Early Shipwrecks and the Evidence for Pastoral Prosperity in Southern Africa
There are eleven published accounts of shipwrecks (and subsequent overland marches to a place of presumed safety) that occurred in southern Africa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many of these records were collected by Bernardo Gomes de Brito in the two volume Historia trágico-marítima de Portugal (1735-1738) and are considered in Portugal to be amongst the greatest literary accomplishments of the exploration age. Translations by South African historian G.M. Theal made these documents readily available to the English-speaking world at the end of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, these records have not been well-utilized in the understanding of the contact era in southern Africa—despite their being the most impressive documentation of food availability and pastoral practices in southern Africa (as well as the best source for understanding other general effects of the earliest period of the carreira da India on southern Africa). In fact, bands of up to 500 famished Portuguese sailors, passengers and slaves encountered both periods of food scarcity and regions of food surpluses on their long marches through the coastal regions and close hinterlands after their maritime disasters. The periods and regions of scarcity are not a surprise. What is a surprise is the documental evidence of periodic food surpluses in Eastern Cape and Natal regions of southern Africa during the Portuguese shipwreck era (1552-1686).
PAPER PRESENTED AT THE AFRICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE,
NOVEMBER, 2006
San Francisco, California
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