THE AFRICANDERS
A CENTURY OF
DUTCH-ENGLISH FEUD
IN SOUTH AFRICA
BY
LE ROY HOOKER,
AUTHOR OF
“Enoch, the Philistine,” “Baldoon,” etc.
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK:
RAND, McNALLY & CO., PUBLISHERS.
MDCCCC.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE.
I The Dutch at the Cape (1652–1795), 11
II First Contact of Africander and Briton in Diplomacy (1795), 26
III First Contact of Africander and Briton in War (1795), 46
IV The Africanders’ First Trek to the North (1806–1838), 68
V Second Contact of Africander and Briton—In Natal, 87
VI Second Contact of Africander and Briton—North of the
Orange River, 98
VII The Africanders’ Second Trek to the North, 114
VIII The Independent Africander and Slavery, 123
IX Third Contact of Africander and Briton—In the Orange
Free State, 135
X Third Contact of Africander and Briton—In the Transvaal, 148
XI The Africanders’ First War of Independence, 165
XII The Africander Republics and British Policy, 178
XIII Causes of the Africanders’ Second War of Independence, 188
XIV Causes of the Africanders’ Second War of Independence—
Continued, 207
XV Causes of the Africanders’ Second War of Independence—
Continued, 221
XVI Causes of the Africanders’ Second War of Independence—
Concluded, 241
XVII The Country of the Africanders, 261
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, Frontispiece
President Kruger, Facing page 48
Lighthouse, Durban, 72
President Steyn, Orange Free State, 88
The Vaal River, 96
Doctor Jameson, 112
Majuba Hill, 120
General Joubert, 136
Pietermaritzburg, 152
Cecil J. Rhodes, 168
Government Building, Pretoria, 176
Joseph Chamberlain, 192
Bloemfontein, 208
General Cronje, 224
Pritchard Street, Johannesburg, 240
Cattle on the Vaal River, 264
FOREWORD.
This is the history, briefly told, of the great Dutch-English feud in
South Africa, up to the beginning of the Africanders’ second war of
independence with Great Britain, which opened on the 11th of October,
1899.
In writing these pages I have not felt conscious of being in
controversy with any one. If I had been susceptible to influences that
create prejudice, nearly three centuries of American descent from
purely Anglo-Saxon progenitors with no admixture of any other blood
would have predisposed me to magnify everything in this long feud that
exemplified the prowess and the honor of that race, and to minify in
the telling whatever faults it had committed. It will be for such
readers of my work as are conversant with the ultimate authorities on
the subject treated of to judge how far I have succeeded or failed in
presenting a “plain, unvarnished” tale.
I acknowledge, with much gratitude, indebtedness for data to the
following distinguished writers:
Canon W. J. Little, M.A., author of “South Africa”; George McCall
Theal, M.A., Official Historiographer and sometime Keeper of the
Archives at Cape Town; Professor James Bryce, author of “Impressions of
South Africa,” “The American Commonwealth,” etc.; F. Reginald Statham,
author of “South Africa as It Is”; Olive Schreiner, author of “The
South African Question”; the British Blue Books and other sources of
reliable information.
THE AUTHOR.
THE AFRICANDERS.
CHAPTER I.
THE DUTCH AT THE CAPE.
(1652–1795.)
This is the story, briefly told, of the Dutch Boers in South Africa.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit the shores of South
and Southeastern Africa, but they made no attempt to settle the country
south of Delagoa Bay. They were traders. The Hottentots had little to
sell that they cared to purchase. The route for Portuguese commerce
with the East was west of Madagascar, consequently they found it
unnecessary to put into Table Bay; the voyage from St. Helena to
Mozambique could be made comfortably without seeking a port of supply.
But when the Dutch wrested the eastern trade from the Portuguese, the
southeastern portion of Africa assumed an importance to them that it
had never before possessed in the esteem of any other nation. Their sea
route to the East was south of Madagascar, and it was all but
imperative that they should have a port of supply at the turning point
of the long voyage between Holland and Batavia. It soon became their
practice to call at Table Bay for the purpose of obtaining news, taking
in fresh water, catching fish, and bartering with the natives for
cattle—in which they were seldom successful.
In 1650 the Dutch East India Company, acting upon the reports and
suggestions of influential men who had visited Table Bay and resided in
Table Valley several months, determined to establish at Table Bay such
a victualing station as had been recommended. In accordance therewith
the ships Reiger and Dromedaris and the yacht Goede Hoop—all then lying
in the harbor of Amsterdam—were put in commission to carry the party of
occupation to Table Bay, under the general command of Jan Van Riebeek.
