelmina was a well-to-do woman while woollen dresses were the preferred dress of the underclass of free burgher women who needed a practical but warm garment. The items of

44 Ibid. 45 According to Hoge, Jacob Pleunis was originally from Orsoy and was born in 1662. Initially he is listed as a house carpenter and later as a deacon. He had a farm in the early 1700s in Banghoek, Stellenbosch, and interestingly enough refers to Pleunis as ‘de hollebollige Jacob Pleunis’. In 1710 his wife applied for a divorce because he had mistreated her often, but they were not divorced and at the time of her death in 1727 she is still listed as his wife; Hoge, J. 1946. ‘Personalia of Germans at the Cape, 1652-1806’. Archives Year Book for South African History 9. Cape Town: Cape Times. 46 Du Plessis, S. 2013. ‘Pearls Worth Rds4000 or Less: Reinterpreting Eighteenth Century Sumptuary Laws at the Cape.’ ERSA Working Paper 336, 7.

80 clothing included in her inventory are rather excessive for the relatively early stage in the settlement of the Cape as the economic growth of the later 18th century had not yet begun. Her clothing includes the following:

30 chintz dresses 2 woollen dresses 7 silk dresses 2 seijde samaaren 20 women’s shirts 90 linen handkerchiefs 4 women’s caps with lace 39 women’s caps 14 halsjes 19 night caps 6 pairs of women’s gloves 27 women’s shirts 4 shirt dresses 23 aprons 18 handkerchiefs 3 silk handkerchiefs 2 halsjes 12 pairs of socks 1 women’s cap 2 chintz robes 2 chintz dresses 47 1 rouw caper

Besides the large number of dresses included in her inventory there is also mention of 2 chintz japonnen which were initially used for inside wear as a robe but later developed as a dress in its own right.48 Staggering numbers of caps and handkerchiefs are also listed in her

47 TEPC, MOOC 8/5.4. 48 Dibbits, H.C. 2001. Vertrouwd Bezit: Materiële Cultuur in Doesburg en Maassluis, 1650-1800. Nijmegen: Sun, 186.

81 inventory with a total of 45 caps excluding her night caps and 108 handkerchiefs. These caps and handkerchiefs were used as accessories at the time, greatly increasing the number of outfits that Wilhelmina de Wit could wear. In terms of clothing Wilhelmina would no doubt have been regulated for her dress if she had lived at the time the 1755 sumptuary legislation was implemented. The silk dresses she wore were the reserve of the Company elite and the lace trimming of the four caps mentioned in the inventory was also reserved for the wives and widows of the directors of outlying posts of the VOC. Besides the clothing the inventory also includes some jewellery although these items are much less excessive for the day. They include 10 fans, some gold jewellery and a few buckles, among other items.

One of the most informative items in the inventory of Wilhelmina de Wit is the mention of five kiepersollen among the numerous items in her estate inventory. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the kiepersol was a parasol of sorts with an Eastern origin which was a symbol of social status. The fact that Wilhelmina’s inventory contains five of these suggest that they were used in this regard as an indicator of her social status and her position as one of the elite of the free burgher community. Although Wilhelmina died before the 1755 sumptuary legislation, there is record of the regulation of the kiepersol in the 17th century and while this was probably not strictly enforced, the reissuing thereof suggests that it was a problem and that many made use of this symbol of status who were not allowed to do so. Article 30 of the 1755 sumptuary legislation limited the use of the kiepersol to those who possess the status of junior merchant or higher, and stated that this should be regulated due to 49 the large scale infringement on this rule.

Wilhelmina de Wit’s inventory in comparison to that of her first husband gives us an idea of how the social and economic position of an individual could have altered at the Cape. Having come to the Cape as an orphan girl, she managed to climb the social ladder of the small community at the Cape, to such an extent that she became a relatively wealthy burgher woman with symbols of her social and economic status to boot.50 What is interesting is

49 Naudé, S.D. & Venter, P.J. (eds). 1949. Kaapse Plakkaatboek III (1754-1786). Cape Town: Cape Times, 14. 50 The exact source of the Pleunis family’s wealth is not known. After a few years of farming in Stellenbosch, they returned to Cape Town in the early . Perhaps Jacob Pleunis again took up his job as a carpenter. By the time of Wilhelmina’s death, they owned a house in Table Valley and five slaves. Interestingly enough, their son joined the VOC administration, becoming a clerk (adsistent) in 1716 and being appointed as secretary of the

82 Mentzel’s remark that ‘money, not pedigree, is worshipped at the Cape.’51 Therefore the change in Wilhelmina’s financial position across the span of her life would have influenced her status in the Cape burgher society. This gives credence to Mentzel’s quote that the burghers at the Cape snubbed those that boasted of their lineage, saying instead: ‘Segt niet wat gy geweest, maer segt wat gy tegens woordig zeyd’.52 Whether it was a way of proclaiming her higher social status after her second marriage, or of competing with the elite member of the society during her lifetime, Wilhelmina de Wit’s inventory is extremely informative in that it gives us a glimpse into how the change of social position impacted on the possessions of an individual. Her clothing reflects her altered social status after her second marriage and therefore serves as an indication of how women at the VOC Cape performed their social identity.

The VOC and the Burgher Elites

Society at the Cape changed progressively over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries which had influenced social stratification and hierarchies. Even though the VOC official elite was at the hierarchical head of the society at the Cape, the growth in wealth and prominence of many of the free burgher population resulted in the development of two individual strands of elite society, the rooted elite and the mobile elite. These two groups of elite society were not mutually exclusive, often combining international and local networks of friends and family.53 These connections were often formed through marriage and this is evident in the family ties between VOC officials and some of the free burghers.54 This intermarriage was also not exclusive to men, but many Cape born women married members of the VOC official elite. An example of such intermarriage is mentioned in Mentzel’s biography of Rudolph Siegfried Allemann. The particular scene referred to is that of Allemann’s engagement to a

Stellenbosch district in 1720. In 1722 he was promoted to the rank of boekhouder. Cf. De Wet, G.C. (ed.). 1964. Resolusies van die Politieke Raad, Volume V (1716-1719). Cape Town: Government Printer, 242 n. 317. 51 Mentzel, Geographical-topographical Description, 115. 52 Ibid. Translation: ‘We shall esteem you for what you are and not for what you have been.’ 53 Ross, R. & Schrikker, A. 2012. ‘The VOC Official Elite’, in Worden, N. Cape Town between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town. Johannesburg & Hilversum: Jacana & Verloren, 37. 54 Groenewald, ‘Dynasty Building’, 40-41.

83 one ‘juffrouw Meijboom’55 which was all orchestrated by the governor of the time, Governor van Noodt. Mentzel describes the scene as follows:

One day he [Governor van Noodt] elected to have the company of Kampanjemeester Valck, and had him, together with his wife and two sisters-in-law, invited to mid-day dinner…. They sat longer than ordinary at table, but when they had finished the Governor went to the farthest window in the room and called to him Mistress Abbetje 56 Meijboom. She went up to him, curtsied deeply, and awaited his commands.

Mentzel continues with a purported dialogue between mistress Meijboom and the governor, a conversation which finally ended in her agreeing to marry Captain Allemann. After Allemann was called in and agreed to the engagement, the governor had messengers sent out with an invitation to a ball held that same night. It is evident from the text that the company invited to the ball consisted of a mixture of prominent free burghers and company servants.57 This in itself suggests the interaction between burgher and company elite. What is even more important in terms of how complex society became, is the fact that Abbetje Meijboom was a burgher woman herself but with ties to the VOC official elite through her sister, Gesina, who had married the equipagiemeester Cornelis Valk in 1713.58 Although both her parents were born in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, they were only married at the Cape in 1703 and were to go on to have the three daughters mentioned in the Mentzel quote.59 What is interesting is the fact that the Governor promoted such intermarriage between settler society and VOC officials. So too are there numerous examples of company officials intermarrying with the

55 She was the daughter of Nicolaas or Claas Meijboom, who was active as an alcohol pachter between 1706 and 1717. Although he did not own many pachten, Meijboom must have been well off as he is often mentioned in the inventories as a money lender, including to Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen to whom he loaned large sums at the start of his career; cf. Groenewald, ‘Early Modern Entrepreneur’, 18. 56 Mentzel, Life, 70. 57 Ibid., 71. 58 Their younger sister married the prominent free burgher, Abraham Cloppenburg, who later became a burgher councillor and whose brother was a minister in the Cape Town congregation. The Meijboom family thus well illustrates how intertwined burgher and VOC families could become by the mid-18th century; De Wet, G.C. (ed.). 1975. Resolusies van die Politieke Raad, Volume VIII (1729-1734). Pretoria: Government Printer, 151 n. 92. 59 CA, Verbatim Copiën (hereafter VC) 604, NGK Marriage Registers, 1695-1712, folio 99 (11 November 1703), http://www.eggsa.org/sarecords/ (accessed 2 September 2014).

84 daughters of burghers. This intermarriage with VOC elite had the effect of making the local elite more homogenous in that many rich burghers and members of the VOC official elite were part of the same family.

A second reason why society at the Cape became more and more complex has to do with the growth in power that many free burghers attained. Despite the fact that the political power remained in the hands of the VOC employees, the social position of many of the burgher elite did have some impact on the administration of especially in the countryside through civil, military and ecclesiastical administration which was monopolised by the burgher elite in the rural districts.60 By attaining civil, military and ecclesiastical power, the social position of many of these burghers increased which in turn was reflected in the way they lived their everyday lives. One aspect I have argued that is of great importance is the way one appears to the world. Therefore both men in administrative positions and their wives would have sought to reflect their increased prestige through the way they appeared. One example of not only an individual but also a family’s growth in influence and power at the Cape is that of the van Reenen family.

Jacob van Reenen, the progenitor of the family was born in Prussia around 1703. He arrived at the Cape in 1722 with the rank of adelborst and became a free burgher only three years later.61 During the same year he married an orphan girl by the name of Johanna Siekermans. The van Reenens became a very wealthy family with Johanna Siekermans’ inventory of 1756 amounting to 60 617 rixdollars.62 The inventory of Johanna Siekermans contains a few pieces of jewellery that are exceptional. Listed in her inventory is one string of pearls with a clasp containing seven diamonds that was valued at 100 rixdollars. In order to understand how valuable this individual piece of jewellery was one can compare it to other items listed in her estate account. Comparatively 23 oxen were sold for 138 rixdollars from her estate which gives some indication of the high value of one of her pieces of jewellery. The total value of the pieces of jewellery listed in her estate is 310 rixdollars which gives an indication to the

60 Ross, ’Cape Gentry’, 5-6. 61 Jacob van Reenen arrived at the Cape in 1721 and became a burgher in 1725. He was born in Memel, East Prussia as part of the Prussian gentry to Daniel Von Rhenen and Catharina Elisabeth Crofki. His brother, Daniel was Burghermeester of Von Altenburg and owned large estates in the Rhine; cf. De Wet, Resolusies, vol. 7, 184, n. 256. 62 TEPC, MOOC 8/7.48.

85 wealth that the van Reenen family possessed. In fact, the van Reenens became among the wealthiest burghers at the Cape, operating as both members of the landed gentry but also exploiting the lucrative alcohol and meat pachten. Jacob went on to have a number of children and upon his death in 1764 his inventory lists the following inheritors:

1. His son, the burgher lieutenant Jacob van Reenen. 2. His grandson, Jan van Schoor, son of Catharina van Reenen and her husband the burgher lieutenant Willem van Schoor. 3. His grandson Jacob Hendrik Wilhelmij. 4. His granddaughter Magdalena Elisabeth Wernich, daughter of Beatrix Cornelia van Reenen and her husband the former commissioner of marriage affairs, Johan Lodewijk Wernich. 5. Gertruijd van Reenen, wife of the burgher councillor Jan Serrurier. 63 6. And three younger children from his later marriage.

Firstly what is significant is the fact that many of his children went on to either hold positions of prominence in the burgher society or to marry men who held positions of importance. This too is an example of how society tended to become more and more complex as civil positions grew in prominence, which gave further prestige to many members of the free burgher society and by so doing contributed to their status.

The van Reenen family in particular also played a significant role in the growth of the power of civil institutions in that the eldest son, also named Jacob van Reenen played a significant role in the Cape’s Patriot movement. This movement developed particularly in the 1780s and 1790s which was also a time of dwindling fortunes for the VOC. The Patriot movement challenged the power of the VOC in the Cape and in 1779 four burgher representatives, the aforementioned Jacob van Reenen, Barend Jacob Artoys, Tielman Roos and Nicholaas Godfried Heyns presented a memorial to the Heren XVII in Holland. What is particularly significant is that it gives us some clue as to the feeling of many of the burgher population towards the VOC officials who held power at the Cape. One of the issues addressed was the way in which the Fiscal, W.C. Boers and the secretary of the Council of Policy abused their power by giving unwarranted punishment for small offences. The burghers were at this stage

63 TEPC, MOOC 8 /11.45a.

86 starting to contest the absolute power of the VOC and its officials, instead demanding more 64 civil rights for themselves.

Ross supports this supposition, stating that ‘the demands of the Patriots were largely political, as they demanded far greater responsibilities for the Burgher Raad’.65 The suggestion is therefore that later in the 18th century the burgher society became dissatisfied with their position of subservience at the Cape, instead attempting to break the power hold of the VOC elite. This too had an influence on society and the way in which people used conspicuous consumption in order to display their social worth and position.

