The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape's Northern Frontier in the 19th Century (review)

The frontier zone occupies an important place in Southern African historical studies. Over the past fifty years, scholars of Southern Africa, influenced in part by Turner's thesis on the American frontier, have devoted considerable attention to the frontier as a zone of military, economic and cultural contact between white colonists and indigenous peoples. However, much of this literature has focused on the eastward expansion of white settlers from the Western Cape during the nineteenth century. Scholars have expressed surprisingly little interest in examining the initial period of northerly expansion from the Cape Colony in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The destruction of indigenous societies in the Western Cape seems to be a foregone conclusion. The Forgotten Frontier by Nigel Penn is an exemplary study that seeks to correct this imbalance.

Penn begins by highlighting the tendency in academic literature to privilege the encounters between the British and Xhosa along the nineteenth century eastern frontier. Starting with the question of "What happened to the Khoisan societies of the Cape?" (pp. 1), Penn contends that the answer lies in a close examination of eighteenth century expansion into the northern reaches of the Western Cape. Employing a narrative format that "moves with the frontier zone itself," (p.14), the author's begins his story in the late-seventeenth century when the frontier was located on the banks of the Berg River. The story ends with the firm establishment of British rule in the early years of the nineteenth century when the northern frontier extended as far as the banks of the Orange River.

His spatial and temporal boundary set, Penn proceeds to explore the often complicated and tenuous relationship between the Cape Colony government, white settlers, and indigenous peoples. The author examines the processes of primitive accumulation by which white colonists gradually extracted surplus product and labor from the Khoisan population (pp. 14–15). The capital acquired allowed for colonists to erode the infrastructure of indigenous society and establish an exploitative hierarchy. However, the establishment of relationships based on racial domination did not occur smoothly and without resistance. Colonists faced numerous obstacles including environmental and geographic hardship and indigenous resistance. Penn is careful to detail the numerous rebellions and uprisings fought by Khoi and San communities throughout the frontier region. Emerging from this narrative is an analysis of frontier expansion that challenges the assumption that the destruction of indigenous society and the rise of a dominant white class constituted a foregone conclusion.

While the author is careful to stress the fact that the eighteenth century northern frontier was a place of instability and uncertainty, he is clear in his assertion that white settlers, with the tacit support of the government, aimed to subdue the Khoisan population. The Cape Colony government emerges as a torn body. On the one hand, government officials knew that they had a responsibility to crush indigenous resistance and to maintain order on the frontier. On the other hand, the same officials wished to maintain control over the colonists on the frontier. Penn asserts that, particularly in the case of the 1739 uprising, it was the government's success in crushing Khoisan resistance … which was to weaken its hold over the colonists in the long term … The defeat of the Khoisan now emboldened the colonists to expand into the interior and satisfy their hunger for land, Khoikhoi labour and livestock." (pp. 77)

In highlighting the instability and uncertainty of the northern frontier, the author asks a provocative question: Is it possible to excavate a Khoisan mentality from available archival records? While Penn acknowledges that the colonists were largely successful in destroying the material and spiritual world of indigenous peoples and that many of the stories of that destruction come to us as biased accounts in European legal records. However, he is interested in examining, when possible, how indigenous peoples experienced this period of intense upheaval. His examination of...