Guns of the Khoe-San: the firearms used by indigenes for the first two hundred years of colonisation at the Cape

Abstract

AbstractThe Cape Khoe-San experienced a significant change in weapons technology when Europeans began colonising the Cape in the seventeenth century. Khoe-San first adapted their military tactics to counter the firearms used by Dutch settlers in conflicts over land possession. With colonisation, many Khoe-San found themselves being incorporated into the colony as hunting and military, both formal and informal, assistants. Deemed sufficiently colonised by the Europeans, there was now an effort to arm Khoe-San with guns. The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw great developments in firearm technology. In tracking these developments alongside historical accounts of Khoe-San with firearms, it is noticed that by the first half of the nineteenth century, Khoe-San fighting for the colony were being supplied with the most ideal firearms for colonial warfare in the Cape. This was a marked contrast to the policies of the seventeenth century which sought to keep firearms out of indigenous hands.Keywords: firearmsKhoe-SancolonisationCape Colony Disclosure statementThis research was conducted while the author was a Jean Curry Memorial Fellow at the Royal Armouries Museum.Notes1 D. Moodie, ed., The Record, or, a series of official papers relative to the condition and treatment of the native tribes of South Africa, Volume I (Cape Town: AS Robertson, 1838), p. 357.2 D. Moodie, ed., The Record, or, a series of official papers relative to the condition and treatment of the native tribes of South Africa, Volume III (Cape Town: AS Robertson, 1838), p. 31.3 G.M. Theal, ed., Records of the Cape Colony, Volume XIII (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1902), p. 163, Somerset to Bathurst 13/06/1820.4 See e.g. F. Lategan. Die Boer se Roer: Die Groot Geweerboek van Suid-Afrika (Cape Town: Tafelberg-Uitgewers Beperk, 1974).5 M. 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Lucas, Camp Life and Sport in South Africa Experiences of Kaffir Warfare with the Cape Mounted Rifles (London: Chapman and Hall, 1878), p. 50.114 British Parliamentary Papers, June 1851, p. 4, Bowker to Smith 13/02/1851.115 Bisset, p. 91.116 Bisset, p. 92.117 Bisset, p. 111.118 Lucas, p. 50.119 Bisset, p. 92.120 Blackmore, p. 207.121 Bailey, 1815-1865, p. 13.122 J. van Driel, A Short History of Firearms (Amsterdam, Foundation for European Societies of Arms Collectors, 2009), p. 8.123 A. J. Smithers, The Kaffir Wars, 1779-1877 (London: Leo Cooper Books, 1973), p. 120.124 Munro, p. 206.Additional informationNotes on contributorsBrent Sinclair-ThomsonBrent Sinclair-Thomson is a former Jean Curry Memorial Fellow at the Royal Armouries Museum. His research focuses on the use of firearms by indigenous southern Africans during the colonial period. He completed his doctorate, on the rock art of multi-ethnic groups of bandits, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 2020.