In effect society became both more socially equal and more dissatisfied towards the later part of the 18th century. On the one hand many of the VOC officials and burgher elite intermarried and formed a more homogeneous elite where status and family ties were closely interwoven. This does however not mean that there was no social hierarchy; differentiation with regards to position and power was still very much in existence even when civil positions were created that held some social prestige but little real political power. Because of the intermarriage between the free-burgher population and the VOC official elite, especially during the later part of the VOC existence at the Cape, the social position and prominence of many of free burghers grew immensely but it held no great promise of gaining political position and power. This monopoly on political power was held by the VOC and was the cause of great frustration to many in free-burgher society.

64 Ross, R. ‘Cape Gentry’, 8. Cf. on the movement and the various factions involved, Baartman, T. 2012. ‘Protest and Dutch Burgher Identity’, in Worden, N. Cape Town between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town. Johannesburg & Hilversum: Jacana & Verloren, 65-83. 65 Ross, ‘Cape Gentry’, 10.

87 Chapter 5 Social Display and Sumptuary Legislation

There are two areas in the world where sumptuary legislation was reissued frequently: Western Europe and Japan. In Western Europe sumptuary legislation were reissued often between around 1300 and 1700 and in Japan at a slightly later date, between around 1600 and 1800. These laws aimed to regulate what individuals of different social ranks or status were allowed to wear, often forbidding a particular item of dress to those of lower social rank and so dividing society into neatly compartmentalised status groups.1 Although this seems a foreign idea to the modern person there were various contributing factors for the implementation of sumptuary legislation. The main motivation was the protection of a traditional social hierarchy in the face of the growing economic prospects and social changes of the early modern world. This form of establishing the social hierarchy of society through legislation was so widespread that most of Western Europe had some form of sumptuary th 2 legislation after the 14 century.

Because of sumptuary legislation clothing was considered a relatively accurate indication of the social position of an individual until the 16th century. Age, profession, sex and an individual’s position in the social hierarchy was reflected in the clothing he/she wore, making clothing an item of outward appearance which reflected rank and station.3 Many sumptuary laws were enacted in various Western European states. This regulation was important for the protection of the lower nobility from ruin by spending enormous amounts of money to maintain their social position in the face of the merchant classes’ growing prosperity.4 The rise of the merchant classes and the development of a bourgeoisie had a major influence on the feudal social order. This developing bourgeois class displayed their new wealth through aping the social elite’s way of dress, thereby challenging their position in society. The reaction of those in power was to legislate that only people of a particular rank were allowed

1 Ross, R. 2008. Clothing: A Global History. Cambridge: Polity Press, 16. 2 Ibid., 21. 3 Belfanti, C.M. 2009. ‘The Civilization of Fashion: At the Origins of a Western Social Institution.’ Journal of Social History 43(2), 4. 4 Ibid., 7.

88 to wear certain items of clothing, thereby protecting both the status and the capital of the ruling elite.

Almost all of Western Europe had some form of sumptuary legislation regarding clothing. The Low Countries did not have any form of except one edict issued in 1497 in Flanders which was quickly withdrawn. The absence of sumptuary legislation in the Low Countries can be attributed to the fact that landowners did not have enough political power to challenge the mercantile elite resulting in a situation where the pressure to curb the display of the bourgeoisie was absent.5 This does not refer in any way to an ignorance of the supposed dangers of conspicuous consumption by those who were not deemed ‘worthy’ thereof, as is seen by an edict issued by the legislative body of the province of Holland which summed up the dangers of wearing costly fur and gold thread but did not forbid it, instead imposing tax 6 on such goods, from which certain ranks were exempted.

The governing classes in the Netherlands were relatively open, especially in the province of Holland. Individuals who became wealthy through trade or manufacturing could work their way into the patriciaat.7 In order to attain this status, however, newcomers had to demonstrate their wealth through conspicuous consumption and had to maintain a lifestyle in accordance with the social position they wanted to assert. Therefore status could be obtained by asserting one’s wealth. This attitude was exported to the Dutch overseas territories.

Sumptuary Legislation in Batavia

Batavia was the administrative and commercial hub of the VOC. Its High Council enacted various law codes which were subsequently adopted by the VOC’s other overseas outposts.8 One such example is the sumptuary laws of 1754. These sumptuary laws were directly influenced by, if not the result of, the growing prosperity of the merchants and free burghers in Batavia. The issuing of sumptuary legislation was however not a new phenomenon in

5 Ross, Clothing, 22. 6 Ibid., p 23 7 Ross, R. 1999. Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750-1870: A Tragedy of Manners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 14. 8 Mentzel, O.F. 1921. A Geographical-Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope, part 1. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 137.

89 1754; in fact legislation for the regulation of the display of wealth was put into place earlier during the VOC rule in the east in order to regulate the conspicuous consumption of VOC employees or settled burgher society. Throughout Company rule various plakkaaten were issued to curb this display, This indicates two things: the VOC saw the conspicuous consumption of its servants as an acute problem from an early stage on, and the regular reissuing of these laws shows that Batavia’s population were not to be thwarted from public display by the VOC, especially in a context where such display had a long-entrenched history.

The earliest of these laws were based on the Javanese and Japanese court societies where a deeply stratified rank system existed. This idea was adopted by the VOC in the East, an assimilation of culture which was not uncommon in the East where various local customs were adopted by the European population living there.9 Governor-General Rijcklof van Goens was one of the earliest persons to implement legislation aimed at regulating display in accordance with an individual’s position in society.10 He determined that only members of the supreme government, their wives and children were allowed to wear pearls, other jewellery and gold and silver trimmings on their clothes. Furthermore those of lower social station were banned from possessing a carriage. These laws applied to both those in Company employ as well as those individuals who formed part of free-burgher society. It appears from the issuing of the regulation of carriages and parasols (the kiepersol which us was also regulated at the Cape) by Governor-General Diederik Durven that these regulations were widely ignored.11 Regulations on pomp and display were not to end here, instead being 12 reissued in 1704, 1719, 1729 and 1733, all to no avail.

A hundred and twelve years after van Goens issued his legislation for the regulation of display, the Governor-General of Batavia, Jacob Mossel issued what is known as Mossel’s Code. This code was a set of legislations consisting of twelve major clauses, bearing the title ‘Measurers for Curbing Pomp and Circumstance’. Mossel’s codified sumptuary legislation

9 Taylor, J.G. 2009. The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia. 2nd ed. London & Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 66. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Joubert, J.J.F. 1942. ‘Die Kaapkolonie onder .’ Unpublished MA thesis, Stellenbosch University, 93.

90 was aimed at limiting the conspicuous consumption of not only the society in Batavia but also those of other VOC outposts.13 Mossel’s sumptuary laws were much more comprehensive than those of van Goens. Consisting of twelve chapters and 124 articles it consolidated earlier attempts at sumptuary legislation by paying attention to matters of transport, ceremonies, slavery, dress and jewellery.14 What is interesting to note, however, is that the legislation of both van Goens and Mossel paid particular attention to the clothing of different individuals according to rank. This is of particular interest to this study as clothing and jewellery are aspects of the sumptuary legislation to which the VOC paid particular interest. This is suggested by the nine articles comprising the clause on the clothing of men and the specific attention given to the permitted monetary value of their wives’ attire.15 These self-same laws were to be implemented at all VOC outposts, including the Cape of Good Hope, subject to local amendments.

The Situation at the Cape of Good Hope

Rijk Tulbagh was the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope at the time of the implementation of the 1755 sumptuary legislation by the Batavian government. Tulbagh was born on the 21 May 1699 in Utrecht. At the age of 16 he entered into a five-year agreement with the VOC under which he was sent to the Cape in 1716. Finally, after 35 years of Company service, Rijk Tulbagh was made Governor of the Cape of Good Hope in 1751.16 Although the Sumptuary legislation was implemented towards the end of 1754 in Batavia, word only reached the Cape early in 1755 after which Tulbagh gave the task of reviewing the sumptuary legislation to a subcommittee of the Council op Policy. This subcommittee consisted of the Fiscal, Pieter van Rheede, Colonel Isaac Meynertshagen and the Upper Merchant Cornelis Eelders. They were given the task of amending the Batavian measures to suit local circumstances.17 The changes made by this committee concerned issues of practicality to suit the Cape colony. An example of these alterations for local use is the provision for the use of

13 Taylor, Social World of Batavia, 66. The individual clauses of this set of laws will be discussed compared to what which was implemented at the Cape in 1755 later on in this chapter. 14 Van der Chijs, J.A. 1885-1897. Nederlandsch-Indisch Plakkaatboek, 1602-1811 (16 volumes). Batavia & The Hague: Landsdrukkerij & M. Nijhoff, vol. 6, 773. 15 Taylor, Social World of Batavia, 66. 16 Joubert, ’Kaapkolonie’, 18. 17 Ibid., 96.

91 more than two horses per carriage (which in Batavia was limited only to the highest ranking individuals) because of the poor state of Cape roads and the great distance people had to 18 travel.

Batavian Legislation Cape Legislation

Article 1: No one besides the Governor, Article 1: Due to the bad weather and the Director General, members of the strong south-eastern wind at the Cape, Council of India and the president of the members of the Council were allowed to Council of Justice were allowed to make use travel by their own coaches to the Castle. of a ‘carosse coupe’ or coach. No (And were therefore allowed to own embellishments or insignia was allowed to coaches.) These coaches were not allowed be brought on to the sides of the coach. If any gold embellishments; this right was an individual was to make use of a coach reserved solely for the Governor. who was not legally allowed to do so, the coach and horses would be confiscated and a fine of 500 rixdollars imposed. Article 2: Only the Governor General was Article 2 (& Articles 24-29: Because of allowed to have a coach pulled by six the bad state of the roads at the Cape and horses. The Director General and members the fact that produce had to be transported of the Council of India were allowed to over long distances it was determined that it employ four horses. Infringement of this was unpractical to force the regulation of law would result in the confiscation of the the number of horses to draw a wagon by coach and horses and a fine of 1000 limiting it to four instead of six. rixdollars. Article 3: No one besides the Governor, Article 3: At the Cape the use of European the Director General, the Council of India, coachmen was not prohibited since many of their wives or widows, the President of the the burghers had their own wagons with Council of Justice, ex-governors, the which they brought produce to the market secretary of the Indian government and the or had European ‘knegten’ and this would

18 Du Plessis, S. 2013. ‘Pearls Worth Rds4000 or Less: Reinterpreting Eighteenth Century Sumptuary Laws at the Cape.’ ERSA Working Paper 336, 7.

92 brigadier of the militia were allowed to have therefore be an unpractical measure. But European coachmen. If anyone else had a the sub-committee at the Cape did European coachman, his employment was determine that these coachmen could not to be terminated and the party responsible wear livery except for the coachmen of the would pay a fine of 200 rixdollars. Governor. Article 5 & 6: Anyone who owned a Articles 5 & 6: With regards to those wagon or coach had to pay a tax for using it. people who did not belong to the Council of The tax varied from 50 rixdollars to 300 Policy, they did not need to pay taxes for rixdollars, with the exact amount depending owning a coach or wagon as these vehicles on the position of the owner. were used for transportation to and from farms and did not primarily serve to enhance social prestige.

Article 13: No one besides the Governor, Article 13: Because the storerooms of the the Director General, the Council of India, Company were within the Castle, unlike in the President of the Council of Justice, ex- Batavia, wagons were allowed to come governors, secretaries of the Indian inside the Castle walls. Government, the brigadier of the militia, the Council of Justice, the respective officers of justice and the directors, with their wives and children, was allowed to enter the Castle in Batavia with a coach, on pains of a fine of 100 rixdollars. Article 30: Only individuals holding the Article 30: No man of lower standing than position of junior merchant or higher, as a junior merchant, or the equivalent among well as their wives and all European the burgher population – and by implication women, were allowed to use large parasols. their wives and daughters – was allowed to People below the rank of junior merchant use large parasols (sommereels). were however allowed to use smaller hand- held parasols. A fine of 50 rix dollars could be levied if this regulation was broken. Article 41-48: The legislation as stipulated Articles 41-48: At the Cape the Sumptuary in articles 41-48 were accepted at the Cape Legislation determined that the fashion of

93 in totality, there was however no mention of wearing dresses with long trains was the stipulation regarding long trains as was forbidden. mentioned at the Cape. Article 54 and 55: The slaves and Art: 54 and 55: In the articles regarding coachmen of merchants and burghers of the clothing of slaves, the only amendment equal standing were only allowed to wear was that slaves at the Cape were allowed blue or red clothing, whether either striped jackets due to the cold climate of the Cape or not. Slaves were not allowed to wear compared to the humid warmth of Batavia. painted linen or chintz and were allowed a jacket in the evening. Coachmen were allowed to wear linen or silk with socks and shoes as well as a hat although the hat may not contain any decoration. There was no such practice mentioned in the Article 67: With regards to funerals, the Batavian Sumptuary Legislation. practice of throwing beach sand in the street in front of the house was prohibited except for the funeral of a Governor.

19 Figure 5.1 Comparison of Batavian and Cape Sumptuary Legislation

The Batavian Sumptuary Legislation with regards to the clothing of women is of particular interest when studying the Sumptuary Legislation as implemented at the Cape. Articles 41- 44 deal exclusively with the jewellery which women of different ranks were allowed to wear. Wives and widows of the Governor and the Director General of the Council of India, as well as the president of the Council of Justice, were all allowed to wear diamond watches, and betelkistjes (small boxes containing betel) made with silver and gold and set with precious stones. Also they were exclusively allowed the wearing of double pearl necklaces. If someone were to infringe on this regulation they would be fined 500 rixdollars.

