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The Portuguese and the Dutch in Southern Africa. Some Comparisons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Robert Ross
Robert Ross
Affiliation:
University of Leiden
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Extract

During the first decade of the Dutch East India Company's existence, it made a number of vain attempts to drive the Portuguese out of their main base in East Africa, Mozambique island. Within a few years, though, the Dutch discovered that they could reach their destinations in the East more quickly by setting a course far to the south of Madagascar. Since they no longer needed to frequent the Mozambique channel, they saw no particular reason to dislodge the Portuguese from its shores. Except for one final Dutch attempt to capture Mozambique island, in 1668, the two imperial powers kept their distance from each other, at least in Africa. The Dutch did not even know the simplest details of the political or economic situation in East Africa, while Portuguese visitors to the Dutch sphere of influence in the Cape Colony were entirely those of transients and traders, particularly in slaves. They were not competitors, and therefore were not attempting to solve the same questions. Nevertheless, the problems with which they were faced on the African mainland were analogous, so that it is possible to make comparisons between their activities.

Type
Two Systems of European Expansion; a Tribute to George Winius
Information
Itinerario , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 29 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1991

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