ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Devouring Beasts: Predators, Pastoralists, and the Ecology of Scarcity in the Dutch Cape Colony (1652-1795)

• In Event: Food, Scarcity and Knowledge in Colonial and Atlantic Worlds (1500-1800). Panel N. 3

English Abstract

This paper explores how Dutch colonists, Khoikhoi pastoralists, and non-human animals navigated scarcity and abundance in the seventeenth-century Cape Colony. Although the Cape was described by Europeans as a place of natural abundance (grazing opportunities, plentiful game, extensive herds of Khoikhoi cattle), the colonists soon experienced scarcity. The East India Company (VOC) banked on reliable supplies of meat and dairy for its passing fleets, but Khoikhoi communities were not automatically enthusiastic to trade cattle in the volumes that the Company desired. The Khoikhoi, in turn, were frustrated in their access to the land by the expanding European settlements. Meanwhile, both the Khoikhoi and the Europeans were confronted by non-human animals, notably predators, that placed limitations on their living space. Animals such as lions thus came to occupy an ambivalent position in the Europeans’ bestial imaginary: while culturally admired in the metropole, they became active threats to subsistence in the African veld. Their predation patterns became an important project of environmental intelligence. Reports noted, for instance, that the “devouring beasts” altered their hunting behaviour with seasonal water availability. Fears of livestock loss thus sharpened the Dutch understanding of predator hunger, movements, and habits. The paper foregrounds the conflicts stemming from these interactions between Europeans and Khoi humans, and wild and tame animals. Based on a combination of hand-written records in the VOC archives (agricultural reports, colonists’ petititions) and printed proto-ethnographical reports, it explores how the dynamic interactions of humans, predators, and prey animals co-produced a space of simultaneous abundance and scarcity.

Author

• Jim Van der Meulen, Huygens Instituut - KNAW