19 The Batavian sumptuary laws were first discussed on 25 February 1755 by the Cape Council of Policy and the subcommittee was formed. They reported back on 15 July 1755 and their report can be found in the minutes of the Council; Cape Archives (CA), Council of Policy (C) 133, 198 and 283-349. This table is based on a comparison of the Batavian and Cape sumptuary laws as published in van der Chijs, Nederlandsch-Indisch Plakkaatboek, vol. 6, 773-97 and Naudé, S.D. & Venter, P.J. (eds). 1949. Kaapse Plakkaatboek III (1754-1786). Cape Town: Cape Times, 12-15.

94

Regarding the clothing women of different ranks were allowed to wear, the Batavian sumptuary legislation determined that velvet clothing with silver or gold embroidery was for the exclusive use of the wives, widows and children of the high government and the president of the Council of India. Only those women whose husbands were higher in rank than senior merchants were allowed to wear silk and linen clothing with gold or silver embroidery. If anyone infringed on these regulations they would be fined 100 rixdollars upon first infringement, then 300 rixdollars and finally a thousand rixdollars.

Of interest to this study is the section on women’s apparel in articles 41 to 48. These articles deal chiefly with the value and types of jewellery different ranks of women were allowed to wear. The rank of a woman was determined by the position of her father (if she was unmarried) or her husband (in the case of married women and widows) to take into account the social mobility of women during this time. The widows and wives of the top echelons of society such as the Governor-General, councillors and court presidents were allowed to wear diamond necklaces, diamond studded watches, gold betel boxes and boxes set with precious stones, as well as top quality pearls and precious jewels.20 Slightly lower in the social hierarchy were the wives or widows of directors of the outlying posts of the VOC who were restricted by not being allowed to wear pearls exceeding 6000 rixdollars in value while wives and widows of senior merchants could not wear pearls worth more than 4000 rixdollars. With regards to clothing, only these women could wear clothing of silk, velvet and linen with lace trimmings.21 Silk dresses and velvet mantels were the reserve of wives of men of the rank of junior merchant or higher. However the same allowance was not made to their children.

As only the members of the High Government and the President of the Court of Justice, along with their wives and children, were allowed to wear clothing embroidered with gold or silver thread it meant that only the Governor and his family at the Cape qualified for this. Gold or silver buttons as well as velvet could only be worn by senior merchants while junior merchants were allowed to wear gold or silver shoe buckles.22 One aspect of the clothing of

20 Taylor, Social World of Batavia, 67. 21 Ibid. 22 Du Plessis, ‘Pearls worth Rds4000’, 7

95 women that was added by Council of Policy was regarding the fashion of wearing long dresses of which the back trailed on the ground, a phenomenon which they refer to as a misbruijk ook onlangs onder de Vrouwen (an abuse which recently [arose] among the women) which thereafter would be summarily forbidden. The Council did not however give any indication of what form of penalty or punishment would be given if this rule was infringed upon. This indicates something of a lax attitude towards the regulations.

Because sumptuary legislation was comprehensive in detailing what individuals of different ranks were allowed to wear it served to further reinforce social identities. Status, social identity and importance could all be gauged from a single glance as a difference in dress could distinguish a senior merchant from a junior merchant. The distinction would have been even greater between a slave, who would go bare-foot as a sign of their enslavement, and a senior VOC official who was allowed to wear gold or silver shoe buckles. Although sumptuary legislation did not expressly forbid the wearing of shoes by slaves, Mentzel states that bare feet is the mark of a slave, quite unlike ancient Rome where the cape was the 23 marker of freedom.

Motivating Sumptuary Legislation

Although the Dutch never enacted sumptuary legislation in their own country, they did so right from the early years of their colonies in the East. These laws, which were issued in Batavia and adopted by the various Dutch outposts, were called the Praal en Pracht wetten, laws regulating the pomp and display of especially modes of transport such as carriages and the clothing and jewellery of different groups of people. Although there had been a long history of sumptuary legislation in Europe, the sumptuary laws issued by the VOC were unique in that they were issued at such a late date. By the 18th century much of the legislation in Europe surrounding the regulation of clothing and pomp and display were outdated. Although sumptuary laws did exist in a number of European countries well into the eighteenth century, their doom was sealed by the increasing individualism of society as well as the emergence of mercantile economies across much of Europe.24 The uniqueness of the sumptuary laws issued in Batavia rests firstly on the fact that the Dutch did not have a long

23 Schoeman, K. 2007. Early Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1717. Pretoria: Protea, 219. 24 Freudenberger, H. 1963. ‘Fashion, Sumptuary Laws and Business’, The Business History Review, 37(1-2), 39.

96 tradition of sumptuary regulation, secondly that the Dutch were from an early stage a mercantile economy and, finally, the implementation of regulations that where becoming more and more unpopular in the rest of Europe. Therefore we can conclude that there must have been other factors contributing to the implementation of Sumptuary Legislation in the Dutch overseas colonies.

From the text of the sumptuary legislation of 1755 we can glean some information to what these contributing factors were. The introduction of Mossel’s Code spoke of the ‘splendour and pomp among various Company servants and burghers…’25 This ‘splendour and pomp’ had three dangerous characteristics: it placed the spendthrift at risk of financial ruin; an individual may become overly proud and, finally, that those individuals of lower social standing may lose respect for those of higher social standing.26 From the first it would seem that there was some consideration for the well-being of the individual, although it is doubtful that this would have been a key consideration for the VOC authorities in the implementation of sumptuary legislation. Rather the two other factors seem to correlate more with traditional arguments for the implementation of sumptuary legislation. Firstly, that an individual may grow overly boastful and succumb to the vice of pride was an issue with which the Company would have had to deal in their various overseas outposts, especially as (with time) the social set-ups there became more complex. As the free burghers in these outposts grew wealthy they too adopted the use of conspicuous goods which allowed them to show off their wealth. It is significant that in the introduction to the 1755 sumptuary laws some members of the free burgher population are mentioned as living in ‘splendour and pomp’ at a time when the Company was experiencing economic decline.

The second of these dangers was the possibility that the social hierarchy of society may collapse if those of a lower social rank lose respect for those of a higher rank. This was also in line with the traditional reasons for sumptuary legislation elsewhere, but there is one problem in accepting this reason at face value: the Dutch did not have a tradition of protecting social hierarchy through legislation, nor in fact did they have a deep sense of hierarchical society at home. In fact, it is quite significant to keep in mind that the impulse to

25 Ross, Status and Respectability, 9. 26 Ibid., 9-10.

97 enact sumptuary legislation came from the authorities in Batavia and were not suggested by the Heren XVII or the VOC authorities in the Netherlands.

Tightening the Economic Belt and Protecting Prestige

One reason that has been put forward for the implementation of sumptuary legislation by the VOC was the dire financial situation of the VOC during the latter part of the 18th century. The sumptuary legislation of Batavia was implemented by Jacob Mossel who succeeded Gustaaf Willem van Imhoff as Governor-General in 1751. Mossel inherited the governorship at a time when the VOC’s fortune was declining due to competition from the English East India Company in south Asia, widespread internal corruption, and a shift in Asian trade patterns. In order to cut costs the Heren XVII cancelled all Company sponsored festivals, reduced the size of the garrisons and lowered expenses on slaves in all their colonial outposts. To increase revenue, taxes were raised on burghers, officials and foreign ships entering Company ports.27 These economic restructurings were followed by the implementation of the sumptuary legislation of December 1754. These laws were circulated to all the colonial outposts of the VOC, the Cape among them.

An argument that goes hand-in-hand with the idea of tightening the economic belt of the VOC is that of protecting the prestige of the Company. As individual prosperity grew in the VOC’s outposts so did the consumption of conspicuous goods associated with prosperity by those members of society which were no longer in the employ of the Company. In the Cape the settler society of free burghers soon developed into what Robert Ross has termed the Cape gentry, resulting in an elite class of burghers who were in direct competition with the prestige of the VOC ruling elite at the Cape. Perhaps the most important example of how the prestige of the Company was being overrun by the newly wealthy burgher elite is the governorship of Hendrik Swellengrebel. Hendrik Swellengrebel was the son of the wealthy free burgher, Johannes Swellengrebel, who is rumoured to have spent the substantial amount of a hundred thousand guilders in Amsterdam in order to convince the Heren XVII that his son should be appointed governor of the Cape.28 Although this has not been substantiated,

27 Du Plessis, ‘Pearls worth Rds4000’, 8. 28 Picard, H.W.J. 1972. Masters of the Castle: A Portrait Gallery of the Dutch Commanders and Governors of the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1795. Cape Town: Struik, 139.

98 the mere fact that Hendrik Swellengrebel, a Cape-born man and the son of a free burger, albeit an ex-VOC official, should become governor of the Cape was some indication of the growth of the power of the free-burgher population. This growth in power was not restricted to the Cape but was also seen in other VOC outposts, notably Batavia, where the settler society was becoming more and more powerful and visible through their increased wealth and status. This brings us back to the centuries-old reason for the implementation of sumptuary legislation: competition from those from below who do not belong to the elite. One can argue that sumptuary legislation was implemented by the VOC in order to prevent competition from a newly developing burgher elite with the established VOC elite at a time when the Company could no longer keep up its former splendour.

Racial and Social Hierarchy

One may argue that, in addition to regulating the social hierarchy of people of European descent in the colonial outposts of the VOC, sumptuary legislation also had the intention of preserving something of a racial hierarchy. Rebecca Earl studies the correlation between race and sumptuary legislation in colonial North and South America, arguing that sumptuary legislation may well have had the aim of drawing a distinction between the races, of which the lines became more blurred with time in many of the American colonies.29 Earl is of the opinion that in Ibero-America and the Caribbean, racial categories reflected not only the skin colour of a person but had direct correlation with his/her wealth and the culture he/she identified with.30 This means that a person could use emulation regarding clothing in order to position him or her in a particular race group, and thereby intentionally or unintentionally challenge the social hierarchy of their time and place. For this reason, a woman or a man of mixed race who dressed in European clothing could appear to be from a different racial group from the one they would have been assigned to had if they been dressed in rags.31 Earl argues that this is exactly the reason why sumptuary legislation existed in the Americas until such a late date, while it had run its cycle in Europe at a much earlier date. In Europe, between 1300 and 1700, sumptuary legislation had served as a regulation of people of the same race but of different social and economic positions. As mercantilism grew the

29Earle, R. 2001. ‘“Two Pairs of Pink Satin Shoes!!”: Race, Clothing and Identity in the Americas (17th -19th Centuries).’ History Workshop Journal 52, 2. 30 Ibid., 14. 31 Ibid.

99 importance of social hierarchy was starting to wear thin, with the result that sumptuary legislation increasingly served little purpose in early modern Europe. In the various colonial outposts of these European powers, the situation was very different. Society consisted of a melting pot of different nationalities and races: Europeans, native peoples as well as those brought in as free or slave labour all lived side-by-side. At times the boundaries between these groups became blurred as individuals attempted to transcend from one social group to another. For this reason it can be argued that many outposts of European expansion implemented legislation aimed at controlling the form of personal transformation through the use of clothing, as well as other markers of position or identity.

This fear of the blurring of racial lines was naturally confined to areas where people of different cultures and origins lived in close quarters. The colonies of many European powers provided such a situation, including the various outposts of the VOC. The Cape and especially Cape Town was a comparatively prosperous colony.32 Tulbagh assumed control of the Cape in 1751 during a time when the prosperity of individuals increased despite the VOC’s overall decline as a trading company.33 Individuals who were of poor peasant stock in Europe could establish themselves well in the Cape if they had some entrepreneurial sense, and in so doing could cross socio-economic lines. At the Cape material culture was essential to a society where social status was fluid and where status could be used to express individual 34 or group identity.

Calvinism and the Luxury Debate

The 18th century saw a remarkable divergence in Europe which brought the supposed moral and social dangers of the consumption of luxury items in conflict with the increasing desire to consume luxury items in an economically developing world. Luxury was associated with power but also with moral danger, according to Calvinistic ideas. The consumption of luxury

32 Fourie, J. 2013. ‘The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories.’ Economic History Review 66(2), 419–448 33 Ibid. 34 Groenewald, G. 2012. ‘Entrepreneurs and the Making of a Free Burgher Society’, in Worden, N. Cape Town between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town. Johannesburg & Hilversum: Jacana & Verloren, 53.

100 items could seemingly easily lead to indulgence in the sins of, amongst others, gluttony, lust, 35 vanity, greed and pride.

In the Dutch Republic this came into conflict with the direct access people had to luxury goods thanks to their importation, as well as a speedily expanding economy due to a growth in agriculture and industry which led to many merchants and industrialists, amongst others, becoming very wealthy. De Vries argues that for the first time a large group of society could afford to purchase whatever they desired which in turn brought up the issue of morality once more. The dangers of luxury were not only personal but the elite could value luxury so highly that it set the stage for the downfall of the state. The comfort and pleasure of luxury could serve to make men unfit for military service and averse to taking the hard decisions needed to 36 defend the state.

That there was great wealth in the colonial outposts of the VOC can be seen in the accounts of contemporaries. Regarding the Cape, which at the time was regarded as the social backwater of the VOC’s overseas territories, S.P Braam claimed there is: “…a magnificence which I am certain in general can be found in no other colony, nor even in the richest cities of 37 any country in the world.”

This was even more the case in the East Indies. This is demonstrated by an English traveller who visited it between 1747 and 1748 who remarked of Governor-General van Imhoff:

[He] keeps up the state and retinue of a king. When he goes abroad his coach and six is preceded by a troop of horse guards, a company of halberdiers surround it, and another on foot bring up the rear. His guards are all clothed in yellow satin, trim’d

35 De Vries, J. 1999. ‘Luxury and Calvinism / Luxury and Capitalism: Supply and Demand for Luxury Goods in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic.’ The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 57, 2. 36 Ibid. 37 Ross, R. 1983. ‘The Rise of the Cape Gentry’. Journal of Southern African Studies, 9 (2), 206.

