Great escapes: deserting soldiers during Noodt's Cape Governorship, 1727 - 1729

Abstract

Between 1727 and 1729, there were three cases of group desertion and one attempted rebellion committed by soldiers in the employment of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in southern Africa. Though desertion and disobedience among Company soldiers was nothing new, the scale and timing of these acts of military resistance were extraordinary and suggest that there must have been something unusually intolerable about the late 1720s. What was it?