Cape Colony

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Kaapkolonie
Cape Colony
British colony
←
1795 – 1910 →
Flag Coat of arms
Flag Coat of arms
Anthem
God Save the Queen
Location of Cape Colony
The Cape Colony
Capital Cape Town
Language(s) English, Dutch ¹
Religion Dutch Reformed Church, Anglican
Government Constitutional monarchy
King
 - 1795-1820 George III
 - 1901-1910 Edward VII
Governor
 - 1797-1798 George Macartney
 - 1901-1910 Walter Hely-Hutchinson
Prime Minister
 - 1908–1910 John X. Merriman
Historical era Scramble for Africa
 - Established 1795
 - Dutch colony 1803-1806
 - Anglo-Dutch treaty 1814, {{{year_event2}}}
 - Natal incorporated 1844, {{{year_event3}}}
 - Disestablished 1910
Area
 - 1910 569,020 km² (219,700 sq mi)
Population
 - 1910 est. 2,564,965 
     Density 4.5 /km²  (11.7 /sq mi)
Currency Pound sterling
¹ Dutch was the sole official language until 1806, when the British officially replaced Dutch with English. Dutch was reincluded as a second official language in 1882.

The Cape Colony of the future South Africa was established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, with the founding of Cape Town. It was subsequently occupied in 1795, and finally taken in 1806 by the British - the period immediately before and during the Napoleonic Wars. It was coextensive with the later Cape Province, stretching from the Atlantic coast inland and eastward along the southern coast, constituting about half of modern South Africa: the final eastern boundary, after several wars against the Xhosa, stood at the Fish River. In the north, the Orange River, also known as the Gariep River, served for a long time as the boundary, although some land between the river and the southern boundary of Botswana was later added to it.

Contents

Cape Colony
History
Pre-1806
1806–1870
1870–1899
1899–1910
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In South Africa, the Dutch planted the first European colonials almost inadvertently, yet the consequences of their action were to be ultimately as grave and far-reaching as any European incursion onto African soil. The first Cape settlement was built in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company as a re-supply point and way station for Dutch vessels on their way back and forth between the Netherlands and the East Indies. The support station gradually became a settler community, the forebears of the Afrikaners of modern South Africa.

The local Khoikhoi had neither a strong political organization nor an economic base beyond their herds. They bartered livestock freely to Dutch ships. As Company employees established farms to supply the Cape station, they began to displace the Khoikhoi. Conflicts led to the consolidation of European landholdings and a breakdown of Khoikhoi society. Military success led to even greater Dutch control of the Khoikhoi by the 1670s. The Khoikhoi became the chief source of colonial wage labour.

The colony also imported slaves. Slavery set the tone for relations between the emergent and ostensibly "white" Afrikaner population and the "coloreds" of other races. Free or not, the latter were eventually identified with slave peoples.

After the first settlers spread out around the Company station, nomadic white livestock farmers, or Trekboers, moved more widely afield, leaving the richer, but limited, farming lands of the coast for the drier interior tableland. There they contested still wider groups of Khoikhoi cattle herders for the best grazing lands. By 1700, the traditional Khoikhoi lifestyle of pastoralism had disappeared.

The Cape society in this period was thus a diverse one. The Dutch Company officials (including Dutch Reformed ministers), the emerging Afrikaners (both settled colonists and Trekboers), the Khoikhoi, and the slaves of diverse nationality played differing roles. Intermarriage and cohabitation of masters and slaves added to the complexity. The emergence of Afrikaans, a new vernacular language of the colonials, shows that the Dutch immigrants themselves were also subject to acculturation processes. By the time of English domination after 1795, the sociopolitical foundations--and the basis of the Apartheid doctrine--of modern South Africa were firmly laid.

The history of Cape Colony started in 1652 with the founding of Cape Town by Dutch commander Jan van Riebeeck, working for the Dutch East India Company, known in Dutch as the "Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie" (VOC).

In 1795, France occupied the Seven Provinces of the Netherlands, the mother country of the Dutch East India Company. This prompted Great Britain to occupy the territory in 1795 as a tactic in the Napoleonic Wars. The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie transferred its territories and claims to the Batavian Republic (the Revolutionary period Dutch state) in 1798, and ceased to exist in 1799. Improving relations between Great Britain and Napoleonic France, and its vassal state the Batavian Republic, led the British to hand Cape Colony over to the Batavian Republic in 1803 (under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens).

In 1806, the Cape, now nominally controlled by the Batavian Republic, was occupied again by the British in the Battle of Blaauwberg. The temporary peace between Britain and Napoleonic France had crumbled into open hostilities, whilst Napoleon had been strengthening his influence on the Batavian Republic (which Napoleon would subsequently abolish later the same year). The British hoped to keep Napoleon out of the Cape, and to control the Far East trade routes.

They set up a British colony on 8 January, 1806. Cape Colony remained under British rule until the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, when it became the Cape of Good Hope Province, better known as the Cape Province.

The title of the founder of the Cape Colony, Jan van Riebeeck, was "Commander of the Cape" (initially called "opperhoof"), a position which he held from 1652 to 1662. He was succeeded by a long line of both Dutch and British colonial administrators, depending on who was in power at the time:

The post of High Commissioner for Southern Africa was also held from 27 January 1847 to 31 May 1910 by the Governor of the Cape Colony. The post of Governor of the Cape Colony became extinct on 31 May 1910, when it joined the Union of South Africa.

The post of prime minister of the Cape Colony also became extinct on 31 May 1910, when it joined the Union of South Africa.

  • The Migrant Farmer in the History of the Cape Colony.P.J. Van Der Merwe, Roger B. Beck. Ohio University Press. 1 January 1995. 333 pages. ISBN 0-8214-1090-3.
  • History of the Boers in South Africa; Or, the Wanderings and Wars of the Emigrant Farmers from Their Leaving the Cape Colony to the Acknowledgment of Their Independence by Great Britain. George McCall Theal. Greenwood Press. 28 February 1970. 392 pages. ISBN 0-8371-1661-9.
  • Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750-1870 : A Tragedy of Manners. Robert Ross, David Anderson. Cambridge University Press. 1 July 1999. 220 pages. ISBN 0-521-62122-4.
  • The War of the Axe, 1847: Correspondence between the governor of the Cape Colony, Sir Henry Pottinger, and the commander of the British forces at the Cape, Sir George Berkeley, and others. Basil Alexander Le Cordeur. Brenthurst Press. 1981. 287 pages. ISBN 0-909079-14-5.
  • Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799-1853. Elizabeth Elbourne. McGill-Queen's University Press. December 2002. 560 pages. ISBN 0-7735-2229-8.
  • Recession and its aftermath: The Cape Colony in the eighteen eighties. Alan Mabin. University of the Witwatersrand, African Studies Institute. 1983. 27 pages.



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