101 with silver-lace, and make a more splendid show than the life-guards of any European 38 prince.

Therefore one contributing factor to the implementation of sumptuary legislation may lie in the moralistic conflict between Calvinism and the pomp and display of many of the individuals living in extreme luxury in the various overseas dominiums of the VOC. Sumptuary legislation sought to curb this excess by regulating what was considered appropriate display according to rank or position.

Some scholars such as Simon Schama have argued that the restraint on the consumption of luxury items was not so much due to the mercantile nature of Dutch society but rather due to the Calvinist religion of the Dutch and the moral implications of the consumption of luxury items, leading to an uneasy relationship with such items.39 While these arguments may have had some influence on the situation in Europe, it seems that they do not quite pertain to the overseas outposts of the VOC where both the excessive consumption of luxury items and sumptuary legislation would both make an appearance. In the colonial context, characterised by social mobility and complexity in terms of background, class and race, it appears more likely that sumptuary legislation related to the existing elite’s need to control the social aspirations of those they considered beneath them.

The Impact of Sumptuary Legislation

One aspect which makes evidence scarce for determining if sumptuary legislation was contested is the fact that due to a large number of outlying districts in the Cape colony during the 18th century, enforcement of sumptuary laws, and in fact many other laws was poor. But it also seems as if the sumptuary laws were not necessarily concerned with the rural areas of the Cape colony where people lived in much humbler circumstances than in a place like Cape Town where laws could be enforced more easily. Despite this there is no archival evidence of the prosecution of people who contravened the sumptuary laws. There are two possible

38 Jolibois (sic). 1762. A Voyage to the East Indies in 1747 and 1748: Containing an Account of the Islands of St. Helena and Java. Of the City of Batavia. Of the Government and Political Conduct of the Dutch. Of the Empire of China, with a Particular Description of Canton. London: T. Becket and P.A. Dehondt, 81. 39 Schama, S. 1987. The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age.

London: Collins.

102 reasons for this: either that the sumptuary laws were not broken at the Cape, or that the legislation was not rigidly enforced.

The first suggestion that sumptuary legislation was not infringed upon at the Cape seems improbable. Torstein Veblen’s treatise on conspicuous consumption suggests that individuals will often consume highly conspicuous goods in order to display their wealth and thereby achieve greater social status.40 Since sumptuary legislation did not divide the population of the VOC outposts, and more specifically for this study, the Cape, into socio-economic groupings but rather into social groups based on an individual’s rank, one can suppose that Veblen’s theories must have played some part in the contestation of sumptuary legislation at the Cape. By the time of the implementation of the Sumptuary legislation there was throughout the VOC Empire, including the Cape, various individuals who were not in Company employ but had who had acquired great economic wealth. It therefore only stands to reason that these members of the nouveau riche would seek to express their wealth, a need which was made even greater by the fact that they were hampered by legislation from doing so. The theory therefore suggests that there must have been infringement of sumptuary legislation.

On the other hand those living at the Cape may have appeared conspicuous without necessarily undermining the sumptuary legislation of 1755. With regards to the jewellery the different ranks of society were allowed to wear, the legislation states that the wives of the directors of the outlying posts could wear pearls not exceeding 6000 rixdollars while the pearls worn by the wives and widows of senior merchants could be worth no more than 4000 rixdollars. There are no entries in the Cape records to suggest that these laws were ever violated (or at least prosecuted). In fact when studying the estate inventories of the entire VOC period at the Cape there is no case of a woman who possessed jewellery to the full value allowed for by the sumptuary legislation. The range of prices for a string of pearls varied greatly. The estate records of Sophia van der Bijl who died in 1733 gives the value of her string of 60 pearls with a gold clasp as mere 3:6 rixdollars while, on the other end of the spectrum, Josina van Dam’s pearls with a diamond clasp managed to sell for 149 rixdollars

40 Bagwell, L.S & Berheim, B.D. 1996. ‘Veblen Effects in a Theory of Conspicuous Consumption.’ The American Economic Review, 86(3), 2.

103 the previous year.41 It would therefore seem that in the Cape context, the sumptuary laws’ restriction on the value of pearls could not easily be transgressed.

This does not however mean that people did not attempt to appear conspicuous. The inventory of Hermanus Keeve who died in 1760 suggests that he ran some form of shop from his home. Among the items put up for sale by Keeve were, as the inventory lists them, 14 snoeren valse paarlen (14 strings of false pearls).42 Nor were these items of jewellery cheaply made, in fact the estate accounts of Pieter Meyer include a string of false pearls adorned with a diamond clasp.43 This string of false pearls did not come cheaply either, selling for 17 rixdollars, more than four times the price of the string of real pearls which was owned by Sophia van der Bijl. These false pearls were not of great monetary value and because of this, the wearer could appear conspicuous while not infringing on the sumptuary legislation.

Support for the second argument that sumptuary legislation was not strictly implemented at the Cape is suggested by the probate inventories of the years immediately following the implantation of the 1755 sumptuary legislation. One such example is found in the deceased estate inventory of the junior merchant, Jan Raak, who died in 1764, not ten years after the implementation of the sumptuary legislation. His inventory contains a black silk dress, inherited by one of his daughters, in the French sacque style despite the fact that according to the sumptuary legislation of 1755 only women with a husband of senior merchant rank or higher would be allowed to wear dresses made of silk or velvet. Even more telling is another item of clothing, a white sacque embroidered with coloured and gold yarn. This while gold embroidery was (supposedly) the reserve of only the governor and his family. A second example is found in the inventory of Maria Cicilia van Kerken which contains, amongst other things, two dress of yellow silk. As the sumptuary legislation would only be revoked in 1795 and Maria Cicilia van Kerken died in 1770 it suggests that sumptuary legislation was either wholly ignored or, if not, not very strictly enforced.

41 TEPC, MOOC 10/4.110 & MOOC 10/4.116 42 TEPC, MOOC 8/10.71a 43 TEPC, MOOC 10/5.67

104 Despite the probability of individuals contesting sumptuary legislation there are no records pertaining directly to this. What does shed light on the possibility that these laws were not altogether accepted and abided by, is the fact that the 1755 sumptuary legislation was not the first attempt at this but rather an amalgamation of earlier laws which sought to curb the excess of those living in VOC outposts. An example of the fact that people did not necessarily abide by either the earlier sumptuary legislation or the codification thereof in 1755, is suggested by the use of the kiepersol, a type of eastern parasol that was considered a status symbol. A decree of 28 December 1729 limited the use of these kiepersollen while the sumptuary laws of 1755 contain an entire article on their acceptable use.44 Article 31 of the sumptuary legislation of 1755 states: ‘Houdende verbod aen een ijgelijk minder als een koopman om met een open kipersol by goed weer in't Casteelte komen….’45 Furthermore, the importance of the kiepersol can be gleaned from its use by members of the social elite such as mistress van Kervel as discussed in chapter 3.

Yet one must take into account that although we do not have any existent records suggesting that the sumptuary laws were broken, this does not mean that it never happened. Most likely the Cape government would have followed the precedent set by the Batavian government regarding the punishments given for the infringement of these laws. Therefore the Cape authorities would likely have issued fines of which either they held no record, or no record survives. This probability is supported by the fact that although the subcommittee tasked with adapting the Batavian sumptuary legislation to suit the local conditions made various suggestions for changing them, they mentioned no alternative punishment for those who broke the laws.

Sumptuary Legislation and Markers of Distinction

Sumptuary legislation had an impact on both the servants of the VOC and the free burghers in the various outposts of the VOC since no one could escape Company edicts. All members of society, whether part of the VOC’s official structures or members of the free-burgher population, were classified according to rank; for example, the clergy were ranked with

44 Naudé & Venter, Kaapse Plakkaatboek III, 14. 45 Ibid. Translation: ‘Hereby forbidding everyone less [in rank] than a merchant to enter the Castle with an open kiepersol during good weather.’

105 surgeons with regards to the ornamentation of their clothing and shoes through the use of gold and gold shoe buckles.46 As no individual could escape the sumptuary legislation, irrespective of whether they were strictly enforced or not, sumptuary legislation would have had an effect on the way in which people perceive certain items as symbols of status by the simple fact that those of high rank were allowed to wear or use them and those of lower rank were not. In order to determine how different ranks of people would have interacted both within the Cape and in other parts of the VOC empire, one needs to divide the population into different status groups. Doing this allows us to see the interplay between these different groups.

According to certain theorists, society can be grouped into four individual groupings based on two characteristics, wealth and a desire for status.47 The first group, the patricians are those members of society who possess great wealth but who aspire to use fewer conspicuous luxury goods in order to impress their status on other members of the same status group. Thus these members will engage in horizontal competition with other patricians. At the Cape this group likely consisted of the social elite and these individuals would have been firmly entrenched in their roles as such. This group probably consisted of members of the VOC official elite and their families, including such individuals like the Governor and those in high office.

The second group, the parvenus also possess considerable wealth but would appear to fall more into the grouping of the nouveau riche. This group craves a higher status. They make use of highly conspicuous objects to indicate their status in society and compete vertically with the patricians in an attempt to associate with the social elite while disassociating themselves from the two lower status groupings.48 The parvenus consist of those members of society who had gained great wealth through either trade or farming. The Cape has many examples of such individuals who rose through the ranks to become part of the upper status groups of society, a group often called the Cape gentry. An example of such a group could

46 Taylor, Social World of Batavia, 69. 47 Young, J.H., Nunes, J.C. & Dreze, X. 2010. ‘Signaling Status with Luxury Goods: The Role of Brand Prominence.’ Journal of Marketing 74, 6. The patricians are named for the elites of ancient Rome, parvenus from the Latin pervenio which means ‘to arrive or reach.’ Poseurs is from the French for a ‘person who pretends to be what he or she is not’ while proletarians is a general term for those members of society who are from a lower social or economic class.

48 Ibid., 7.

106 be the alcohol pachters at the Cape who gained considerable wealth through their control of alcohol retail. These free burghers used their new wealth in such a way as to denote their newfound status through using conspicuous symbols of their wealth.

The third status grouping consists of poseurs who desire to compete by using conspicuous goods in order to place themselves among the upper echelons of society. This group does not have the financial means of the patricians or the parvenus, but they attempt to emulate these groups in order to associate with individuals of a higher status while disassociating themselves from the proletariat. The poseurs were likely those members of Cape society who did not possess huge wealth and therefore could not afford to indulge in the luxuries of the two upper status groups, although they still sought to associate with them.

The fourth group consists of the proletarians who are less affluent but also less conscious of status. They do not desire to compete through the use of conspicuous goods. The proletariat was that part of the society in the 18th century Cape who did not attempt to compete with the higher status groups. These individuals typically belonged to those families who lived on frontier farms and who did not have ready access to the latest fashions and symbols of status, nor had any need for emulation as they lived a relatively isolated existence. For this reason the two middle status groupings are of particular importance for determining whether or not sumptuary legislation gave more prominence to the symbols of status.

It is between the parvenus and the poseurs that the greatest amount of status competition occurs which reflects Veblen’s arguments that the higher status group consumes conspicuous goods in order to disassociate themselves from the lower status group, while the lower status group attempts to consume conspicuous goods in order to associate with the higher status group.49 This association is achieved through emulation, thus the poseurs attempt to appear to be part of the parvenus by using symbols which would associate them with that group even though they cannot afford it. This is the reason why 18th century Cape estate accounts contain mention of items such as false pearls, as poseurs attempted to emulate their social superiors in order to be associated with a higher status group.

49 Ibid., 10.

107 In Veblen’s treatise, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), he argues that status is not gained by accumulating wealth but that it is rather gained from the use of objects which become symbols of wealth. Therefore making use of the latest fashions or wearing expensive pieces of jewellery would confer status onto their owners.50 We have determined that jewellery, for example, can be used as a symbol for the gaining of status. Now enter sumptuary legislation, particularly the codification thereof in 1755, which determines that these status groups are to be clearly defined and that clothing (and other symbols of social status) was to be regulated according to a detailed set of rules. As society will naturally divide into these groupings and tensions will exist between the different status groups, especially the parvenus and poseurs, sumptuary legislation only serves to further entrench these ideals. This deepening of the association between status and certain objects will increase the symbol’s value as an object associated with a desired status and thereby giving more prominence to the symbol. Therefore, effectively, sumptuary legislation gave more prominence to markers of distinction as especially the poseurs strive to acquire these very markers.

The Cape Compared to Batavia

Of particular importance when discussing the differences between the Cape and the rest of the VOC empire is Batavia, which acted as the administrative hub of the VOC. The 1755 sumptuary legislation (as well as earlier examples of sumptuary legislation) derived from the Batavian government and we can assume therefore that the legislation was of particular interest to the situation within Batavia, and that the original legislation was structured in such a way as to suit the needs of that particular environment. For this reason we will consider the differences between the Cape and Batavia.

Compared to Batavia, the Cape was a social and economic backwater. Men were drafted into the VOC with the aim of travelling to the East where they could make their fortune; in comparison the Cape was just a half-way point towards this end destination. Batavia was essentially the jewel in the VOC crown, and its inhabitants lived as such. For a contemporary remark on the style of living in Batavia during the VOC period, we turn to a description of Nicolaus de Graaff who writes:

50 Ibid., 9.

108

What most astounds one in Batavia is the extreme splendour and hauteur which the woman in Batavia – Dutch, Mestiza and Half-Caste too – display, especially upon going to and from church…for on such occasions each is decked out more expensively than at any other time… Thus they sit by the hundred in church making a show like lacquered dolls. The least of them looks more like a Princess than a burgher’s wife or daughter, so that Heaven itself is filled with loathing, especially as they go and come from church, when even the most inferior has her slave follow 51 behind to carry a parasol or sunshade above her against the fierce heat.

