Cape Colony

Kaapkolonie
Cape Colony
British colony
←
1795–1910 →
Flag Coat of arms
Anthem
God Save the King
(God Save the Queen 1837-1901)
The Cape Colony ca. 1890
with Griqualand East and Griqualand West annexed
and Stellaland/Goshen claimed (in light red)
Capital Cape Town
Language(s) English, Dutch ¹
Religion Dutch Reformed Church, Anglican
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
 - 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
 - 1910 569,020 km2 (219,700 sq mi)
Population
 - 1910 est. 2,564,965 
     Density 4.5 /km2  (11.7 /sq mi)
Currency Pound sterling
Today part of  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.

The Cape Colony, part of modern South Africa, was established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, with the founding of Cape Town. It was subsequently occupied by the British in 1795 when the Netherlands were occupied by revolutionary France, so that the French revolutionaries could not take possession of the Cape with its important strategic location. An improving situation in the Netherlands (the Peace of Amiens) allowed the British to hand back the colony to the Batavian Republic in 1803, but by 1806 resurgent French control in the Netherlands led to another British occupation to prevent Napoleon using the Cape. The Cape Colony subsequently remained in the British Empire until the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, when it was renamed the Cape of Good Hope Province.

The Cape Colony was coextensive with the later Cape 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 for a long time as the boundary, although some land between the river and the southern boundary of Botswana was later added to it.

Contents

History

In South Africa, Dutch traders were the first European colonists. The first Cape settlement was built in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a re-supply point and way station for Dutch vessels on their way back and forth between the Netherlands and the East Indies (Batavia). 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. 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 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 Dutch Company officials (including Dutch Reformed ministers), the Afrikaners (both settled colonists and Trekboeren), who were growing different from their counterparts in the Company, the Khoikhoi, and the slaves of diverse nationality all played differing roles. Intermarriage and cohabitation of masters and slaves added to the complexity. The emergence of Afrikaans, a new vernacular language of the colonials that is however intelligible with Dutch, shows that the Dutch immigrants themselves were also subject to acculturation processes. By the time of British rule after 1795, the sociopolitical foundations were firmly laid.

The history of Cape Colony started with the founding of Cape Town by Dutch commander Jan van Riebeeck, working for the Dutch East India Company, known in Dutch as the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC).

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 assumed control of the territory following the minor Battle of Muizenberg. The VOC 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).

Cape Colony
History
Pre-1806
1806–1870
1870–1899
1899–1910
Map of the Cape Colony 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 hoped to keep Napoleon out of the Cape, and to control the Far East trade routes.

They set up a British colony on 8 January 1806. The British started to settle the eastern border of the colony with the arrival in Port Elizabeth of the 1820 Settlers. In 1854, the Cape Colony received representative government, and in 1872 under Prime Minister JC Molteno, responsible government. The discovery of diamonds around Kimberley in 1870 led to a rapid expansion of British influence into the hinterland under colonialists such as Cecil Rhodes. The ill-fated Jameson Raid curbed this expansion somewhat until British victory following the Second Boer War.

The Cape Colony remained 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 Colony (1652-1910)

The title of the founder of the Cape Colony, Jan van Riebeeck, was "Commander of the Cape" (initially called "opperhoof"), a position which he held from 1652 to 1662. He was succeeded by a long line of both Dutch and British colonial administrators, depending on who was in power at the time:

Commanders of Dutch East India Company colony (1652-1691)

Governors of Dutch East India Company colony (1691-1795)

British occupation (1st, 1797-1803)

Batavian Republic (Dutch colony) (1803-1806)

British occupation (2nd, 1806-1814)

British colony (1814-1910)

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

Prime Ministers of the Cape Colony (1872-1910)

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

References