Eight Hens per Man per Day: Shipwreck Survivors and Pastoral Abundance in Southern Africa

This essay examines South African shipwrecks and shipwreck survivor accounts in relation to land settlements and indigenous food production systems in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By analysing a collection of Portuguese shipwreck accounts it discovers that African land, often portrayed by colonising forces as Terra Nullius - empty land - in their efforts to rationalise usurping it, was actually populated by settled pastoral communities. Further analysis of the shipwreck accounts reveal the presence of racial typography and the attitudes toward indigenous southern Africans, which would become another rationalisation for usurping land in later colonisation efforts. It concludes that these accounts offer evidence disproving Terra Nullius assertions, whilst also providing an example of how the colonial mindset interpreted the ownership of land.