Great Britain Acquires Cape Colony

This series has five easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: Dutch Settlement Before the Coming of the British.

Introduction
When the British established themselves in Cape Colony they took a step which eventually led to an important extension of their vast empire. After the Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, near the end of the fifteenth century, no permanent settlement was made there for many years, the Portuguese themselves using the Cape merely as a supply station on the way to India. In 1620 a company of Englishmen landed there and took possession in the name of King James I, but nothing came of this proceeding, and although the Dutch arrived in 1595 they did not stay.

But in 1652 the Dutch made a settlement on the Cape, and in 1658 they had a company of three hundred sixty souls, more than half, however, being negro slaves. The evil effects of this slavery have ever since been felt, although it was long ago extinguished. Throughout the last half of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century the Dutch settlement made gradual progress. In 1687 there was a French immigration.

The conditions preceding the first British occupation, that event itself, the restoration to the Dutch, and the history of the final acquisition of the Cape by England are shown by Bryden in a clear light. His account is of special value in view of the subsequent course of events in that quarter of the world.

This selection is from A history of South Africa, from the first settlement by the Dutch, 1652, to the year 1903 by Henry A. Bryden published in 1903. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Henry A. Bryden (1854-1937) was an author who traveled to South Africa as evidenced by his vivid description of the ground where the events took place

Time: 1806
Place: Cape Town

Toward the end of the eighteenth century the Dutch settlers had spread far over the Cape country. Their eastern limits were bounded by the Great Fish River; their western boundary, toward the mouth of the Orange, was the Koussie, afterward known as the Buffalo River; and they had settled themselves firmly in the country about the Sneeuwberg Mountains, where the new town and Drosdy of Graaff Reinet had been established. Swellendam had been established as a town and magistracy since 1746. The country northward to the Orange River had been explored; the mouth of the Orange located by Colonel Gordon, a Scottish officer in the service of the Dutch; and so far back as 1761 Hendrik Hop, an enterprising and determined colonist, had crossed the Orange itself and penetrated into Great Namaqualand.

In pushing to the eastward the colonists had come in contact with the Amakosa Kaflirs, a fine, athletic, pastoral, and warlike people, whom they found very different neighbors from the slothful and easily managed Hottentots. In 1779, after various raids, negotiations, and recriminations, the Kafiirs were attacked by the Dutch farmers and their Hottentots, and after some fighting were driven by them beyond the Fish River. It is curious to note that the Hottentots from early times took readily to firearms and horses; they are to this day excellent rifle shots and horsemen, and, whether serving under Dutch or British, have almost invariably proved themselves valuable fighting men. The Kafflirs and Zulus, on the other hand, never showed the same inclination for firearms, preferring rather to trust to their strong arms and sharp assegais.

Even at the present time the bulk of the Kaflirs and Zulus, and the Matabele, are by no means expert gunners or riders. The Bechuanas and Basutos take to horses and rifles more readily, and many good horsemen and fair rifle shots are found among them. In 1789 a second Kaffir war broke out; the Amakosas suddenly invaded the colony west of the Fish River, and, after desultory operations during four years, were still, thanks chiefly to the rapidly decaying Dutch Government, unexpelled from the colonial limits. The gravest dissatisfaction, amounting indeed to disaffection, prevailed among the Swellendam and Graaff Reinet settlers at this period toward their own rulers. Considering that they had lost over sixty thousand head of cattle they had strong reasons for their annoyance. Proclamations from the seat of government were openly scoffed at, and although the settlers had been long forbidden, on pain of corporal or capital punishment and confiscation, to quit their farms and penetrate into the interior, they moved whithersoever it pleased them in search of game, trade, ivory, and fresh pastures. Their warfare with the Bushmen, who dwelt in the mountains, chiefly toward the northern parts of the colony, had been bloody and unceasing for many years past. The Bushmen objected to the white men invading their hunting-grounds, and carried off their cattle and sheep; the Boers looked upon the Bushmen as nothing better than apes and vermin, and shot them down wherever possible; and the Bush men in turn defended themselves with poisoned arrows and occasionally descended upon lone farmhouses, when the men were absent, killing women and children and destroying and driving away stock.

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