This quote indicates the personal wealth of many of the free people living in the colony. The Cape too had its wealthy residents, in fact many individuals grew fabulously rich at the Cape but overall society did not live in such a grand scale as that found in Batavia.52 It would seem that there were numerous differences between Batavia and the Cape.

One interesting factor is the fact that wealthy members of Batavian society were not nearly as centralised in terms of their living arrangements as those of the Cape. In fact, members of the elite increasingly tended to move away from the old city in the course of the 18th century due to its unsanitary and unhealthy living conditions lined to outbreaks of malaria. For this reason the elite possessed landed estates which provided them with another way in which to display their wealth. Because of internal developments, the settlement of Batavia became more and more dispersed as the colonial society which was originally perched on the sea edge spread inland to their various estates on which impressive homesteads and pleasure gardens were built.53 In the Cape the elite too had country estates, for example Simon van der Stel acquired Groot Constantia as his country seat, but compared to Batavia the social elite was much more centralised in and around the Castle.

51 N. de Graaff quoted in Taylor, Social World of Batavia, 17-18. 52 Johanna Maria van Riebeeck (grand-daughter of the first Cape commander) supports this notion when she noted in the early 18th century how backwards the Cape was compared to Batavia where she had grown up (although it should be kept in mind that she was the wife of the Governor-General); Bosman, D.B. (ed.). 1952. Briewe van Johanna Maria van Riebeeck en Ander Riebeeckiana. Amsterdam: Die Skrywer, 69. 53 Taylor, Social World of Batavia, 53.

109 A second difference between the Cape and Batavia related to the relations between different racial groups. In Batavia there was a higher degree of social mixing between European settlers and the Asians, Eurasians and creoles which made up the majority of the Batavian population. Because the Dutch were the immigrant minority, they seem to have adopted many of the Asian manners, recreations and style of living, even going so far as to adopt Asian dress in times of undress. This was further perpetuated by the fact that Dutch settlers further intermarried with the local population, or with the creole population, to such an extent that by the 18th century only one of the first ladies was Dutch by birth, while the rest came from the creole Eurasian groups.54 An aspect of this intermixing of culture is the clothing women in Batavia wore. Stavorinus remarked that women raised in the East only wore European dress to church on Sundays but other than that they wore an Indonesian sarong and kebaya. In comparison the settlers at the Cape, although also intermarrying with the free black population and the offspring of slaves, did not adopt generally adopt their cultural practices.55 The slave population of the Cape was widely diverse in that they came from different geographical regions in the Indian Ocean and therefore did not possess a distinct, unified culture which could threaten or influence the Dutch way of life. Therefore, with regards to the clothing people wore at the Cape, the VOC elite, free burghers and slaves all tended to wear European-style clothing. There were some minor exception, though, as slaves sometimes would wear certain eastern clothing (depending on their area of origin) but overall this did not affect the clothing of the Dutch settler society.

Conclusion

Sumptuary legislation has existed in Europe since the Middle Ages but this legislation was never implemented in the Netherlands. Despite this, the VOC implemented sumptuary legislation as part of its regulation of pomp and display in their overseas colonies. Various factors contributed to the implementation of sumptuary legislation, including economic survival and regulation of the social system of the day. The legislation had quite the opposite result and instead of rigidly controlling symbols of status gave these symbols greater importance. Although we have no record to determine how strictly these laws were applied,

54 Ibid., 61. 55 Cf. Malan, A. 1998/9. ‘Chattels or Colonists? “Freeblack” Women and Their Households’. Kronos: Journal of Cape History 25, 50-71.

110 we can be certain that they were ultimately unsuccessful. Sumptuary laws did not survive the 56 VOC and were revoked by Governor-General Alting in December 1795.

56 Taylor, Social World of Batavia, 68.

111 Chapter 6 Clothing and Status among Slaves and Free Blacks

Slaves and Clothing

One cannot study the early colonial period at the Cape without considering slavery. Right from the establishment of the refreshment station at the Cape, a need for labour evolved which could not be fulfilled by the few Europeans who came to the Cape in Company employ. One of the earliest accounts of the presence of a slave woman at the Cape dates from December 1654 when Frederick Verburgh brought back a slave woman named Eva and her son Jan Bruyn (aged about two or three) from his first expedition to Madagascar. She was placed in the service of Sergeant Jan van Herwerden.1 The initial importation of slaves was slow and small scale but there was a definite push towards the use of slave labour in the Colony. In 1655 Jan van Riebeeck bought two slaves from Pieter Kemp, commander of the return ship Amersfoort. These slaves were Angela and Domingo van Bengalen (Angela will feature later as an example of the social mobility of slaves in the early colonial period). Therefore, within a few years of establishing a settlement at the Cape, the senior officials (both van Riebeeck and van Herwerden) were provided with slave labour. By the time Rijckhoff van Goens visited the Cape on his way back to Batavia in 1657, the van Riebeecks 2 were in possession of five young slave women and girls.

On 28 March 1658 the first large group of slaves were brought to the Cape aboard the very same Amersfoort. These slaves came mainly from Angola and Dahomey. Overall, however – taking into consideration the whole period of slave imports to the Cape (1657-1807) – the slave population at the Cape came almost exclusively from five areas: the Indonesian archipelago, Bengal, South India and Sri Lanka, Madagascar and the East African coast. The largest cultural group of the slaves at the Cape fluctuated over the years. Malagasy slaves, who were thought to be especially suitable as agricultural labourers, were generally the largest during the early years, while in the first half of the 18th century more Indonesians were

1 Schoeman, K. 2007. Early Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope 1652-1717. Pretoria: Protea, 33. 2 Ibid., 35.

112 imported. During the last years of the slave trade the majority of slaves derived from the East 3 African coast.

Many of these slaves were housed in the Company’s Slave Lodge between 1679 and 1795 with the number living there averaging around 480 slaves.4 What is interesting about the Company owned slaves is that they had to be baptised and educated in the Reformed religion. The Slave Lodge also contained a school through which hundreds of slaves over the years received education in Dutch language skills, the Reformed faith and skills useful to the Company. The importance of this school in terms of Cape society is that it aimed to enable slaves to assimilate into burgher society, in a sense imposing the cultural character of Dutch society on the widely diverse backgrounds of the Company slaves.5 This assimilation is important in terms of the manumission of slaves which occurred in a few instances. These manumitted slaves would become part of the free-black population and were able to speak Dutch, be members of the Reformed church and culturally copy their Dutch superiors. This process of assimilation is important in terms of the clothing slave women and free black women wore at the Cape during the 18th century.

The eventual large-scale import of slaves to the various outposts of the VOC resulted in a practical problem the Dutch had difficulty in solving. There was no provision for slavery in the laws of the Dutch Republic since the Dutch, unlike the Portuguese, only adopted slavery relatively late and never allowed slavery in The Netherlands. For this reason the VOC followed Roman laws with regards to the use of slave labour in its overseas settlements. In general, slave owners of European status were expected to convert their slaves and subsequently to manumit those who became Christian, or at least manumit them as a stipulation in their wills.6 With regards to any children born in bondage, Roman law

3 Ross, R. 1983. Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 13. 4 Shell, R. & Dick, A. 2012. ‘Jan Smiesing, Slave Lodge Schoolmaster and Healer, 1697-1734’, in Worden, N. (ed.) Cape Town between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town. Johannesburg & Hilversum: Jacana & Verloren, 128. 5 Ibid., 129. 6 Taylor, J.G. 2009. The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia. 2nd ed. London & Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 70.

113 determined that the status of a child be that of its mother, regardless of the paternity, with the result that all children born to slave women were automatically slaves.

With regards to the clothing slaves at the Cape wore, it varied according to whether a slave was in Company ownership or in private ownership. Shortly after the arrival of some of the first slaves at the Cape, van Riebeeck ordered ‘Bengal fotas’ and ‘Japanned striped woolly cloth’ for the making of clothing for the company slaves. This cloth was then sewn into basic clothing by tailors selected among the soldiers and sailors.7 Some idea as to what the costume of a Company slave might have looked like is given by Slotboo’s report in 1710 which states that female slaves received a piece of photas sufficient for four dresses or skirts, a length of nequanias, a piece of sailcloth or chintz for a kabaai, four ells of white linen for head cloths and a supply of thread. From this and a drawing made in the East by the German, Caspar Schmalkalden, we get some idea of what slave woman wore at the Cape. His drawing depicts a slave woman wearing a long skirt (sarong) and short, loose blouse (kabaai), and this 8 may well have been what slave women of Eastern descend wore at the Cape.

The type of clothes slaves in private ownership wore depended greatly on the benevolence of their owners. Clothing could either be cast-offs from members of the family or bought as second-hand items, or cloth would be bought for making clothes. An example of cast-off clothing given to slaves can be seen in the inventory of Christina de Beer who died in 1710 and left a considerable amount of clothing. A dress of coarse striped woollen cloth was left to ‘the slave woman’.9 In the kasboek (cash book) of Johanna Duminy there is reference to the purchasing of cloth for slave clothing. In January of 1791 Duminy purchased ‘4 stukken blouwe bafte voor de slaaven tot hemden’ (four pieces of blue baft to make shirts for the slaves) to the value of 14 rixdollars.10 In January of 1792 Duminy’s kasboek reflects that the household spent 80 rixdollers on ‘uytgaf voor de slaaven tot kleeren’ (expenses for clothes for the slaves) which is a considerable amount if you take into account that a year’s expenses for the running of the entire household amounted to 2088 rixdollars.11 Therefore privately owned slaves could either wear Western or Eastern dress, although it seems that slaves

7 Schoeman, Early Slavery, 108. 8 Ibid., 145. 9 Ibid., 217. 10 Franken, J.L.M (ed.) 1938. Duminy-Dagboeke. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 336. 11 Ibid., 337.

114 generally wore head cloths or scarves. According to Mentzel, slaves at the Cape also did not wear shoes even though there was no specific legislation stating that they were not allowed to do so. Mentzel claims that:

The bare foot is the mark of the slave. Hence at the Cape, unlike in ancient Rome, the 12 shoe, not the cap, is the mark of freedom.

This is supported by the evidence from court cases of the time. In a case from 1746, regarding runaway slaves, it is stated that someone ‘…found footprints of several people going barefoot from the house down to the beach…’, on which basis it was assumed that these must have been slaves.13 Kolb also makes mention of the fact that some slaves used the money they earned for extra work (so-called koeligeld) to buy Sunday clothes for themselves, while Mentzel observed that slaves ‘buy ornaments and fine coloured kerchiefs to bind 14 around their heads’.

There are some indications in the record that some slave women wore clothing that was considered beyond their station. When Mentzel describes how some slaves earn an income for themselves, he adds:

Some also obtain money or goods from their ‘reputed’ wives who have their own way of earning at the expense of soldiers or sailors. These ‘birds’ are easily recognised by 15 their ‘fine feathers’.

This suggests that these women were better dressed than other slave women, and the fact that this was easily noticeable shows to what an extent these women were better outfitted.

12 Mentzel, O.F. 1925. A Geographical-Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope, part 2. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society. 13 Worden, N. & Groenewald, G. 2005. Trials of Slavery: Selected Documents Concerning Slaves from the Criminal Records of the Council of Justice at the Cape of Good Hope, 1705-1794. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 261. 14 Mentzel, O.F. 1944. A Geographical-Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope, part 3. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 110. 15 Mentzel, Geographical-Topographical Description, part 2, 124.

115 Another way in which slaves often acquired money was through trade in second-hand clothing, either gained legally or illegally. In the 1770s Thunberg recalls of his visit to the Cape: ‘We had hardly come to an anchor before a crowd of black slaves and Chinese came in their small boats to sell and barter, for clothes and other goods…’16 The trade in old clothes was apparently not something that was unusual even amongst the slave population at the Cape, as is also clear from the criminal records.

Another way in which slaves could be dressed in clothing far above their status was when ladies of station dressed their slaves luxuriously in order to denote their own status. Wealthy women who were the wives of senior VOC officials would parade around town followed by a train of slaves who were allowed to wear gold and silver jewellery.17 This practice was however later regulated by the VOC. Cornelis de Jong wrote at the end of the 18th century of Cape society:

Many Cape women do not gladly sleep without a maid in the room, and thus one is kept for this and better clothed than the others, [she] also has the job of lady’s maid 18 and carries the Psalm Book behind [her mistress] on visits to church.

It was often these slave women who were much better dressed than those who performed ordinary household tasks, to such an extent that sumptuary legislation regulated the clothing of these slaves as it was yet another way in which burgher women attempted to display their wealth and position.

Because of the marginalising nature of slavery there is relatively little written about the day- to-day lives of slaves. One source that is rich in the detail of the lives of slaves are the court records which deal either directly or indirectly with slaves and their crimes. These records offer a glimpse into the daily tasks, ideals and aspirations of many individuals who would otherwise have been forgotten. One such case took place in 1755 in Cape Town when

16 Thunberg, K.P. 1795. Travels in Europe, Africa and Asia between 1770 and 1779, volume 1. London: W. Richardson, 99. 17 Ross, R. 1999. Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750-1870: A Tragedy of Manners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 11. 18 de Jong, C. 1802. Reizen naar de Kaap de Goede Hoop, 1791-1797, volume 3. Haarlem: Francois Bohn, 143- 44.

