Paarl Western Cape South Africa

The community at Table Bay has grown larger and more diverse throughout the late 1600s, particularly after the VOC decided in 1679 that European settlement should be boosted in order to expand agricultural production.

German and Dutch settlers are offered free farms if they will come to the Cape.

Individual Huguenots had settled at the Cape of Good Hope from as early as 1671 with the arrival of Francois Villion (Viljoen).

After a commissioner was sent out from the Cape Colony in 1685 to attract more settlers, a more dedicated group of French refugees began to arrive in the Cape after after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The first band of Huguenot immigrants to southern Africa had set sail from France on December 31, 1687, arriving at the recently established Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope in 1688.

An organized, large scale influx of Huguenots to the Cape of Good Hope takes place during 1688 and 1689, notable for the emigration of Huguenots from La Motte d'Aigues in Provence, France.

Many of these settlers have choses as their home an area called Franschhoek, Dutch for "French corner", in the present day Western Cape province of South Africa.

French Huguenot refugeess, many of whom are given land by the Dutch government in 1688, form the original settlers of the valley called Olifantshoek ("Elephant's corner"), so named because of the vast herds of elephants that roam the area.

The name of the area would soon change to Franschhoek, with many of the settlers naming their new farms after the areas in France from which they have come.

La Motte, La Cotte, Cabriere, Provence, Chamonix, Dieu Donne and La Dauphine are among some of the first established farms — most of which still retain their original farm houses today.

These farms have grown into renowned wineries, such as Boschendal, which is one of the oldest wine estates in South Africa.

The estate's first owner, Jean de Long, is one of the party of two hundred French Huguenot refugees granted land in the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company in 1688.

The several hundred Huguenot refugees, all of whom had soon assimilated Dutch culture and language, grow large crops of wheat as well as other grains for sale to the VOC, although they find such crops barely profitable.

They also planted grapevines, so that they could make wine and brandy—products much in demand for Dutch sailors and capable of being exported to Europe, unlike other, perishable items.

They had introduced viticulture to southern Africa when they settled Paarl, east of Cape Town, on the Groot-Berg River between the Paarl Mountain and the Drakenstein Range. (South Africa will continue to be known into the twenty-first century for high quality wine.)

The mainstay of most settlers, however, is livestock farming, which requires large areas of pasture-
land because the soil is generally poor.

Pressures for land in and around the Cape peninsula have become intense by the end of the seventeenth century.

There are approximately fifteen hundred Europeans in the Cape settlement and a slightly larger number of enslaved people, and the area of settlement has extended well beyond the original
base at Table Bay to include freehold farms reaching sixty kilometers inland.

The rise of an expanding settler society fuels tensions between free burghers and the VOC.

Free burghers criticize the autocratic powers of the local VOC administration, in which the governor has full control and the settlers have no rights of representation.

They denounce the economic policies of the VOC that fix the prices at which settlers can sell their agricultural products.

They call attention to the corrupt practices of VOC officers, who grant themselves prime land, then sell their own crops at higher prices to the company.

Above all, they complain about the VOC's failure—at least in their eyes—to police the frontier boundaries and to protect the settlers' crops and herds from Khoikhoi and San raiders.

The final blow for most Khoikhoi comes in 1713 when a Dutch ship brings smallpox to the Cape.

Hitherto unknown locally, the disease ravages the remaining Khoikhoi, killing ninety percent of the population.

Exhortation by the Afrikaner nationalist organization Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Afrikaans for "Society of Real Afrikaners") leads to the publication of the first Afrikaans grammar.

The society, based in Paarl, publishes a journal in Afrikaans called Die Afrikaanse Patriot ("The African Patriot") from January 15, 1876, as well as a number of books, including grammars, dictionaries, religious material and histories.