The Cape’s mixing was multidirectional across many populations, not simply two-sided

Evidence

Mixing, miscegenational and cultural, was never simply just between European settlers, first Dutch and then British, on one side, and the indigenous, initially Khoisan and more than a century later Xhosa and Zulu, on the other. And of course mixture with the already mixed was always more robust, from both sides of the divide. Intercourse was always multiply, complexly interactive. On the European side, as the case of Meertens indicates, the Dutch settlers brought with them some non-Dutch Europeans, seeking adventure, wealth, power, but also simply survival from life’s trials and tribulations in economically challenged Central Europe. Before long, and especially with decline of Dutch control in the late eighteenth century, slaves were being imported from socio-cultural horizons further afield, including Madagascar, India, and Malaysia, driven by formal East India Company restrictions on the enslavability of the locals. Thus came Hinduism and Islam to the Cape. The British followed at the close of the eighteenth century, bringing in their wake sources of labor from their other colonies, most notably India, and interacting with both Xhosa and Zulu as settlement seeped up the east coast. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1333

Categorization

• XREF: The detail that East India Company rules forbidding enslavement of locals drove the import of slaves from Madagascar, India, Malaysia — and with them Hinduism and Islam — is a concrete mechanism connecting to the reader’s interest in how trade/institutional rules shape culture.
• CANDY: East India Company restrictions on enslaving locals is why Hinduism and Islam arrived at the Cape — an unexpected causal chain worth retelling.