Cape Colony

For the previous Dutch colony, see Dutch Cape Colony.
Cape of Good Hope
Kaap de Goede Hoop
British colony
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1795–1910 →
 
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Flag Coat of arms
Anthem
God Save the King (1795–1837; 1901–1910)
God Save the Queen (1837–1901)
The Cape of Good Hope c. 1890
with Griqualand East and Griqualand West annexed
and Stellaland/Goshen (in light red) claimed
Capital Cape Town
Languages English, Dutch (official¹)
Khoekhoe, Xhosa also spoken
Religion Dutch Reformed Church, Anglican, San religion
Government Constitutional monarchy
King/Queen
 •  1795–1820 George III
 • 1820–1830 George IV
 • 1830–1837 William IV
 • 1837–1901 Victoria
 • 1901–1910 Edward VII
Governor
 • 1797–1798 George Macartney
 • 1901–1910 Walter Hely-Hutchinson
Prime Minister
 • 1872–1878 John Charles Molteno
 • 1908–1910 John X. Merriman
Historical era Scramble for Africa
 •  Established 1795
 • Dutch colony 1803–1806
 • Anglo-Dutch treaty 1814
 • Natal incorporated 1844
 •  Disestablished 1910
Area
 •  1822[1] 331,900 km² (128,147 sq mi)
 •  1910 569,020 km² (219,700 sq mi)
Population
 •  1822[1] est. 110,380 
     Density 0.3 /km²  (0.9 /sq mi)
 •  1865 census[2] est. 496,381 
 •  1910 est. 2,564,965 
     Density 4.5 /km²  (11.7 /sq mi)
Currency Pound sterling
Today part of  Namibia²
 South Africa
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.
² Penguin Islands and Walvis Bay

The Cape of Good Hope, colloquially also known as the Cape Colony (Dutch: Kaapkolonie), was a British colony in present-day South Africa and Namibia, named after the Cape of Good Hope. The British colony was preceded by an earlier Dutch colony of the same name, the Kaap de Goede Hoop, established in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch lost the colony to Britain following the 1795 Battle of Muizenberg, but had it returned following the 1802 Peace of Amiens. It was re-occupied by the British following the Battle of Blaauwberg in 1806, and British possession affirmed with the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.

The Cape of Good Hope then remained in the British Empire, becoming self-governing in 1872, and uniting with three other colonies to form the Union of South Africa in 1910. It then was renamed the Cape of Good Hope Province.[3] South Africa became fully independent in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster. Following the 1994 creation of the present-day South African provinces, the Cape of Good Hope Province was partitioned into the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, and Western Cape, with smaller parts in North West province.

The Cape of Good Hope was coextensive with the later Cape of Good Hope 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 as the boundary for some time, although some land between the river and the southern boundary of Botswana was later added to it. From 1878, the colony also included the enclave of Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands, both in what is now Namibia.

History

Dutch Colonisation

Dutch East India Company (VOC) traders, 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.

The local Khoikhoi had neither a strong political organisation nor an economic base beyond their herds. They bartered livestock freely to Dutch ships but, as Company employees established farms, the Khoikhoi became displaced in the ship-related commerce. Conflicts led to the consolidation of European land holdings and a greater degree of Khoikhoi society breakdown. Military success led to even greater Dutch East India Company control of the Khoikhoi by the 1670s and the Khoikhoi became the chief source of colonial wage labour.

The area around the Company station in-filled and 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 where they competed with the Khoikhoi cattle herders for the best grazing lands. By 1700, the traditional Khoikhoi lifestyle of pastoralism had disappeared and following British rule in 1795, the establishment of the Cape's socio-political 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 reach 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 of Good Hope over to the Batavian Republic in 1803, under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens.

Cape Colony
history
Pre-1806
1806–1870
1870–1899
1899–1910
Map of the Cape of Good Hope in 1809.

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.

British Colonisation

The British started to settle the eastern border of the colony, with the arrival in Port Elizabeth of the 1820 Settlers. They also began to introduce the first rudimentary rights for the Cape's Black African population and, in 1833, abolished slavery. The resentment that the Dutch farmers felt against this social change, as well as the imposition of English language and culture, caused them to trek inland en masse. This was known as the Great Trek, and the migrating Afrikaners settled inland, forming the "Boer republics" of Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

British immigration continued in the Cape, even as many of the Afrikaners continued to trek inland, and the ending of the British East India Company's monopoly on trade led to economic growth. At the same time, the long series of border wars fought against the Xhosa people of the Cape's eastern frontier finally died down when the Xhosa partook in a mass destruction of their own crops and cattle, in the belief that this would cause their spirits to appear and defeat the whites. The resulting famine crippled Xhosa resistance and ushered in a long period of stability on the border.

