Town The copyright of this thesis rests with the University of Cape Town. No quotation from it or information derivedCape from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of theof source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non-commercial research purposes only. University KINSHIP, ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SOCIAL CAPITAL: ALCOHOL PACHTERS AND THE MAKING OF A FREE-BURGHER SOCIETY IN CAPE TOWN, 1652-1795 by Town Gerald Jacobus Groenewald Cape of Thesis Presented for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY University in the Department of Historical Studies UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN November 2009 A BSTRACT “Kinship, Entrepreneurship and Social Capital: Alcohol Pachters and the Making of a Free-Burgher Society in Cape Town, 1652-1795” by Gerald Jacobus Groenewald November 2009 In 1657 the Dutch East India Company (VOC) released fourteen employees from its service who settled as free burghers at the Cape of Good Hope. By 1795 their number had grown to almost fifteen thousand. The original free burghersTown shared the same socio- cultural background and were uniformly poor. Yet in the course of the eighteenth century they developed into a stratified society with a clearly identifiable elite. Hitherto this development had been ascribed to capital accumulationCape in the form of land and slaves, with a focus on the settled arable farmers. This thesis challenges these arguments by applying the theoretical concept of entrepreneurshipof to the history of the 198 individuals who served as alcohol pachters (lease holders) in Cape Town between 1680 and 1795. The thesis argues that a study of their economic and social activities leads to greater conceptual clarity and a better understanding of the way in which social mobility operated. This study reveals how intertwined economic success was with social factors; and traces the changingUniversity uses and functions of kinship and social capital in VOC Cape Town. It demonstrates the importance of the urban free burghers to the Cape economy and the ways in which this group was linked to the rural free burghers. The first chapter treats the origins and operation of the alcohol pacht (lease) system and its contribution to the Cape economy. This is followed by a prosopographical analysis of all 198 of the alcohol pachters. Chapter three presents the biography of Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen as a vehicle with which to present the theoretical concepts attended on entrepreneurship, which are employed in the rest of the thesis. Chapter four illustrates the importance of social capital and kinship to what was still a largely immigrant society in the 1730s, while chapter five traces the changes which had occurred by the 1770s. These two chapters also demonstrate the ways in which the urban and rural elites coalesced over time. The final chapter shows to what extent the economic success of pachters was translated into other forms of power. Town Cape of University ii CONTENTS List of Tables, Graphs and Figures………………………………………………….v Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………vii Abbreviations and Glossary…………………………………………………………xi A Note on Dates…………………………………………………………………….xii Introduction…………………………………………………………………………1 Town 1. The Development, Operation and Economic Role of the Alcohol Pacht System at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1795………………………15 Cape 2. The Alcohol Pachters at the Cape of Good Hope, 1680-1795: A Prosopography………………………………………………………………49of 3. Early Modern Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship: The Case of Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen, 1702-1741………………………………….71 4. Immigrants,University Kinship and Social Capital in Cape Town: The Alcohol Pachters of the 1730s………………………………………………105 5. Dynasty Building, Family Networks and Social Capital in Cape Town: The Alcohol Pachters of the 1770s………………………………….131 6. Symbolic Capital, Consumption and Identity among the Alcohol Pachters of Cape Town, 1680-1795…………………………………………163 iii Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………193 Appendix 1: Database of Alcohol Pachters, 1680-1795……………………………203 Appendix 2: Shipping Volume and Pacht Income, 1685-1795……………………..237 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………247 Town Cape of University iv LIST OF TABLES, GRAPHS AND FIGURES Table 1.1: Individuals with the Right to Sell Alcohol, 1656-1679............................25 Table 2.1: Number of Pachten Bought by Individual Pachters.................................53 Table 2.2: Pachters who Invested in Ten or More Pachten, 1680-1795...................54 Table 2.3: Origins of Alcohol Pachters over Time....................................................57 Table 2.4: Women who Invested in the Alcohol Pachten, 1680-1795......................60 Town Table 2.5: Alcohol Pachters