Cape Town between East and West

Description

"This is the first single-volume social history of eighteenth-century Dutch Cape Town. ... [I]t looks at the port settlement in all the complexity of its social interactions. Not only does it consider the elite inhabitants such as the 'expat' officials of the Dutch East India Company and the free burghers but it also includes members of Cape Town's underclasses: soldiers and sailors, artisans, convicts, exiles and freed slaves. At the same time the book positions the town in the wider context of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and stresses its complex connections with Europe, Asia and Africa."--Back cover.