Unrest Among the Dutch Settlers in Cape Colony

The Netherlands East India Company had wrought much of its own ruin.

Continuing Great Britain Acquires Cape Colony,
our selection 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. The selection is presented in five easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Great Britain Acquires Cape Colony.

Time: 1806
Place: Cape Town

It was said of the Sneeuwberg Boers in 1797 that they dared not venture five hundred yards from their own dwellings. As time went on, the reprisals inflicted by either side were distinguished by increasing savagery. The Bushmen, of course, suffered by far the more severely. A Boer thought no more of killing a Bushman than of shooting a Cape partridge, and talked of his feat with as much nonchalance. Commandoes were called out constantly, and the impish Bushmen were hunted down and harried among their fastnesses. The men were invariably killed, and the women and children were made slaves of. In the district of Graaff Reinet alone, between 1786 and 1794, more than two hundred Dutch people and their servants were slain by Bushmen, while of the latter there were shot by the farmers on commando during that period no fewer than two thousand five hundred. The Government at the Cape could, by its very remoteness, exercise no sort of control over these hostilities.

In the year 1781 Great Britain, for the first time in the history of the Dutch settlement, cast an eye upon the Cape Peninsula. England had at this time plenty upon her hands; the revolted American colonists had been joined by the French, and Holland as an ally of France had involved herself in the struggle. England’s conquests in India, and her trade with the East, had greatly increased, and the Cape, if it could be captured, offered many attractions as a port of call, a half-way house, a sanatorium, and a place of arms. An English fleet, therefore, under Commodore Johnstone, was dispatched with secret orders to seize Cape Town. But, thanks to a smart spy, one Dela Motte, the French got wind of the project, and in their turn quietly sent out a fleet, under Admiral de Suffren, to checkmate British designs.

The two fleets by mere accident met at Porto Praya in the Cape Verd Islands, and after a sharp engagement the French, who were beaten off after severely mishandling the English, got clear away, reached Simon’s Bay before their rivals, and threw a strong force into Cape Town. Johnstone, after patching up his crippled vessels, pursued his way to the Cape, where, however, he found the allied French and Dutch forces quite ready for him. Realizing the impossibility of taking the place, he drew ofi. Looking into the snug Saldanha Bay, a little to the north of the Cape, he found there a rich fleet of the Netherlands Company’s Indiamen, homeward bound. With this capture he enriched himself and went his way. The once rich and famous Dutch East India Company had about this period been falling upon evil times. Its ancient prosperity had been slowly departing, and various causes now combined to complete the dry-rot which had set in among the foundations of that great enterprise.

Corruption and misgovernment among its rich islands in the Indies were answerable for some portion of this decay; the war with England, and the many losses incurred during the struggle, may too have contributed to hasten the company’s downfall. But, in truth, the Netherlands East India Company had wrought much of its own ruin. Its absurd and hidebound trade restrictions, with laws and regulations far more fitted for the Middle Ages than for a modern undertaking; these, coupled with ill chosen servants and rank corruption, contributed to the downfall of this once powerful company. Even at the perilous time of 1781, when the company was known to be steadily losing twenty five thousand pounds a year by its Cape possessions, when war had been declared between British and Dutch, and an English fleet was on its way to the Cape, the company’s officials could permit themselves to indulge in such insensate folly as the granting of deeds of burghership under such restrictions as the following: The applicant was one Gous, a tailor, formerly a soldier, who was “graciously allowed to practice his craft as a tailor, but shall not be allowed to abandon the same, or adopt any other mode of living, but, when it may be deemed necessary, is to go back into his old capacity and pay, and be transported hence if thought fit.” Under such galling fetters it is small wonder that the Cape colonists of that period were becoming sick of the company’s rule.

In spite of approaching ruin and of the fact that repeated demands were being made by deputations of the colonists for a free commerce, the reform of abuses among the officials, and less tyrannous laws, the company managed to keep afloat much in the old way until 1792. By that time it had come to the end of its resources, and disaster was imminent. In 1792 commissioners were appointed by the Stadtholder of the Netherlands to make full inquiry at the Cape, reform abuses, and inaugurate, if possible, a new era of prosperity. The commissioners did what they could. They reduced establishments, rearranged taxation, opened a loan bank, passed new fiscal and trade regulations, and presently departed, leaving the control of affairs to a council of regency, with Commissary-General Sluysken at its head. But troubles came thicker and faster. The back-country colonists of Swellendam and Graaff Reinet refused to pay their taxes, declaring that as the Government could no longer give them aid they would help to maintain it no further.

In 1795 the wild frontier Boers of Bruintjes Hoogte, among them some of the most turbulent and restless spirits in the colony, fine border fighters and forayers, hunters of lions, elephants, and Bushmen, met at Graaff Reinet, expelled the landrost, or magistrate, declared themselves independent, and appointed Adriaan Van Jaarsveld, a noted fighting man against the Kaflirs, as commandant of the new republic. Four months later, in June, 1795, the landrost of Swellendam was expelled in the same manner, and the Boers of that wide district appointed for themselves a “national assembly ” and a new magistrate. Looking at the state of general dissatisfaction spreading throughout the colony, it is more than doubtful whether the Dutch authorities at the Cape, even if they had had the opportunity, could ever again have restored order or regained authority among the burghers. As it turned out, deliverance from an almost impossible situation was left to quite other and unexpected hands. Great Britain suddenly appeared upon the scene.

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