at the Cape of Good Hope, 1680-1795........................63 Table 4.1: Number of Pachten Bought by IndividualCape Pachters ................................107 Table 4.2: Alcohol Pachters at the Cape, 1730-39....................................................109of Table 4.3: Careers of the 1730s Pachters..................................................................111 Table 5.1: Number of Pachten Bought by Individual Pachters................................133 University Table 5.2: Alcohol Pachters at the Cape, 1770-1779................................................134 Table 5.3: Careers of the 1770s Pachters..................................................................136 Figure 6.1: Residences of Major Alcohol Pachters in Cape Town...........................167 Table 6.2: Public Offices Held by the Major Alcohol Pachters................................176 v Table 2.1: Annual Shipping Volume Compared to Pacht Income, 1700-1793.........237 Graph 2.1: Ships Calling at the Cape, 1700-1793......................................................240 Table 2.2: Annual Income from the Alcohol Pachten, 1685-1795............................241 Graph 2.2: Income from the Smaller Alcohol Pachten, 1685-1795..........................245 Graph 2.3: Income from the Major Alcohol Pachten, 1685-1795.............................245 Graph 2.4: Shipping Volume Compared to Pacht Income.........................................246 Town Cape of University vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis was done in the framework of the inter-institutional research project, ‘Social Identities in Eighteenth-Century Cape Town’, funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa. As such, the NRF financially supported my research for the first three years of the project. In 2009 I also received the King George V Chair in History Award for Travel and Research from the University of Cape Town which went some way towards covering my travel costs. While I acknowledge with thanks the financial support of these institutions, I must state that the views expressed in this thesis, and the conclusions drawn, are those of the author and should not be attributed to the sponsors. Historians depend, more than anyone else, on the goodwill of archivists and librarians. It is thus with due humility and gratitude that I expressTown my indebtedness to the following institutions and their staff where the bulk of the research was performed: the Cape Archives Repository, the National Library of South Africa in Cape Town and the Jagger Library of the University of Cape Town,Cape in particular the Inter-Library Loans section and the African Studies Library whose staff have performed stellar service over the years. A particular word of thanks toof Jaco van der Merwe at the Cape Archives Repository for knowing what historical research is all about. I am most grateful to the University of Oxford for allowing me to work in (or, more appositely, raid) the Bodleian Library in November 2004. Without this opportunity to amass large amounts of comparative literature not readily available in South Africa, the work on this thesis would not have progressedUniversity very far. My thanks go to Nigel Worden and David Wardle for making this visit possible. I have been immensely fortunate in that my research formed part of the aforementioned NRF-project on Cape Town during the VOC period. This meant that I could readily tap into the expertise of a group of established and younger researchers whose help and encouragement made my burden much lighter. I am therefore most grateful to Lalou Meltzer and Susan Newton-King for providing the impetus for this project and who, along with Nigel Worden, encouraged me to become part of the project. As it had not been my intention at that point to pursue further graduate studies, least of all vii in History, I can quite honestly state that they have (unwittingly) changed the course of my life. I am very grateful for the practical support and enthusiastic encouragement I continue to receive from Lalou and Susan. In addition, I would like to thank the following individuals who have (in various ways) been part of this project and whose support and solidarity have been a real boon: the late Andrew Alexander, Jim Armstrong (whose interest and support have been a continual source of inspiration), Teun Baartman, Andrew Bank, Adrien Delmas (also for sharing material from overseas), Wayne Dooling, Antonia Malan, Candy Malherbe (whose cheerful collegiality was a source of inspiration during a trying time), Nigel Penn, Tracey Randle, Ebrahim Rhoda, Robert Ross, Sandy Rowoldt Shell, Robert Shell and Deon Viljoen. I am especially grateful for the many wonderful, enriching and inspiring seminars we held during the past few years, as also the successful conference the project organised in 2006. Thus one felt that one’s work served aTown real purpose and meant