Dutch Cape Colony
| Cape Colony | ||||||
| Kaapkolonie | ||||||
 Dutch Cape Colony 1652–1795Dutch Republic  First British Cape Colony 1795–1803United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland  Batavian Cape Colony 1803–1806Batavian Republic | ||||||
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 Evolution of the Dutch Cape Colony | ||||||
| Capital | First the Castle of Good Hope, then Cape Town | |||||
| Languages | Dutch (official) Afrikaans Xiri Korana Khoekhoe isiXhosa English | |||||
| Religion | Dutch Reformed Church including the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk and Gereformeerde Kerke in Suid-Afrika, Anglicanism, Traditional African religion | |||||
| Political structure | Dutch Cape Colony 1652–1795 Dutch Republic First British Cape Colony 1795–1803United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Batavian Cape Colony 1803–1806Batavian Republic | |||||
| Governor | ||||||
| • | 1652–1662 | Jan van Riebeeck | ||||
| • | 1679–1699 | Simon van der Stel | ||||
| • | 1771–1785 | Joachim van Plettenberg | ||||
| • | 1803–1806 | Jan Willem Janssens | ||||
| Historical era | Imperialism | |||||
| • | Establishment of Cape Town | 6 April 1652 | ||||
| • | Elevated to Governorate | 1691 | ||||
| • | First British occupation | 7 August 1795 | ||||
| • | Cape Colony restored to Dutch rule | 1 March 1803 | ||||
| • | Battle of Blaauwberg | 8 January 1806 | ||||
| Population | ||||||
| • | 1797[1] est. | 61,947 | ||||
| Currency | Dutch rijksdaalder | |||||
| Today part of |  South Africa | |||||
The Cape Colony (Dutch: Kaapkolonie) was between 1652 and 1691 a commandment, and between 1691 and 1795 a governorate of the Dutch East India Company. The colony was founded by Jan van Riebeeck as a re-supply and layover port for vessels of the Dutch East India Company trading with Asia.[2] Much to the dismay of the rulers of the Dutch East India Company, who were primarily interested in making profit from the Asian trade, the colony rapidly expanded into a settler colony in the years after its founding.
Being the only permanent settlement of the Dutch East India Company not serving as a trading post, it proved an ideal retirement place for employees of the company. After several years of service in the company, employees could lease a piece of land in the colony as a Vryburgher ("free citizen"), on which they had to cultivate crops that they had to sell to the Dutch East India Company for a fixed price. As these farms were labour-intensive, Vryburghers imported slaves from Madagascar, Mozambique and Asia, which rapidly increased the number of inhabitants.[2] After Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes (October 1685), which had protected the right of Huguenots in France to practise their religion without persecution from the state, the colony attracted many Huguenot settlers, who eventually mixed with the general Vryburgher population.
Due to the authoritarian rule of the Company, telling farmers what to grow for what price, controlling immigration, and monopolising trade, some farmers tried to escape the rule of the company by moving further inland. The Company, in an effort to control these migrants, established a magistracy at Swellendam in 1745 and another at Graaff Reinet in 1786, and declared the Gamtoos River as the eastern frontier of the colony, only to see the Trekboere cross it soon afterwards. In order to avoid collision with the Bantu peoples advancing south and west from east central Africa, the Dutch agreed in 1780 to make the Great Fish River the boundary of the colony.
In 1795, the colony was occupied by the British, after the Battle of Muizenberg. Under the terms of the Peace of Amiens of 1802, the colony was returned to the Dutch on 1 March 1803, but as the Dutch East India Company had since been nationalized, the colony was ruled directly by the Batavian Republic. The return was not to last long, however, as the breaking out of the Napoleonic Wars invalidated the Peace of Amiens. In January 1806, the colony was occupied for a second time by the British after the Battle of Blaauwberg. This transfer was confirmed in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.
History
Traders of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), under the command of Jan van Riebeeck, were the first people to establish a European colony in South Africa. The Cape settlement was built by them in 1652 as a re-supply point and way-station for Dutch East India Company vessels on their way back and forth between the Netherlands and Batavia (Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies. The support station gradually became a settler community, the forebears of the Afrikaners, a European ethnic group in South Africa.
At the time of first European settlement in the Cape, the southwest of Africa was inhabited by Bushmen and Hottentots who were pastoral people with a population estimated between 13,000 and 15,000.[3] Conflicts with the settlers and the effects of smallpox decimated their numbers in 1713 and 1755, until gradually the breakdown of their tribal society led them to work for the colonists, mostly as shepherds and herdsmen.[3]
The local Khoikhoi had neither a strong political organisation 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 East India Company control of the Khoikhoi by the 1670s. The Khoikhoi became the chief source of colonial wage labour.
After the first settlers spread out around the Company station, nomadic European livestock farmers, or Trekboeren, 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 emergence of Afrikaans, a new vernacular language of the colonials that is however intelligible with Dutch, shows that the Dutch East India Company immigrants themselves were also subject to acculturation processes. By the time of British rule after 1795, the sociopolitical foundations were firmly laid.