116 Januarij van Boegies attacked his slave partner in a jealous fit. Although the insight this case provides into the emotional aspects of slave lives is very interesting, the case also contains important information pertaining to the dress of a slave woman in the very year that sumptuary legislation was implemented. After seeing another slave rock the cradle of their child, Januarij attacked his partner out of jealousy. As the slave woman tried to flee from the attack, Januarij hit her ‘with a parrang which he held in his hand, so that she instantly received a blow straight on her head, which , however, was largely thwarted by a silver hair 19 pin in her hair’.

Although this is a minor detail, the reference to a silver hair pin which was large enough to thwart a blow to the head is suggestive of the pains even slave women went to in order to adorn themselves, as well as to the fact that many slave women were in a position to be well- dressed despite their low social position. This could have been either because the slave woman in question was one such slave who acted as lady’s maid to her mistress, but one cannot know. As mentioned previously, many slaves took great pride in their personal adornment and would go to great lengths to dress and adorn themselves with brightly coloured handkerchiefs and such.

There is another example from the criminal records which is particularly illuminating regarding the need for personal adornment amongst slave women. It comes from a case of stolen paper money documented in 1791. It involves Rosetta van de Caab and Pieter Domus, her slave husband. Pieter Domus at times worked in Cape Town’s harbour servicing passing ships. On some occasions it would seem that Pieter Domus would acquire the second-hand blankets from these ships and would either sell them himself or ask his wife to sell the blankets as part of the wide-spread trade in second-hand items which existed at the Cape. On one such occasion Rosetta was paid with paper money. But as she had no idea as to its value, she asked another slave woman, Jamila, to establish its value and then to buy her some silk kerchiefs somewhere else.20 Although the court’s interest centred on the paper money and the possibility of it being stolen, the case does give us a small glimpse into the lives of slaves and the ways in which they used the second-hand trade at the Cape to acquire goods they desired. In this case Rosetta wanted to buy silk kerchiefs with the profit she would make

19 Worden & Groenewald, Trails of Slavery, 327. 20 Ibid., 586.

117 from selling the used blankets, which provides and unusual and rare insight into the desire of slave women for personal adornment.

The Free Black Population

The term ‘Free Black’ was used particularly for freed slaves at the Cape and came into existence due to their manumission, although there are instances of individuals exiled to the Cape from the East Indies who were also so called. Between 1652 and 1708 slave owners did not need Company approval for the manumission of slaves, therefore the exact number of slaves manumitted during this time is rather obscure. But since manumission later on required that the slave owner apply for permission, the later statistics are relatively certain. Between 1715 and 1791 the Council of Policy received 1075 requests for manumission, which indicates a relatively low rate of manumission at the Cape.21 The rate of manumission at the Cape was about 0.165 per cent of the slave population per year which is the reason why such a small free black population developed at the Cape.22 Company slaves, however, were twelve times (in proportion to their total slave holding) as likely to be manumitted as privately held slaves.23 These other members of the free ‘coloured’ segment of society were described as ‘freeborn’.24 Many of these freeborn members of the free-black population at the Cape were convicts, deportees and political and other exiles sent to the Cape from the East. According to statistics compiled in 1709, there were 51 deportees at the Cape, including two girls, 18 Europeans and 31 people from the East (including Chinese, Malays and men from Ceylon and Macassar).25 Exiles (bannelingen) were distinct from convicts or bandieten in that they were allowed to make their own living and could essentially live as free individuals at the Cape. In order to be manumitted, a slave had to have ‘reasonable knowledge’ of the Dutch language and be baptised. The reasons for manumission of slaves vary: some were manumitted on the death of their owner, if so stipulated in their will, or because they had become too old to be effective and therefore became a burden to their

21 Shell, R. & Elpick, R. 1989. ‘Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, Settlers, Slaves and Free Blacks, 1652-1795’, in Elphick, R. & Giliomee, H. (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 204. 22 Ibid., 206. 23 Ibid., 211. 24 Schoeman, Early Slavery, 307.

25 Ibid., 321.

118 owner. Some slave women were manumitted especially in order to be married. During the early decades of the settlement it was not uncommon for a slave woman to marry a settler due to the fact that women were few and far between in the Cape. Women from the Indonesian archipelago and India (especially Bengal) were among the slave women most incorporated into what was perceived as ‘white’ settler families.26 The first Cape slave to be freed was Maria van Bengalen who was bought by Jan Sacharias in 1658 in order to manumit and marry her. Because this section of the population was the result of the manumission of slaves, it is not surprising that this group was relatively small at the Cape.27 There are records for 21 ‘mixed’ marriages taking place between 1696 and 1744, although these were formal ceremonies and do not account for the various cases of settler men who had free black women as concubines. As regards their lifestyle, Böeseken remarks:

[M]ost of the freeblacks remained in Africa and many of them succeeded in life. ... [T]hey must have found it difficult at first to make ends meet ... [but] within one generation of being manumitted, the freeblacks had begun to adopt the way of life which they had shared when they were slaves in the houses of the freeburghers of the 28 officials.

There was no physical separation with regards to living space between free blacks and free burghers and others. In fact most of the first free blacks seem to have established themselves in the Table Valley where, in the 17th century, they could request land with several thus obtaining either residential or garden plots for the cultivation of fruit and vegetables. Most of these garden plots were established behind the Castle and many free blacks had white free burghers as neighbours. For instance the free black Anthonij de Later van Japan had the prominent whites, Elbert Dirckx Demer and Jacob Cornelis van Rosendael as his 29 neighbours.

Although it does not seem that the free black population was spatially separated from the free burghers there is an indication of a distinction between these groups with regards to the

26 Malan, A. 1998/9. ‘Chattels or Colonists? “Freeblack” Women and Their Households’. Kronos: Journal of Cape History 25, 3. 27 Ibid. 28 Böeseken, A.J. 1977. Slaves and Free Blacks at the Cape, 1657-1700. Cape Town: Tafelberg. 29 Schoeman, Early Slavery.

119 clothing they wore, suggesting a difference in the social statuses of these groups. A plakkaat from 1765 regarding the dress of free black women suggests that these women dressed in a way that was considered onbetamelijk for their position by the authorities. They were forbidden from wearing coloured silk clothing, ‘mistsgaders hoepelrocken, fijne kanten, en eenige optooisels of de mutzen, zoowel als met gefriseerde hair invoegen desleve voortaan in 30 geen ander gewaat dan alleen chits ofte gestreepte lijwaat sullen mogen gekleet gaan.’

Therefore it seems that the Cape government made a distinction between the clothing of the free black population and that of the free burghers, at least in the second half of the 18th century. What is interesting is that there seems to have been some form of contestation regarding these clothing ordinances in that they had to be reissued in 1780s. In general, the re-issuing of legislation suggests that it was not adhered to and it is in fact so that it is probable that the free black population were more likely to contest such laws than the slave population for the simple reason that they possessed more capital to acquire luxury goods. In fact, the legislation was not only re-issued but also sharpened after the 1780s because it was noted that emancipated slave women were ‘not only wearing clothes that were the equal of respectable burgher women, but were many times exceeding them’. Because of these regulations they were only allowed to wear chintz or striped linen with the exception that those of good character were allowed to wear black silk dresses for marriages, when acting as 31 witnesses for a baptism, or when they went to church.

A Chinese Woman at the Cape

During the 17th and 18th centuries there was a small Chinese community at the Cape which largely derived from Batavia. Most of the Chinese at the Cape were convicts and exiles sent to the Cape by the VOC.32 The first Chinese person was exiled to the Cape in 1654 and the number of Chinese exiles increased significantly after the 1680s. There are two instances of

30 Translation: ‘as well as hoop dresses, fine lace or any adornment of their caps as well as curled hair; for which reason they are henceforth not allowed to clothe themselves in any other clothing except chintz or striped linen clothing’, Naudé, S.D. & Venter, P.J. (eds). 1949. Kaapse Plakkaatboek III (1754-1786). Cape Town: Cape Times, 62. 31 Ross, Status and Respectability, 11. 32 Armstrong, J. 2012. ‘The Chinese Exiles’, in Worden, N. (ed.) Cape Town between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town. Johannesburg & Hilversum: Jacana & Verloren, 101.

120 Chinese women at the Cape, one, Tangwangse, voluntarily accompanied her exiled husband to the Cape in 1688 while the other, Tjopjingio or Thisgingnio, was banned to the Cape. Tjopjingio arrived at the Cape in 1747 aboard the Standvastigheid from Cheribon in Java.33 For ten years she formed part of the forced labour force living in the Company Slave Lodge. By 1756 she was already living with the Chinese exile, Onkongko, but they never married as non-Christians could not legally be married in the Colony. After Onkongko’s death in 1762 or early 1763 Tjopjingio inherited almost all of Onkongko’s estate. Tjopjingio did not survive Onkongko’s death long, taking to drinking and staying out all night, consequently dying in July 1763.34 Her untimely death left an interesting inventory of her worldly possessions, including a large amount of clothing and jewellery:

26 women’s dresses 3 chintz ‘japonnen’ 3 aprons 4 ‘borstrocken’ 1 pair of women’s shoes 2 jackets 4 women’s shirts 1 mantel 15 handkerchiefs 2 pairs of gloves 2 pairs of woollen gloves 1 fan 5 pairs of women’s pants 6 pairs of women’s socks (stockings) 1 ‘cabaijband’ 15 handkerchiefs 1 pair of gold buttons 2 pairs silver buckles 1 pair silver nose [rings?] 2 silver chains

33 Ibid., 118. 34 Ibid., 119.

121 9 silver buttons set with stones 1 double gold pants button 5 different gold rings 4 gold rings set with different stones 1 pair gold earrings with 2 diamonds 1 gold with 1 diamond various lose stones 35 1 ring

The inventory of Tjopjingio is interesting as it contains mainly Western dress, even though she was of eastern origin and had not been born at the Cape but merely exiled. Furthermore her inventory consists mainly of clothing, a phenomenon which is also seen in the inventory of Rachel van de Caab who will be discussed later. Her inventory contains 15 dresses and 11 cabaijen. Besides the more traditional women’s dresses, Tjopjongio’s inventory also include three voorschoten (aprons) which were particular to western dress. This along with the high number of handkerchiefs and gloves in her inventory suggests that she wore mainly Western clothing. Along with her clothing her inventory also includes a pair of shoes, which was, as discussed earlier, particular to the free population at the Cape. One cannot know what social position Tjopjingio belonged to during her term of exile at the Cape. Initially after her exile she spent ten years in the Company Slave Lodge although we know nothing specific of her life there. During this time she might have assumed the same social status as others in the Slave Lodge, thereby belonging to the under classes of a slave owning society. If this is the case, owning shoes would have had particular importance to Tjopjingio, serving to make a distinction between herself and the slave population of the Cape.

What is most likely, however, is that Tjopjingio formed part of what the VOC authorities deemed the onbetamelijk free black women who were the subject of a plakkaat only two years after her death. Her inventory includes a pair of gold earrings set with two diamonds, which would have been illegal to wear two years later. The plakkaat states that free black women were not allowed to wear earrings with fijne ofte valsen steenen (with precious or false stones). The fact that Tjopjingio was part of the population that the VOC sought to

35 TEPC, MOOC 10/8.37

122 regulate, suggests that she attempted to transcend the social boundaries of the day by using her clothing to gain social position.

The free Chinese population at the Cape appears to have had the same social status of that of the free-black population, although they were not completely assimilated into this population. In the opgaafrollen, the free population of the Cape were divided into three categories, first the free burghers, then the free blacks and sometimes at the end the free Chinese population, although at times they were included within the free black population.36 The distinction is however also draw in the legislation, the plakkaten distinguish between free blacks and free Chinese by always mentioning them separately.

A Free-Black Woman: Rachel van de Caab

Rachel was a free black woman who passed away in 1767. Her daughter, Mietje, inherited her estate as there is no record of Rachel having had a husband. The fact that she is named Rachel ‘van de Caab’ suggests that she was most probably born at the Cape, either the child of a free black woman or a slave. Despite the fact that Rachel was apparently not married to either a free black man or to a member of the Dutch burgher society, her possessions indicate someone who was relatively well-off, or at least who appeared to be so. It is difficult to determine Rachel’s social standing as during this time a woman’s position in society was determined by that of her husband or father. It is difficult due to the fact that Rachel was most probably born out of wedlock as is indicated by the toponym ‘van de Caab’ instead of a traditional European surname. Legally therefore Rachel would have taken the status of her mother, a status which is unknown to us. The massive amount of clothing listed in her inventory makes her something of an oddity. Despite not having been married, or listed as widowed and with no other property to her name, Rachel would have appeared to be affluent based on the clothing in her estate, which included:

26 women’s dresses 7 women’s gonnen (French dress) 10 women’s jackets 4 bed cabaaijen (gowns)

36 Armstrong, ‘Chinese Exiles’, 125.

123 6 12 white shirts 16 white handkerchiefs 15 handkerchiefs of various colours 1 unmade women’s dress 2 pieces of handkerchief 1 velvet bonnet 1 silver hairpin with 1 stone 6 silver shirt buttons 1 silver beugel (sort of handbag) 1 silver 7 gold 5 gold rings 2 gold, double handknoopen (hand buttons) 9 gold earrings 1 ‘coljeé met sijne paarlen’ 1 string of fine pearls 37 1 tin with various ribbons

Besides a few pieces of cloth, needles and one or two other items Rachel van de Caab’s entire inventory consisted of clothing.38 The sheer amount of clothing is something that is not even trumped by ladies who belonged to the VOC elite, and this at a time when the sumptuary laws were already consolidated in 1755. Although there is no record of the type of material her dresses were made of, the fact that there are almost forty dresses alone listed together is a remarkable amount of clothing. It is interesting to note that the inventory of Rachel van de Caab was compiled only two years after the Cape government passed a plakkaat to regulate the clothing of free black women whom they saw as dressing excessively. So excessively in fact that they refer to the free black women as not only trying to dress similarly to ‘ordentelijke burgervrouwen, maar hun Selfs veelmaalen, niet komen te ontsien, boven de

37 TEPC, MOOC 8/12.28 38 It is of course possible that she worked as a dressmaker, but this would not explain the large amount of jewellery in her estate. Overall, the case of Rachel van de Caab is something of a mystery.

