1654
VOC authorises the importation of enslaved labour to the Cape
The VOC granted Van Riebeeck permission to import enslaved people after the station’s labour supply proved insufficient for its agricultural and construction work.
View in timelineIn 1654 Van Riebeeck received permission from the VOC to import enslaved people to address labour shortages at the Cape station. The authorisation applied to the work required by the company’s fort, gardens, transport and other operations. It connected the Cape to established VOC networks in the Indian Ocean, where people were captured, purchased, transported and held in slavery.
The authorisation was a decision to expand the company’s labour system, not a record of one shipment or a complete account of the people who would later arrive. Early arrivals came through different routes and circumstances, and the population grew over subsequent decades. Their work and lives became part of the institutional, agricultural and domestic economy of the Cape settlement.
Significance
The decision authorised the expansion of a slaveholding labour regime at the Cape, linking the new station to the VOC’s wider Indian Ocean systems of enslavement and transport.
Why it matters
The decision authorised the expansion of a slaveholding labour regime at the Cape, linking the new station to the VOC’s wider Indian Ocean systems of enslavement and transport.
Disputed interpretations
Permission to import enslaved people did not mean that a large enslaved population arrived immediately or that all later forms of enslavement began at exactly the same moment. The first arrivals, routes and numbers should be treated as separate questions supported by different records.