On Sunday, 24th of December, 1651, the expedition sailed, accompanied
by a large fleet of merchant vessels. On the morning of Sunday, the 7th
of April, 1652, after a voyage of one hundred and four days, the site
of their future home greeted the eyes of the sea-worn emigrants,—Table
Mountain, 3,816 feet high, being the central and impressive feature of
the landscape. In due time preparations were made to land and begin the
necessary operations in establishing themselves in the new and entirely
uncivilized country.
The organization of the Dutch East India Company was on a thoroughly
military system. It graduated downward from the home Assembly of
Seventeen—who were supreme—to a governor-general of India and his
council resident in Batavia, and, ranking next below him in their
order, to a vast number of admirals, governors and commanders—each
having his own council, and acting under the strict rule that whenever
these came in contact the lower in rank must give place and render
obedience to the higher. It is important to bear this in mind, as it
gives a clear insight into the mode of government under which the
occupation took place, and which prevailed with little variation for
more than a hundred years. The ranking officer of the expedition was
Jan Van Riebeek, and next to him in authority were the three commanders
as his council in founding the settlement.
Van Riebeek and the three skippers, having inspected Table Valley,
selected a site for the fort a little in rear of the ground on which
the general postoffice of Cape Town now stands. On that spot a great
stronghold was built in the form of a square strengthened by bastions
at its angles. Each face of the fort measured 252 Rhynland feet—about
260 feet English measure. The walls were built of earth, twelve feet
high, twenty feet in thickness at the base, tapering to sixteen feet at
the top, and were surmounted by a parapet. Surrounding the whole
structure was a moat, into which the water of Fresh River could be
turned. Within the walls were dwellings, barracks, storehouses and
other conveniences that might be required in a state of siege. Around
the fort were clustered a walled kraal for cattle, a separate inclosure
for workshops, and the tents in which the settlers began their life in
Africa.
On the 28th of January, 1653, the last of the ships, the Dromedaris,
sailed away and left the colonists to their own resources.
The history in detail of this first European settlement in South Africa
is of surpassing interest; but, here, it must be sketched in the
briefest outline possible, up to the first contact of Boer with Briton.
For the first twenty-five years the aim of the colonists was to keep
within easy reach of the fort at the Cape. Up to 1680 the most distant
agricultural settlement was at Stellenbosch, about twenty-five miles
from the Cape. Not till the end of the century did they push pioneering
enterprises beyond the first range of mountains.
There was a steady though not very rapid increase of population. As
early as 1658 the disastrous step was taken of introducing slave labor,
performed at first by West African negroes—a step which encouraged in
the whites an indisposition to work, and doomed that part of Africa to
be dependent on the toil of slaves. To their African slaves the Dutch
East India Company added numbers of Malay convicts from Java and other
parts of its East Indian territories. These Malays took wives from the
female convicts of their own race, and to some extent intermarried with
the native African slave-women. From such marriages there arose a
mongrel, dark people of the servile order, which became a considerable
element in the population of Cape Town and its neighboring regions.
In 1689 some three hundred French Huguenots came from Holland in a body
and joined the colonists at the Cape. These were a valuable acquisition
as an offset to the rapidly increasing servile element. They were
mostly persons of refinement, and brought with them habits of industry,
strong attachment to the Protestant faith, and a supreme love of
liberty. Many of the more respectable colonial families are descended
from that stock.
The somewhat intolerant government of the Company hastened the blending
of the various classes of the population in one. The Huguenots loved
their language and their peculiar faith, and greatly desired to found a
separate religious community. But the Company forbade the use of French
in official documents and in religious services. As a result of this
narrow but far-seeing policy, by the middle of the eighteenth century
the Huguenots had amalgamated with their Dutch fellow-colonists in
language, religion and politics. It was not until 1780 that the
Company’s government permitted the opening of a Lutheran church,
although many Germans of that persuasion had emigrated to the Cape.
The distinctive Africander type of character began to appear at the
time when the settlers began to move from the coast into the interior
of the country. There was everything to favor the rapid development of
a new type of humanity. For the most part the Dutch and the Germans
belonged to the humbler classes; the situation was isolated; the home
ties were few; the voyage to Europe was so long that communication was
difficult and expensive; and so they maintained little connection
with—and soon lost all feeling for—the fatherlands. As for the
Huguenots, they had no home country to look to. France had banished
them, and they were not of Holland—neither in blood nor in speech. Thus
it came to pass that the whites of South Africa who went into the
interior as pioneers went consenting to the feeling that every bond
between Europe and themselves was severed—that they were a new people
whose true home and destiny, to the latest generations, were to be in
Africa.