124 Sodanige uijt te Steeken….’39 Due to the excessive dress of the free black women they were limited to only wearing striped linen or chintz dresses. Also the plakkaat determined that free black women were not allowed to wear any decoration on their caps. If a free black woman did not adhere to this rule she was fined 50 rixdollars.40 The large fine free black women had to pay for transgressing the rules suggests that the Cape government took these offences seriously. Although we cannot be completely sure, Rachel might very well have overstepped these rulings with the items listed in her inventory. Ribbons in particular were used in the hair and as decorations for caps, also her jewellery might well have been prohibited.

On a larger scale it appears as if the free black women of the time were very much aware of the clothing they wore, perhaps contesting their social position as free black women through their dress if and when they could afford to do so. This is supported by the necessity of issuing a plakkaat in order to regulate the clothing of this relatively small group of women in particular. It is interesting that the plakkaat was concerned with the clothing of free black women and not men, suggesting that there was a particular need for the regulation of women in this social group. Rachel van de Caab is one such example of a woman who formed part of the free black community but who likely wished to transcend her position in society through the clothing she wore. She was not excessively wealthy as is evident by the lack of other notable possession in her inventory, so the excess in clothing must be a playact of a social position she possibly hoped to belong to. Nor was she married, a crucial point since if she could not acquire social standing through marriage, she perhaps attempted to do so through her appearance.

From Slave to Free Burgher: Ansela/Angela van Bengalen

Ansela or Angela van Bengalen’s arrival at the Cape is contested, either 1655 or 1657. Her age upon arrival is equally uncertain but she would spend a long and fruitful life at the Cape, only passing away in 1720.41 Her name may be used in order to determine something of Angela’s origin, the ‘van Bengalen’ indicating she came from the area which is now the north-east of India and Bangladesh. Initially Angela belonged to Jan van Riebeeck but upon

39 Naudé & Venter, Kaapse Plakkaatboek III, 62. Translation: ‘decent burgher women, but that that they sometimes go so far as to surpass them.’ 40 Ibid. 41 Schoeman, Early Slavery, 33.

125 his departure from the Cape he sold her to the then fiscal, Abraham Gabbema, who later became the secunde.42 In April 1666 Abraham Gabbema set Angela van Bengalen and her three children free on condition that she first spent six months with the free burgher Thomas Christoffel Muller, who at this time set himself up as a baker, in order to receive training. She made a request for a house plot in Table Valley in 1667 and was baptised in 1668.43 Angela became integrated into the white colonist community when she married the burgher Arnoldus Willemsz Basson in 1669. With Basson she had seven more children, besides a number of illegitimate children she bore before her marriage, including Anna de Koning. Basson died in 1698 but this did not mean that his family lost their prominent position in Cape society. In fact, Angela and Arnoldus’ eldest son, Willem Basson had a high standing in free burgher society, possessing the lucrative meat pacht between 1705-1707 while the girls born from the union all married Dutch husbands.44 The integration of Angela into the white free-burgher population gives a good idea of attitude towards status and race at least during the early VOC period at the Cape. Although Angela had been a slave, this did not prevent her from marrying a relatively well-to-do burgher or to conduct successful business affairs on her own after her death. The suggestion therefore is that Angela had integrated into the white free burgher population to such an extent that there was no necessity for her to contest social position through the use of clothing.

The decease estate inventory of Angela suggests too that she integrated into the Dutch culture that colonists had brought to the Cape. Her inventory contains the following jewellery and 45 gold and silverware:

1 box containing a bead necklace with a gold clasp 1 double bead necklace with a gold clasp and with 18 small gold beads in between. 3 necklaces with different beads 12 fine pearls 1 gold earring 4 gold rings Various small pieces of gold

42 Ibid., 353. 43 Ibid., 355.

44 Ibid., 356. 45 TEPC, MOOC 8/4.15

126 1 small box with 18 silver buttons weighing 8 loot 2 hairpins 1 pair old silver buckles 1 old watch 2 silver snuffboxes weighing 4 loot

Angela van Bengal’s inventory consists of a number of beaded jewellery pieces which are associated with Eastern dress. Besides the beaded jewellery, however, the rest of the pieces are very Dutch, including amongst others a string of pearls which were prized as an item of jewellery every burgher woman should have. Silver buckles also formed part of European dress of the time, and although the inventory does not state what types the buckles are, they were more likely than not shoe buckles. This also suggests that Angela would have forsworn the tradition of slaves not wearing shoes in the Cape for the clothing of the free burgher population. This same idea is supported by the presence of silver buttons in her inventory. It is, however, from her clothing that we get a good idea of her integration into the free burgher society. In the early years of the settlement the items of clothing mentioned in the inventories are few and for this reason it is important to compare the inventory of Angela to that of the free burghers of the same time. Thus, Maria Visser, who died two years before Angela, had relatively few items of jewellery in her inventory compared to Angela:

1 silver snuffbox containing: 2 gold rings, of which one was set with a stone 1 gold earring with one stone 1 silver hairpin 46 1 horn box containing 1 silver ring

The paucity of jewellery compared to those of Angela suggests that the latter had quite a few items of display for the earlier years of the settlement. Naturally as the settlement grew, so did its prosperity and this is even more evident in the next generation when we consider Angela’s daughter, Anna de Koning (see below).

According to her inventory, Angela owned the following clothes:

46 TEPC, MOOC 8/3.82

127

5 cabaijen (gowns) and 9 dresses 6 caps 7 trekmutsen (sort cap) 7 handkerchiefs 1 pair of knitted gloves 4 black caps 1 silk apron 1 black dress 5 shirts 1 small cap

Angela’s clothing includes 9 dresses and 5 kabaaien which is not an excessive amount of clothing but in order to get an idea of her position in society we should again consider other inventories of the same period. Maria Visser’s inventory contains a great number of caps, coming to a total of 32 but she only possessed 4 dresses and 4 kabaaien, which is less than Angela’s. Both inventories include only one pair of mittens, one apron and only a few shirts. From a comparison of the inventories of Angela and Maria it becomes clear that Angela, a manumitted slave possessed more clothing than Maria. Even more interesting is the fact that there is very little mention of clothing in the inventories of women for the time. Of the 16 inventories of the belongings of women which were compiled in the five years spanning from 1718 to 1722, only six mention clothing in any way or form. It appears that the Orphan Chamber did not pay considerable attention to the clothing of women during the earlier years of the Dutch settlement, often only referring to the presence of clothing as ‘de klederen to des overledens lyf behoort hebben’47. Therefore it quite remarkable that the inventory of Angela van Bengal should include definite reference to clothing, and even more so the reference to a black kabaai or dress which was the traditional colours worn by both Dutch men and women during the 1660s and 1670s when black and white ensembles were the most popular.48 Although brighter colours came into vogue later on, it is important to note that Angela was a very old woman at the time of her death, having arrived at the Cape in its infancy and she may therefore not have followed the newer fashions slavishly. Furthermore, even in later

47 TEPC, MOOC 8/3.88. Translation: ‘Clothing belonging to the body of the deceased’. 48 Strutt, D. 1975. Fashion in South Africa, 1652-1900. Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 37.

128 years black was often worn by the older members of society, and the black dress may well indicate that Angela was something of a matriarchal figure in the Dutch community, or that she adjusted her clothing in such a manner as to align herself with her adopted culture.

Angela van Bengal’s inventory suggests that although she probably did not challenge her position in society as a free black woman, seeing that she had married into the white settler community, she certainly used Dutch clothing in order to fit into that mould. Angela’s biography suggests that she assimilated into the Dutch settler community by being baptised as a Christian and marrying a Dutch colonist. One of the acts of assimilating into the community would be the adoption of Dutch dress. Therefore one can argue that Angela did not contest her background but rather performed her news status and identity through the use of her European clothing. Her daughter, who became the wealthiest women at the Cape of her generation, would build on Angela’s successful assimilation of the dominant culture.

A Wealthy Free Black: Anna de Koning

Anna de Koning married the Company officer Captain Oloff Bergh around 1677 and bore him seven children. Bergh was a Company servant and a Cape explorer who during his service was sent to Namaqualand by Simon van der Stel in order to investigate the reports of copper there. Originally from Sweden, Olof Bergh was nominated as a member of the Council of Policy in 1685 and was promoted to Lieutenant the following year. Following the scandal that erupted after the stranding of the ship, Nostra Senhora de los Milagros, near Cape Agulhas (he was implicated in the embezzlement of some of the cargo), he was exiled and his estate was confiscated and inventoried which gives us some idea of the splendour in which he and Anna de Koning had lived. Only one of these inventories survives regarding the furniture in the home of the couple. At this time Oloff Bergh lived within the walls of the Cape Castle in the house of the secunde. Woodward suggests that the total value of the furniture inventoried at this time indicates that the value of his furniture was certainly worth more than 1000 rixdollars.49 He was a very wealthy man and one of the earliest owners of the prized farm of Simon van der Stel, Groot Constantia. His prominent position in the Cape gave his wife, who was born into slavery and manumitted along with her mother,

49 Woodward, C.S. 1975. ‘“And Pretty Apartments”: Die Binnekant van die Dorpshuis, 1665-1699’. Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe, 15(3), 176.

129 considerable status. A copy of a portrait of Anna de Koning survives and shows her as a beautiful and elegant young Eastern woman with ringlets in her hair and dressed fashionably for the time (see below). And with the status afforded her by the rank of her husband, Anna would have had numerous occasions to wear her fashionable clothing. One reference made to such an occasion is that of the arrival of the visiting Commissioner, C.J. Simonsz, in 1708 who was welcomed by secunde D’Abeleing and fiscal Blesius along with Anna de Koning and Wilhelmina Burlamacchi.50 The fact that Anna de Koning and her husband were part of the welcoming party suggests that they were part of the higher echelons of colonial Cape society. Anna died in 1734, having been widowed ten years before. Her estate included a house on the Heerengracht, another house behind it, a house near the church, a house and garden in Table Valley, one of the most prestigious farms in the colony, Constantia, and two loan farms in Piquetberg, called Guergap and Sonqua’s Kloof. There were 28 slaves in town, seven at the garden, and 27 at Constantia. Her inventory is very extensive, but for purposes of this study the clothing and jewellery left behind by Anna de Koning will be considered 51 here.

The jewellery included in Anna de Koning’s inventory is remarkable, especially considering the relatively early date of the compilation of her inventory. Although in later years as prosperity grew within Cape Town and its hinterland, there were a number of individuals who had very large inventories, few, if any compared with that of Anna de Koning. Her jewellery includes:

1 double string of pearls 2 tufts of ‘hand pearls’ 1 necklace with sapphires 1 brooch with sapphires 1 diamond ring, set with seven stones 2 diamond ring with one stone 2 rings set with sapphires 1 earring set with stone

50 Schoeman, K. 2013. Here & Boere: Die Kolonie aan die Kaap onder die Van der Stels, 1679-1712. Pretoria: Protea, 349. 51 TEPC, MOOC 8/5.118A, B & C.

130 3 gold necklaces 1 pair gold small hand locks 2 pair gold earrings with pearls 6 pair pearl earrings set in gold 1 pair gold small knee clasps 1 gold finger hat 1 pair gold earrings with sapphires 1 gold hairpin 2 pair gold pants buttons 1 gold hat band 2 gold hat pin 2 gold rings 1 pair of gold shirt buttons 2 gold hoop rings 128 gold shirt buttons 1 gold ring set with ‘cat eye’ 1 gold ring set with topaz 1 gold ring set with a green stone 1 gold ring set with a ruby 1 gold ring set with agate 1 gold ring set with glass stones 1 silver ring set with ‘cat eye’ 1 signet stone 7 silver plated buckles, assorted 1 pair silver buckles set with stones 100 silver shirt-dress buttons 6 pair silver buckles 3 pair silver pants buttons 33 ebony buttons with silver 87 ‘Tonkin’ shirt-dress buttons 117 silver shirt-dress buttons 3 silver and gold-plated snuffboxes 2 silver medals 1 bag with silver

131 1 small gold pocket watch with chain 3 pieces of gold 1 gold band 2 old silver pocket watches 2 test stones 8 quadraat small stones 1 bezoar stone 128 snake stones 1 small box with boomsteentjes 1 box with mother of pearl 1 box containing 180 stones 1 box with red coral and 4 agate handles 43 gold shirts-dress buttons an 1 pair of silver pants buttons 10 various silver and gold-plated buckles 3 silver rings 2 gold with one gold band and 1 silver watch 52 112 silver shirt-dress buttons with stones as well as ebony and ‘Tonkin’ shirt-dress buttons.

