Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Dutch Cape Colony at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century: De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika (1810) by Ludwig Alberti

Abstract

In eighteenth-century travel accounts, ethnography was a set part of a more comprehensive, encyclopedic interest in the foreign world. People were described, as well as landscapes, plants, and animals. But between 1740 and 1790 the first signs of specialization can be detected in the German-speaking countries and in Russia; ethnography started developing into a discipline.¹ Following on a comparable, somewhat later development in France, the first Dutch language ethnographic monograph, De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika, Natuur- en Geschiedkundig beschreven (The Kafirs on the South Coast of Africa, described naturalistically and historically) by Ludwig (or Lodewyk) Alberti (1768–1812) was published in 1810 in the Netherlands.² Alberti’s book offers a description of the western Xhosas, which, at the time he wrote about them, occupied the country on both sides of the Fish River and part of the south coast of South Africa. Alberti’s book was accompanied by a large picture atlas in oblong format, Zuid-Afrikaansche Gezichten (South African Views) with three large ethnographic pictures out of a total of four. In 1811 the French edition of both books was published. After Alberti’s death in 1812 the original German text of De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika was published as Die Kaffern auf der Südküste von Afrika nach ihren Sitten und Gebräuchen aus eigener Ansicht beschrieben (The Kaffirs on the South Coast of Africa, described from personal experience according to their manners and customs) on the initiative of his family in 1815.

An earlier version of this essay appeared as a chapter in Siegfried Huigen, Knowledge and Colonialism. Eighteenth-Century Travellers in South Africa (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2009). I would like to thank Jean Kommers and Han Vermeulen for their helpful comments and suggestions.