Unlike the United States, South Africa developed a relatively fluid color-based racial class system where "a man is as white as he looks."9 Whereas the British settling the North American colonies wanted to populate their territories with "fully elaborated British communities,"10 the Dutch debated even immigrating white women, intermarrying among the indigenous and among their enslaved class for both political and demographic reasons. "Few colonists seem to have been under the illusion that the Netherlands could be re-created...until conditions were ripe for the emergence of a self-conscious Afrikaner community."11 In their early years, they did intentionally plan the creation of a society like the British did.12 Moreover, the British outgrew Native Americans in number and away from their need for indigenous support in adapting to the environment and negotiating with different political or language groups to guarantee power and gain more land, but the Dutch retained maintained those relationships as long as they did not threaten their business, eventually transforming those relationships into malevolent forced labor on the frontier. Yet, during this transitional period, indigenous people, including women, opportunities to gain power in the Dutch settler communities.13 For example, Krotoa, a Khoekhoe woman who lived with the Dutch during the early years of their trading post, used her role as a translator and intermediator for the Dutch to influence over Dutch trade and military policy.14 She even married into the Dutch community to make her association with the Dutch concrete.
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Wells suggested shows "the dynamic within colonialism, which so soon made bridging, trans-cultural people like her and Pieter
Wells suggested shows "the dynamic within colonialism, which so soon made bridging, trans-cultural people like her and Pieter