This chapter attempts an overview of the Dutch record of settlement, and traces the development of a Dutch-language writing tradition at the Cape. Before the mid seventeenth century writing about the Cape had appeared in English, French, German, Portuguese and other European languages; but in the writing produced at the Cape itself Dutch was the dominant language until the end of the eighteenth century, when the Cape came under British rule. In the period subsequent to this, Dutch retained some official role (for example in schooling and the church) until the late nineteenth century, when the movement for the formalisation of Afrikaans and eventual replacement of Dutch started (see Chapter 13 below).

The early Cape Dutch record raises a number of issues for someone trying to understand the development of writing about, and in, South Africa. In his influential White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa, J. M. Coetzee has written about the reasons for the absence of a ‘myth of a return to Eden’ in writing about the Cape (p. 2). The present chapter has a different focus, namely to examine the nature of reading and writing at the Dutch Cape (or in most cases their absence), as well as the enduring presence of this period and its archives in contemporary South African literature. For a different perspective, which deals with the Portuguese-language response to Africa, see Chapter 6 in this volume.