Huguenot Settlers at the Cape (1688): French Refugees in Africa

The Huguenot settlers at the Cape were French Protestant refugees who arrived at the Dutch East India Company’s colony in southern Africa, mostly in 1688 and 1689. About 200 men, women and children were given farms in the valleys inland from Cape Town, especially at Franschhoek. Although their French language soon disappeared, they became a lasting part of the settler population that later formed the Afrikaners.

Background: flight from France

The Huguenots were French Calvinist Protestants. The Edict of Nantes of 1598 had granted them limited toleration, but Louis XIV steadily restricted their rights and in October 1685 issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, described in Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Protestant worship was banned, and although emigration was forbidden, an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Huguenots left France in the following years.

This great exodus, known as the Refuge, scattered Huguenots to England, Switzerland, the German states and beyond. Many went to the Dutch Republic, a Protestant country with close religious ties. The directors of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the Heeren XVII, saw an opportunity. Their small Cape settlement, founded in 1652 and covered in Founding of the Cape Colony, needed more farmers to supply passing ships, and refugees who were skilled in agriculture and had no country to return to seemed ideal colonists.

The voyages

The VOC offered free passage, land and tools, on condition that the settlers stayed at least five years. The first group sailed on the Voorschoten at the end of 1687 and reached the Cape in April 1688. Other ships, including the Oosterland, the Borssenburg, the Schelde, the Berg China and the Zuid-Beveland, followed during 1688 and 1689.

About 200 Huguenots arrived in this organised migration, a substantial addition to a free settler community that numbered only several hundred at the time. They came from many parts of France, especially the north, Provence, Dauphiné and the Loire region. The Huguenot minister Pierre Simond also came out to serve them.

Settlement at Franschhoek and Drakenstein

Governor Simon van der Stel gave the newcomers farms along the Berg River valley in the Drakenstein district, around Paarl and Stellenbosch, and in a valley called Olifantshoek, “elephant’s corner”. As French families settled there it became known as de Fransche Hoek, the French corner, today Franschhoek.

Many farms took French names that survive today, such as La Motte, La Provence, La Dauphine, Champagne and Bourgogne. Life was hard at first: the settlers had to clear land, build houses and survive with little capital, and some depended on loans from the company.

Assimilation

Van der Stel deliberately placed Huguenot farms among those of Dutch and German settlers to encourage integration. The settlers asked for their own church and school with French as the language of teaching, but the VOC refused to allow a separate French community. Dutch soon became the language of church, administration and daily life.

Church services in French continued for a time with Pierre Simond as minister, but the authorities steadily reduced their role. Within two generations French had largely disappeared at the Cape. Intermarriage with Dutch and German settlers was common. Family names such as du Toit, de Villiers, Joubert, Malan, Marais, du Plessis, Rousseau, Le Roux and Retief became, often in altered spellings, typical Afrikaner surnames.

Myths and facts

The Huguenots are often credited with founding South African wine. In fact, the first wine at the Cape was pressed in 1659, nearly thirty years before they arrived. Some Huguenots brought experience of vine-growing and wine-making, and their farms contributed to the expansion of viticulture in the Drakenstein and Franschhoek valleys, but they were part of a wider farming community rather than its creators.

It is also sometimes said that the Huguenots formed a distinct community for generations. In reality they merged into the wider settler population very quickly, largely because company policy discouraged a separate identity.

Legacy

The Huguenot heritage was celebrated strongly in the 20th century. The Huguenot Monument in Franschhoek, whose foundation stone was laid in 1938 for the 250th anniversary of the arrival, was inaugurated in 1948. A Huguenot memorial museum stands beside it. Franschhoek and its old farms are now among the best-known wine areas of South Africa.

Timeline

• 1685, October: Louis XIV revokes the Edict of Nantes.
• 1687, December: The Voorschoten sails from the Netherlands with the first Huguenot settlers.
• 1688, April: The Voorschoten reaches the Cape.
• 1688-1689: Further ships bring the rest of the organised group, about 200 people in all.
• Early 18th century: French declines rapidly as a spoken language at the Cape.
• 1948: The Huguenot Monument in Franschhoek is inaugurated.

Why it matters

The Huguenot migration was small, but it shows how religious persecution in Europe shaped colonial societies far away. The refugees became part of the founding population of the Afrikaners and left a visible mark on the farms, names and landscape of the Western Cape.