To Leibniz, from Dorha: A Khoi Prayer in the Republic of Letters

Abstract

Perhaps one of the saddest consequences of the demise of traditional Khoikhoi societies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the loss of their languages. Contemporary reports by visitors abound with references to how difficult the Khoi language was to learn, while at the same time commending the Khoikhoi for their ability to learn European languages. By about 1700, only half a century after Dutch colonisation, most Khoikhoi living in the colonised areas of the Western Cape could speak some form of Dutch in addition to their own language. However, the rapid spread of European settlers deeper into the interior, on the one hand, and the acculturation of the Khoikhoi and their inclusion in the colonial polity and economy, on the other hand, meant that by the end of the eighteenth century Khoi was spoken only on the fringes of the Cape colony. Cape Khoi was increasingly replaced by (a form of) Dutch as the first language of the native inhabitants of the Cape. Thus, on his tour of Southern Africa in 1803-1806, Heinrich Lichtenstein could observe that ‘on the borders alone are some Hottentots to be found who speak their own lariguage; but among them several foreign words are introduced, spoken with the Hottentot accent and snort’. Cape Khoi was by this stage rapidly dying out.

Dutch trade and patronage networks as facilitators of transcontinental mobility in early modern Russia and the VOC Cape

“…It is known that Governor Simon van der Stel favoured Witsen's protégés and the newly appointed Governor Willem Adriaen van der Stel named a mountain range in the Tulbagh Valley "Witsenbergen", probably in gratitude for the director's endorsement. 60 Perhaps Johannes Swellengrebel, having established himself at the Cape, also became Witsen's informant in the age when production of knowledge in geography and natural history depended on patronage networks for data collection. During the Expansion Age, the size of the VOC nearly doubled.…”

Merchants, scholars and languages: The circulation of linguistic knowledge in the context of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)

“…Recently, some scholars have attempted to reconstruct the original provenance of these sources. Groenewald (2004) argues that the provenance of the Lord's Prayer can be traced to Jan Wilhelm van Grevenbroek, who noted it with the help of a certain captain Dorha. Twidle (2013, p. 138) presents other scholarship suggesting that Van Grevenbroek was a VOC official who attached much importance to the study of the indigenous cultures (cf.…”