To better understand the history of the Cape Colony and African-Asian enslavement by the Dutch, one needs to have a broad view of what made up the Dutch Imperial footprint of the United East India Company (VOC). Why we have over 195 roots of ancestral-cultural origin is because of the establishment of the first global company and the ceding of powers of state to this company so that they may conduct trade, form armies, make wars and colonise territories in the name of the Dutch State and Crown.

Dutch Imperialism is a long and complex subject, but for the purposes of the Camissa Museum it is simply important to get a broad overview of the extent of Dutch Imperialism with its global footprint carried out by the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch United East India Company. Cape Town was just one project of many created by the VOC around the world and the majority of its people have ancestral-cultural links to many of these territories. One part of the roots of Camissa Africans lay in the slave-routes of Dutch trans-global trade and slaving.

The Sri Lanka (Ceylon) experience of slavery along the Dutch slavery route. It is one example the Dutch involvement in the slave trade at many points along the coasts of Africa, India and throughout the mainland and Islands of Southeast Asia.