The British Conquest
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 way to better control the seas in order stop any potential French attempt to get to India. The British sent a fleet of nine warships which anchored at Simon's Town and, following the defeat of the Dutch militia at the Battle of Muizenberg, took control of the territory. The Dutch East India Company 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 Britain and Napoleonic France, and its vassal state the Batavian Republic, led the British to hand the 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 after their victory 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, who set up a colony on 8 January 1806, hoped to keep Napoleon out of the Cape, and to control the Far East trade routes. In 1814 the Dutch government formally ceded sovereignty over the Cape to the British, under the terms of the Convention of London.
Administrative divisions
The Dutch Cape Colony was divided into four districts:[4]
| District | 1797 population |
|---|---|
| District of the Cape | 18,152 |
| District of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein | 22,959 |
| District of Zwellendam | 6,663 |
| District of Graaff Reynet | 14,173 |
Commanders and governors of the Cape Colony (1652–1806)
The title of the founder of the Cape Colony, Jan van Riebeeck, was installed as "Commander of the Cape", a position he held from 1652 to 1662. During the tenure of Simon van der Stel, the colony was elevated to the rank of a governorate, hence he was promoted to the position of "Governor of the Cape".
| Name | Period | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Jan van Riebeeck | 7 April 1652 – 6 May 1662 | Commander |
| Zacharias Wagenaer | 6 May 1662 – 27 September 1666 | Commander |
| Cornelis van Quaelberg | 27 September 1666 – 18 June 1668 | Commander |
| Jacob Borghorst | 18 June 1668 – 25 March 1670 | Commander |
| Pieter Hackius | 25 March 1670 – 30 November 1671 | Commander and Governor |
| 1671 - 1672 | Acting Council | |
| Albert van Breugel | April 1672 – 2 October 1672 | Acting Commander |
| Isbrand Goske | 2 October 1672 – 14 March 1676 | Governor |
| Johan Bax van Herenthals | 14 March 1676 – 29 June 1678 | Commander |
| Hendrik Crudop | 29 June 1678 – 12 October 1679 | Acting Commander |
| Simon van der Stel | 10 December 1679 – 1 June 1691 | Commander, after 1691 Governor |
| Name | Period | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Simon van der Stel | 1 June 1691 – 2 November 1699 | Governor |
| Willem Adriaan van der Stel | 2 November 1699 – 3 June 1707 | Governor |
| Johannes Cornelis d’Ableing | 3 June 1707 – 1 February 1708 | Acting Governor |
| Louis van Assenburg | 1 February 1708 – 27 December 1711 | Governor |
| Willem Helot (acting) | 27 December 1711 – 28 March 1714 | Acting Governor |
| Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes | 28 March 1714 – 8 September 1724 | Governor |
| Jan de la Fontaine (acting) | 8 September 1724 – 25 February 1727 | Acting Governor |
| Pieter Gijsbert Noodt | 25 February 1727 – 23 April 1729 | Governor |
| Jan de la Fontaine | 23 April 1729 – 8 March 1737 | Acting Governor |
| Jan de la Fontaine | 8 March 1737 – 31 August 1737 | Governor |
| Adriaan van Kervel | 31 August 1737 – 19 September 1737 (died after three weeks in office) | Governor |
| Daniël van den Henghel | 19 September 1737 – 14 April 1739 | Acting Governor |
| Hendrik Swellengrebel | 14 April 1739 – 27 February 1751 | Governor |
| Ryk Tulbagh | 27 February 1751 – 11 August 1771 | Governor |
| Baron Joachim van Plettenberg | 12 August 1771 – 18 May 1774 | Acting Governor |
| Baron Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn | 1772 – 23 January 1773 (died at sea on his way to the Cape) | Governor designate |
| Baron Joachim van Plettenberg | 18 May 1774 – 14 February 1785 | Governor |
| Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff | 14 February 1785 – 24 June 1791 | Governor |
| Johannes Izaac Rhenius (Isaac Reinus ) | 24 June 1791 – 3 July 1792 | Acting Governor |
| Sebastiaan Cornelis Nederburgh and Simon Hendrik Frijkenius | 3 July 1792 – 2 September 1793 | Commissioners-General |
| Abraham Josias Sluysken | 2 September 1793 – 16 September 1795 | Commissioner-General |
| Name | Period | Title |
|---|---|---|
| George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney | 1797–1798 | Governor |
| Francis Dundas (1st time) | 1798–1799 | Acting Governor |
| Sir George Yonge | 1799–1801 | Governor |
| Francis Dundas (2nd time) | 1801–1803 | Governor |
| Name | Period | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Jacob Abraham Uitenhage de Mist | 1803–1804 | Governor |
| Jan Willem Janssens | 1804–1807 | Governor |
References
- ↑ Robert Montgomery Martin (1836). The British Colonial Library: In 12 volumes. Mortimer. p. 112.
- 1 2 "Kaap de Goede Hoop". De VOC site. Retrieved 8 February 2013.
- 1 2 Newmark, S. Daniel. The South African Frontier: Economic Influences 1652-1836. Stanford University Press. pp. 10–11. ISBN 978-0-8047-1617-8.
- ↑ Sir John Barrow (1806). Travels Into the Interior of Southern Africa. T. Cadell and W. Davies. p. 25.
Sources
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cape Colony. |
- 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.
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