Unfortunately we cannot make an accurate estimate of the total value of the jewellery belonging to Anna de Koning. Although auction records for a large number of the items in her estate are in existence, it does not appear as though her jewellery were auctioned off, save the mention of a few stones sold. The auction rolls mention 128 stones referred to as slangen steene or snake stones sold at auction to a number of different buyers. The total value of these stones amounted to 213:3 rixdollars.53 De Koning’s inventory includes two stones referred to as toetsteentjes, eight quadraat stones, one bezoar stone, the aforementioned 128 snake stones, a small box of boomsteentjies, a small box of mother of pearl, another small box containing 180 unnamed stones and a final small box filled with coral and four agate pieces. The large number of stones included in her inventory, along with the prices paid for the 128 snake stones at the auctioning off of some of her possessions, all indicates that Anna de Koning’s jewellery were valued as a small fortune for the time. The high value of these items along with the massive amount of gold and silver buttons included in her inventory also

52 Ibid. 53 TEPC, MOOC 10/4.126

132 suggests that Anna de Koning saw her jewellery as a means of investment during a time when buttons made of precious metals could be, and often was, used as currency. That said, we cannot take away from the fact that Anna de Koning certainly was a well-dressed woman, adorned with expensive jewellery as befitted her rank in the early colonial society at the Cape. Her inventory includes, amongst other items of jewellery, five gold rings set with different precious and semi-precious stones, three rings (no description of the metal used) set with diamonds, two rings (no description of the metal used) stones set with sapphires, two gold signet rings, two gold hoop rings, one gold ring set with glass stones and one silver ring set with a semi-precious stone. Besides these rings, she owned five necklaces set with precious stones, various silver and even gold buckles and numerous other items of value. Her jewellery was truly remarkable for the time when compared to that of other women of rank.

In terms of the clothing included in Anna de Koning’s inventory, her possessions include:

3 pairs of gloves with fingers 2 embroidered cabaaijen 13 handkerchiefs 9 silk handkerchiefs 2 cotton handkerchiefs 2 black chintz dresses 1 chest … with 4 leather 4 dresses, 1 shirt and 2 trousers chest with six dresses, 1 shirt and 1

Anna de Koning was in possession of several dresses, two of which were sold on auction. Unfortunately there is no description of many of these dresses, making it difficult to learn the details of what material the dresses were made of or what type of embroidery they had, in order to determine the value and quality of her clothing. The two dresses which sold on auction were the two embroidered cabaaijen which sold for 17:7 and 18:1 rixdollars, respectively. This is a remarkable price for the two dresses seeing as in the same year at the auction estate for Catharina Marquart three dresses and two women’s ‘Japanese gowns’ (japonnen) sold for only 4:2 rixdollars.54 Four years later, at the auction of Maria van

54 TEPC, MOOC 10/4.115

133 Hoeven’s estate, another three dresses and two japonnen sold for 12 rixdollars55. Although her estate auction acquired a considerably better price for these items of clothing it is still a far cry from the almost 36 rixdollars the two dresses of Anna de Koning were sold for. This suggests that her dresses were likely of exceptional quality, made of expensive material and possibly embroidered with gold or silver thread, or studded with seed pearls. This of course is only speculation as no description of these dresses survives. Despite this we can still learn something of the type of clothing Anna de Koning wore from the copy of her portrait which still exists today.

56 Figure 6.1 Portrait of Anna de Koning (1657-1733)

The surviving copy of the portrait of Anna de Koning is the only depiction that we have of a former woman slave at the Cape. Yet, although de Koning was born into slavery her status in

55 TEPC, MOOC 10/5.22 56 Sourced from http://newhistory.co.za/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Anna-de-Koning1.png (accessed 12 November 2014).

134 Cape society rose so high that she became one of the elite members of society. Her portrait, which in itself attests to her social position in a time when portraits were symbols of status, contains many details of her social standing, mainly discerned from the clothing she wears. Although the portrait is not a proper full length depiction of de Koning, the width of the skirt suggests that this particular image was painted during the late 17th century, before wide hooped skirts became fashionable, a date which will also fit her age as she is depicted as a relatively young woman. De Koning’s bodice is cut to fit over her corset and is relatively plain without the stomacher effect, as was the fashion during this time. The overskirt or rove is split down the front and drawn back while turning it over in order to expose the lining, while the sleeves are short and the under sleeves are exposed in lacy frills. The collar of de Koning’s dress is much narrower than earlier in the century while her neckline is also very high compared to what would become the fashion a few years later. This high neckline is said be as a result of French fashions of the time which were inspired by Madam de Maintenon, the last mistress of Louis XIV.57 Despite the relatively demure cut of the dress, the frivolity of de Koning’s dress is evident from the large number of ribbons which are seen at her waist and also at her elbows. Evidently this was not a dress worn for everyday work but rather a statement piece to display one’s position. In terms of accessories the portrait contains only two – the string of pearls around her neck and the fan held loosely in her left hand. Pearls were still the jewellery item of choice at the time the portrait was painted and although there is no evidence of other items of jewellery de Koning’s estate has given us a clear indication of the masses she possessed.

Anna de Koning’s clothing, as seen from her portrait and her jewellery, suggests that despite her Eastern heritage and her slave background she became fully integrated into the white settler society. Her choice of clothing and jewellery relates to those of the VOC and burgher elite, which is as one would expect as she belonged to the uppermost echelons of Cape society. Her choice of western clothing might have been intentional if she attempted to reaffirm her acquired position as a member of the settler elite, a possibility that may be suggested by the extravagance of her jewellery. Although Anna de Koning’s psyche is unknown to us, there is little doubt that she attempted to reaffirm her position through the use of her clothing and accessories, marking her as one of the elite ladies of her time.

57 Strutt, Fashion in South Africa, 48.

135 Conclusion

For Ansela van Bengal and Anna de Koning it was not necessary to challenge their social status as they assumed the status of their husbands and were therefore taken up into the free burgher community despite their slave descent. Clothing for these two women was merely an affirmation of their social status, confirming that they were members of the free settler society. What is particularly telling is the way women of the free black community used their clothing. Both Tjopjingio and Rachel van de Caab belonged to this part of society, not marrying into the white community. What is exceptionally telling is that the inventories of Ansela and Anna, contain significantly more property in addition to their clothing. Both had investments in property and jewellery while the items of clothing are relatively small compared to their total inventory worth. In comparison, the inventories of Tjopjingio and Rachel van de Caab consist almost entirely of clothing and other items for personal adornment while neither one was in possession of any landed property. It can suggest that these women paid more attention to personal adornment in order to give the impression of affluence and thereby appearing to be of higher social rank, thus setting them apart from the slaves below them. But even slave women attempted to distinguish themselves through clothes and accessories, in spite of the strictures placed upon them.

136 Chapter 7 Conclusion

The development of newly settled colonies which resulted from European expansion led to the development of new social identities. Because social structures were not rigidly defined in these newly settled areas as was the case in Europe, the various ways in which to define a person’s status and position were contested within these colonial outposts. For this development there were two important factors to take in account, which go hand-in-hand. These are the sense of belonging to a group or groups, and the physical belongings associated with that sense of belonging. By attaining certain belongings a person could create the idea of belonging to an associated group. This was particularly prevalent in colonial settlements where there was much more fluidity in society, allowing individuals of different social groups to move into others through the use of the items which denoted social status, or through close association (such as through marriage) with an individual of high status. A very good example of this process at the Cape is afforded by the case of Anna de Koning who was born into slavery but after manumission married one of the most powerful men at the Cape during that time, Captain Oloff Bergh. When one looks at her estate inventory there is a clear connotation between the material possessions in her estate and her identity as the wife of a senior VOC official which was the result of her marriage. The massive amounts of clothing and jewellery in her estate demonstrate how a woman of very humble origins could acquire social prestige in a colonial society. It is for this very reason that colonial society did not place as much regard on heritage or descent, or even at times on race, but rather emphasised wealth and material possessions.

The clothing which was available at the Cape during the VOC period was produced through a wide variety of means, as illustrated in chapter 2. The production of clothing was both part of the local enterprise as was the case with the production of clothing within the household. Most households produced at least some form of clothing within the home, either by the women of the household or by slaves who produced their own clothing and even that of their masters. Slave women were often experts at making lace as is indicated in chapter 2, and this was seen as a great asset if a household had a slave with such skills. Furthermore clothing was also imported to the Cape via the extensive trade networks which were so conveniently supplied by the VOC shipping routes. Individuals such as Hendrik Persoon

137 contributed to the much smaller marker of pre-made clothing sold at the Cape. Much of the pre-made clothing consisted more of items such as stockings, hoops for dresses, gloves, aprons and handkerchiefs instead of fully made dresses, although there are accounts of Persoon purchasing pre-made dresses. Further research on the role of slaves in producing clothing, both for the household and themselves, will contribute greatly to the historiography of slavery. Although much research has been done on other aspects of their lives, the historiography is still lacking with regards to the domestic and material lives of slaves at the Cape.

With regards to the purchase of second-hand clothing there was a very active trade in buying and selling used items. The second-hand trade ranged from auctions to the illicit trade in clothing. Auctions were either voluntary or forced, depending on the circumstances and many auction records contain the accounts of clothing being auctioned. Clothing put on auction varied from highly decorative and expensive dresses such as those owned by Anna de Koning, whose entire estate was auctioned off after her death, to less-glamorous slave clothing. Other forms of the second-hand purchase of clothing were often less reputable. As mentioned in chapter 2, there was a very active trade in the clothing of sailors and soldiers who at times sold the clothes off their backs in order to cover lodging and drinking debts. Here to there exists a wonderful opportunity to add to the historiography. Although recent work has done much to attempt to illuminate the lives of the lower classes of Cape society, particularly soldiers, and sailors, we still don’t fully understand their material circumstances.

Chapter 3 established that the wives and daughters of the VOC official elite, with their profound social influence and superior purchasing power, often acted as the regulators of fashion at the Cape. This meant in particular that these women acted as ‘gate-keepers’ for the latest fashions from Europe and as such seem to have been the role models of fashion. As Cape society became more complex with the intermarriage of the burgher elite and the VOC official elite, the women belonging to the upper tiers of society still had the means to dress in accordance with their status. With the institutionalising of Sumptuary Legislation in 1755 there was a legal way to protect the dress and exclusive use of particular status symbols. These laws further entrenched the association of social prestige with certain objects and therefore added greater prominence to these items. The women who belonged to the VOC official elite have been largely ignored in the historiography of the 18th century

138 Cape. Ironically enough, even though slaves were more marginal during their life-times, we now know more about their lives than those of women who had belonged to the social elite. Except for the case of Anna de Koning, whose life has been quite extensively researched, there has been relatively very little done regarding the lives of Cape women in general. De Koning is particularly interesting as she experienced extreme differences in status during her life. What was an important contributing factor to Anna de Koning’s social success was the status of the man she married because a woman’s status was closely associated with the status of either her husband or father. The social elite was in effect dominated by a small group of senior members of the VOC government which, as demonstrated in the chapter on VOC women, consisted of a complex set of ranks and positions. This was further encroached upon by the growth in economic power among the free-burgher population as economic enterprises expanded in the course of the 18th century. The real and symbolic control held by these officials is often also linked to having a ‘pure’ Dutch identity and did not only derive from rank. The importance of a Dutch cultural identity can be seen in the position of the Governor at the Cape. For the entire VOC period there was only one locally-born governor, Hendrik Swellengrebel, and he belonged to one of the most affluent burgher families at the Cape with both a father and an uncle who had held high positions in the VOC before settling at the Cape. This clashing of different statuses and the competition between burghers who felt a sense of entitlement due to their settled position at the Cape resulted in a complex interplay of status, position and issues of precedence. This clash also further entrenched the need for social power within the VOC and helped to make society even more hierarchical than it had been at the earlier stages of the settlement.

The increase in the rigidity of society had the result that women from the free burgher, free black and slave communities would often contest their position through an attempt to emulate higher-ranking women. This emulation can clearly be seen in the case of women who owned fake pearls. As pearls was one of the items of jewellery that was closely regulated by sumptuary legislation after 1755 (and even in earlier versions of sumptuary legislation) this is particularly insightful for giving credence to the notion that status and material possessions of high value – or at least the perception of material possessions of high monetary value – were irrevocably intertwined. This is the reason why clothing and other forms of personal adornment were used to express the perceived position of an individual. Our current state of knowledge regarding these groups of women is also not quite satisfactory. This study aimed to enrich the general scarcity of information regarding the lives of women who have been

139 much neglected in earlier studies by looking considering their position and role in the development of Cape society. For this reason, this thesis aimed to shed some light on the cultural and material position of women during this time and the ways in which they contributed to the development of a unique society at the Cape – one that was obsessed with status and material culture.

By focussing particularly on women in the 18th century, the study has helped to bring into relief the role and contribution of a large portion of the population of the Cape during the VOC period who have hitherto not received sufficient attention. The study of women in particular contributes to a better understanding overall of the various forces which moulded the development of Cape society. Also, because women largely could not play an active role in public, the use of material culture to express themselves and their identity became even more significant to them. For this reason, the study of something as individual as clothing and personal adornment becomes an important tool to understand the larger processes which shaped the development of a complex and dynamic society at the VOC Cape, as this thesis has demonstrated.

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Primary Sources: Manuscripts

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C 133 Council of Policy, Resolutions, 1755

VC 39 Verbatim Copiën, Muster Rolls of Free Burghers, 1657-1699

VC 604 Verbatim Copiën, NGK Marriage Registers, 1695-1712

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De Wet, G.C. (ed.). 1964. Resolusies van die Politieke Raad, Volume V (1716-1719). Cape Town: Government Printer.

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Hoge, J. 1946. ‘Personalia of Germans at the Cape, 1652-1806’. Archives Year Book for South African History 9. Cape Town: Cape Times.

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