Peace and prosperity led to a desire for political independence. In 1854, the Cape of Good Hope elected its first parliament, on the basis of the multi-racial Cape Qualified Franchise. Cape residents qualified as voters based on a universal minimum level of property ownership, regardless of race.

The fact that executive power remained completely in the authority of the British governor did not relieve tensions in the colony between its eastern and western sections.[4]

Responsible Government

Map of the Cape of Good Hope in 1885 (blue)

In 1872, after a long political battle, the Cape of Good Hope achieved "Responsible Government" under its first Prime Minister, John Molteno. Henceforth, an elected Prime Minister and his cabinet had total responsibility for the affairs of the country. A period of strong economic growth and social development ensued, and the eastern-western division was largely laid to rest. The system of multi-racial franchise also began a slow and fragile growth in political inclusiveness, and ethnic tensions subsided.[5] In 1877, the state expanded by annexing Griqualand West and Griqualand East.[6]

However, the discovery of diamonds around Kimberley and gold in the Transvaal led to a return to instability, particularly because they fuelled the rise to power of the ambitious imperialist Cecil Rhodes. On becoming the Cape's Prime Minister, he instigated a rapid expansion of British influence into the hinterland. In particular, he sought to engineer the conquest of the Transvaal, and although his ill-fated Jameson Raid failed and brought down his government, it led to the Second Boer War and British conquest at the turn of the century. The politics of the colony consequently came to be increasingly dominated by tensions between the British colonists and the Afrikaners. Rhodes also brought in the first formal restrictions on the political rights of the Cape of Good Hope's Black African citizens.[7]

The Cape of Good Hope remained nominally 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.

Governors of the Cape of Good Hope (1797–1910)

British occupation (1st, 1797–1803)

Batavian Republic (Dutch colony) (1803–1806)

British occupation (2nd, 1806–1814)

British colony (1814–1910)

Cape Governor Lord Charles Somerset
Sir Henry Bartle Frere

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 of Good Hope. The post of Governor of the Cape of Good Hope became extinct on 31 May 1910, when it joined the Union of South Africa.

Prime Ministers of the Cape of Good Hope (1872–1910)

Sir John Charles Molteno, first Prime Minister of the Cape
Prime Minister Cecil John Rhodes
No. Name Party Assumed office Left office
1 Sir John Charles Molteno Independent 1 December 1872 5 February 1878
2 Sir John Gordon Sprigg Independent 6 February 1878 8 May 1881
3 Thomas Charles Scanlen Independent 9 May 1881 12 May 1884
4 Thomas Upington Independent 13 May 1884 24 November 1886
— Sir John Gordon Sprigg (2nd time) Independent 25 November 1886 16 July 1890
5 Cecil John Rhodes Independent 17 July 1890 3 May 1893
— Cecil John Rhodes (2nd time) Independent 4 May 1893 12 January 1896
— Sir John Gordon Sprigg (3rd time) Independent 13 January 1896 13 October 1898
6 William Philip Schreiner Independent 13 October 1898 17 June 1900
— Sir John Gordon Sprigg (4th time) Progressive Party 18 June 1900 21 February 1904
7 Leander Starr Jameson Progressive Party 22 February 1904 2 February 1908
8 John Xavier Merriman South African Party 3 February 1908 31 May 1910

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

Demographics

1904 Census

Population Figures for the 1904 Census. Source:[8]

Population group Number Percent
(%)
Black 1,424,787 59.12
White 579,741 24.05
Coloured 395,034 16.39
Asian 10,242 0.42
Total 2,409,804 100.00

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Alexander Wilmot; John Centlivres Chase (1869). History of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope: From Its Discovery to the Year 1819. J. C. Juta. pp. 268–. Retrieved 10 September 2013.
  2. ↑ "Census of the colony of the Cape of Good Hope. 1865". HathiTrust Digital Library. p. 11. Retrieved 26 December 2013.
  3. ↑ Statemans Year Book, 1920, section on Cape Province
  4. ↑ Illustrated History of South Africa. The Reader's Digest Association South Africa (Pty) Ltd, 1992. ISBN 0-947008-90-X.
  5. ↑ Parsons, Neil, A New History of Southern Africa, Second Edition. Macmillan, London (1993)
  6. ↑ John Dugard: International Law, A South African Perspective. Cape Town. 2006. p.136.
  7. ↑ Ziegler, Philip (2008). Legacy: Cecil Rhodes, the Rhodes Trust and Rhodes Scholarships. Yale: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11835-3.
  8. ↑ Smuts I: The Sanguine Years 1870–1919, W.K. Hancock, Cambridge University Press, 1962, pg 219

Sources

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Cape Colony.
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Cape Colony.
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