Dutch Cape Colony

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Cape Colony
Kaapkolonie
Flag of the Dutch East India Company.svg Dutch Cape Colony 1652–1795
Dutch Republic
Cape Colony flag.png First British Cape Colony 1795–1803
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Flag of the Batavian Republic.svg Batavian Cape Colony 1803–1806
Batavian Republic
Cape Colony flag.png
1652–1806
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 Flag of the Dutch East India Company.svg Dutch Cape Colony 1652–1795
Dutch Republic
Cape Colony flag.png First British Cape Colony 1795–1803
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Flag of the Batavian Republic.svg Batavian Cape Colony 1803–1806
Batavian Republic
Cape Colony flag.png
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
Succeeded by
British Cape Colony
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

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Painting of an account of the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck, by Charles Bell.
Drawing of a group of Khoi women, made by a Dutch artist in the early 1700s

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

Map of the Cape Colony in 1809.

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,[citation needed] 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

Administrative divisions of the Cape Colony on the eve of the 1795 British occupation.

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".

Jan van Riebeeck, first Commander of the Dutch East India Company colony
Commanders of the Cape Colony (1652–1691)
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
Governors of the Cape Colony (1691–1795)
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
Governors of the First British occupation (1797–1803)
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
Governors of the Cape Colony for the Batavian Republic (1803–1806)
Name Period Title
Jacob Abraham Uitenhage de Mist 1803–1804 Governor
Jan Willem Janssens 1804–1807 Governor

References

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Sources

  • 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.