Dutch Cape Colony

Cape Colony
Kaapkolonie
Dutch Cape Colony 1652-1795 Dutch Republic First British Cape Colony 1795-1803 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Batavian Cape Colony 1803-1806 Batavian Republic
1652–1806 →
Flag Coat of arms
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 1795-1803 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Batavian Cape Colony 1803-1806 Batavian 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

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, 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]

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

References

Sources

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.

Commanders and Governors of the Cape Colony Commanders 1652–1691 Jan van Riebeeck Zacharias Wagenaer Cornelis van Quaelberg Jacob Borghorst Pieter Hackius Albert van Breuge Johan Bax van Herenthals Hendrik Crudop Simon van der Stel Governors 1691–1795 Simon van der Stel Willem Adriaan van der Stel Johannes Cornelis d’Ableing Louis van Assenburg Willem Helot Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes Jan de la Fontaine Pieter Gijsbert Noodt Jan de la Fontaine Adriaan van Kervel Daniël van den Henghel Hendrik Swellengrebel Ryk Tulbagh Joachim van Plettenberg Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn Joachim van Plettenberg Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff Johannes Izaac Rhenius (Isaac Reinus) Sebastiaan Cornelis Nederburgh & Simon Hendrik Frijkenius Abraham Josias Sluysken Those in italics were Acting Governors

Political history of South Africa Defunct polities Kingdom of Mapungubwe (c. 1075–c. 1220) Dutch Cape Colony (1652–1806) Mthethwa Paramountcy (c. 1780–1817) Ndwandwe Kingdom (c. 1780–1819) Cape Colony (1795–1910) Zulu Kingdom (1816–97) Natalia Republic (1839–43) Natal Colony (1843–1910) Orange Free State (1854–1902) South African Republic (1856–1902) Griqualand East (1861–79) Griqualand West (1870–73) Goshen (1882–83) Stellaland (1882–85) Nieuwe Republiek (1884–88) Upingtonia (1885–87) Klein Vrystaat (1886–91) Orange River Colony (1902–10) Transvaal Colony (1902–10) Union of South Africa (1910–61) Transkei (1976–94) Bophuthatswana (1977–94) Venda (1979–94) Ciskei (1981–94) Events 1652–1815 Dutch settlement French Huguenot settlement Khoikhoi–Dutch Wars Xhosa Wars Battle of Muizenberg Battle of Blaauwberg Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 1815–1910 Mfecane 1820 Settlers Great Trek Boer Republics Mineral Revolution Witwatersrand Gold Rush South African Wars South Africa Act 1909 1910–1948 Maritz Rebellion Rand Rebellion Great Depression 1946 African Mine Workers' Union strike Bantustans Apartheid era 1948 general election Apartheid legislation Internal resistance Coloured-vote constitutional crisis Defiance Campaign Congress of the People Freedom Charter Women's March 1956 1957 Alexandra bus boycott Sharpeville massacre 1960 republic referendum International isolation Academic boycott Disinvestment Sporting boycott Rivonia Trial Tar Baby Option Durban Moment Border War Israeli alliance Israel–South Africa Agreement Soweto Uprising Weapons of mass destruction Project Coast Constructive engagement Church Street bombing 1983 constitutional reform referendum Rubicon speech Third Force CODESA 1992 apartheid referendum Saint James Church massacre Bophuthatswana conflict Shell House massacre Post-apartheid 1994 general election Government of National Unity Reconstruction and Development Programme Truth and Reconciliation Commission Arms Deal African Renaissance Xenophobia Marikana massacre 2012 Western Cape farm workers' strike Nkandlagate 2014 platinum strike #RhodesMustFall protests #FeesMustFall student protests Political culture Afrikaner Calvinism Baasskap Boerehaat Day of the Vow Greater South Africa Honorary whites Rooi gevaar Slavery Swart gevaar Uitlander Volkstaat Defunct organisations Civic and political organisations Afrikaner Bond Afrikaner Broederbond Afrikaner Party AITUP APO AVF BPC Black Sash CDA CTEG COD Congress Alliance COSG CP Dominion Party DP (1973–1977) DP (1989–2000) DPP ECC FA FD Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners GNP Het Volk HNP ID IP ISL Jeugkrag Johannesburg Reform Committee Labour Party (1910–1958) Labour Party (1969–1994) Liberal Party NA NCP NIC NLP NNP NP NPP NRP NUSAS PFP Progressive Party (Cape Colony) Progressive Party PRP Radio Freedom Reform Party SABP SADECO SAIC SASO SAYCO SAYRCO South African Party (Cape Colony) South African Party (1911–1934) South African Party (1977–1980) TNIP Torch Commando UFP United Party Unionist Party Volksparty Workers Party WOSA Trade unions and social movements APF BCM FOSATU ICU MUSA NEUM PAWE SAAPAWU UDF Umkosi Wezintaba Paramilitary and terrorist organisations APLA ARM BBB Boeremag Greyshirts MK Ossewabrandwag Orde van die Dood SANF Histories of political parties African National Congress Democratic Alliance Pan Africanist Congress of Azania Category