To the Fairest Cape by Malcolm Jack

Author:Malcolm Jack [Jack, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Africa, General, Modern, 18th Century, South, Republic of South Africa, Social Science, Slavery
ISBN: 9781684480005
Google: L2bcDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2019-01-15T16:09:34+00:00

ROUSSEAU’S LEGACY

While Rousseau’s political theory gradually altered the opinion of the earlier French visitors who had written about the Khoisan, it did so in a way that did not radically challenge the notion that progress was beneficial. Noble savages they may have been, but no European settler, in his relative comfort, could envy their life of insecure poverty, subject to the whims of nature. Nor was there any suggestion that the state of nature was a golden age worth returning to. Nevertheless, the new thinking did give rise to a different view of the part the Khoisan could play in colonial society.

One of the exponents of a more benign view of the indigenes was Jacques-Henri Bernardin de St. Pierre (1737–1814), who passed through the Cape on his way to Mauritius in 1768 and made a number of further visits. Bernardin de St. Pierre, said to have read Robinson Crusoe at an early age, was an inveterate traveller who had visited parts of Europe and Russia before heading to the Cape. While in Paris he had become a friend and disciple of Rousseau, sharing with him a love of botany. He went on to write a utopian political tract (L’Arcadie [Arcadia], 1781) and an essay in the spirit of Rousseau deploring the corrupting effects of civilisation (Etude de la Nature [Study of nature], 1784). However, Bernardin de St. Pierre’s celebrity had come about after the publication of his romance, Paul et Virginie (Paul and Virginia, 1787).

His early career was as an engineer in the army, and in that capacity he was sent to Mauritius. His account of his time there was the subject of his first work, L’isle de France (Isle of France, 1773). His view of the indigenous people is sympathetic, ascribing any faults they might have to the lack of the pillars of Enlightenment reasoning—good governance and good education. In Paul et Virginie he tells the story of two young lovers living in idyllic natural surroundings, which ends in tragedy as a result of the advent of civilisation. In his later work, La chaumière indienne (The Indian cottage, 1790) a traveller finds wisdom in the courage of an Indian outcast. In all these works, Bernardin de St. Pierre contributed to an ideology that sought to rebalance the relationship between colonists and indigenous peoples, emphasizing the commonality of human nature and advocating policies based on the just treatment of people who would then become useful citizens of the state rather than remaining in a condition of rebellious serfdom. The Cape looked like an ideal setting for the development of such a mix. After a hard climb up Table Mountain, he records that “never had a trip given me so much pleasure.”16 Another world traveller who visited the Cape at about the same time as Bernardin de St. Pierre was Pierre Pagès (d. 1793). He was a naval officer who had seen service in North America and had travelled to many other parts of the world. In developing the views of Rousseau and Bernardin de St.

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