43 Chapter 2 Setting the scene for Afrikaans: The external history Gerald Groenewald (University of Johannesburg) 1 Introduction Afrikaans is a Germanic language with its roots in northwestern Europe, but the language would not have developed outside of its African context. It is because the Dutch – not the English, nor the Portuguese – seled in the Cape of Good Hope from the mid-17 th century onwards that Afrikaans originated. Yet the language could not have originated had it not been for its very specific socio- historic circumstances in the southern parts of Africa (Groenewald, 2019: 24). This chapter aims to provide the historical background against which the history of Afrikaans should be considered. Aſter a brief overview of the development of the historiography, the chapter presents those aspects of the growth of the Afrikaans-speaking populaons in southern Africa and the ways in which they spread across the subconnent and interacted with other groups, that are most relevant to a consideraon of the history of the language, from the 17 th to the 21 st century. 2 The Historiography of Afrikaans Afrikaans historical linguiscs, while never a huge field, developed out of the debate between the Dutch scholar, D.C. Hesseling (1859-1941), and D.B. Bosman (1888-1960) over the role of slaves and Khoikhoi in the rapid development of a new language at the Cape in the 17 th and 18 th centuries (see also Chapter 3 for some discussion). Hesseling argued that the rapid development of Afrikaans could only be explained by the influence of another language that had to be understood and used by a sizeable part of the populaon. Using socio-historic data about the origins, presence, and number of slaves at the Cape, he argued for the widespread use of a language he called ‘Malayo-Portuguese’, which slaves brought from Southeast Asia to the Cape (Hesseling, 1899). In 1916, Bosman tested most of Hesseling’s data about the social and linguisc history of the early Cape. He pointed out that slaves, in fact, spoke two languages (Creole) Portuguese and Malay, and that there was actually no such language as ‘Malayo Portuguese’.