Many of them became stockmen, roaming with their flocks and herds over
vast tracts of grazing lands, for which they paid a nominal rent to the
Company. Some of them became mighty hunters of big game—like Nimrod;
and even those who herded cattle and sheep were forced to protect
themselves and their live stock against lions and leopards and the
savage Bushmen who waged a constant warfare in which quarter was
neither given nor expected. In such circumstances it is not wonderful
that the people who had in their veins the blended blood of Holland and
Navarre developed to an almost unparalleled degree courage,
self-reliance and love of independence, coupled with a passion for
solitude and isolation.
As inevitable results of the life they led—so isolated and wild—the
children grew up untaught; the women, being served by slaves, lost both
the Dutch and French habits of thrift and cleanliness; and the men
became indifferent to the elegancies of life, and grew more and more
stern and narrow-minded on all questions of public policy and religion.
But there was no declension of religious fervor. In all their
wanderings the Bible went with them as an oracle to be consulted on all
subjects, and the altar of family worship never lacked its morning and
evening sacrifice. And they retained a passionate love of personal
freedom which no effort of the Company’s government could bring under
perfect discipline.
Magistrates and assessors were appointed in some of the distant
stations, but they failed to control the wandering stockmen, who were
called Trek Boers because they “trekked” from place to place. Being
good marksmen and inured to conflict with wild beasts and wilder men,
they formed among themselves companies of fighting men whose duty it
was to disperse or destroy the savage Bushmen. These independent
military organizations the government recognized and approved by
appointing over them a field commander for each district and a
subordinate called a field cornet for each subdivision of a district.
These officers and their respective commands became permanent features
of the system of local government, and the war bands—called
commandos—have always been recognized in the records of military
operations by the Boers.
The administration, through a governor and council appointed by the
Dutch East India Company in Holland, was never popular with the
colonists. The governor was in no sense responsible to the people he
governed. This was one of the causes which prompted the Boers to go out
into the wilderness, where distance from the center of authority
secured to them greater freedom.
In 1779 the disaffected colonists sent commissioners to Holland to
demand of the States-General redress of the grievances suffered under
the rule of the Dutch East India Company and a share in the government
of the colony. This action was due, in part, to actual wrongs inflicted
on a liberty-loving people, and, in part, to the spirit of independence
which characterized the temper of the age and had led the British
colonists in North America to throw off the control of their mother
country.
After prolonged negotiations the States-General sent out two
commissioners to investigate the state of affairs in the Cape colony
and to recommend measures of reform. The degree of relief proposed was
considered inadequate—especially by those who dwelt in the more distant
settlements. Therefore, in 1795, the people of the interior rose up in
revolt against the Company’s government—professing, however, unabated
loyalty to the mother country. The magistrates appointed by the company
were deposed, and little republics were set up, each with a
representative assembly. It would have been an easy matter for the
government at the Cape to have suppressed these uprisings by cutting
off their food supplies. But just then other events claimed the
attention of both the governor and the governed—events which drew South
Africa into the tumultuous tide of European politics and led to the
immediate contact of Boer and Briton, and initiated a struggle between
the two which has been renewed at intervals, with varying fortunes, for
more than a hundred years.
Before going forward to the event of 1795—the first contact of Boer and
Briton—it will be well to note some of the more important features of
the condition in which that contact found the Boer.
The total Boer population of South Africa in 1795 was about seventeen
thousand, with a rapid rate of increase. In the mixed blood of the
people the proportions of national elements were: Dutch, a little less
than two-thirds; French, one-sixth; the remainder was principally
German, with a sprinkling of other nationalities.
The popular language differed largely from that of Holland at the close
of the eighteenth century. The amalgamation with a large body of
foreigners, the scant instruction in book learning, and above all the
necessity of speaking to the slaves and Hottentots in the simplest
manner possible had all tended to the destruction of grammatical forms.
The language in common use by the Boer had become a mere dialect,
having a very limited vocabulary. But the Dutch Bible—a book that every
one read—greatly increased the number of words with which he was
familiar. With this addition, however, most of the uneducated South
African colonists were unable to understand fully the contents of a
newspaper of the time printed in Holland, or a book treating of a
subject unfamiliar to them. Naturally this dialect of the Dutch was
greatly beloved by the people using it—it was the language of mother,
of lover, of friend to friend in parting to meet no more.
In no other country were women more completely on an equality with men
than in South Africa. Property belonging to a woman while she was
single, or acquired by her after marriage, was secured to her in
perpetuity so that her husband could neither squander it nor dispose of
it in any way without her consent. Neither was it subject to seizure
for debts contracted by him, but was as absolutely hers as if no
marriage existed.
The rights of children to be provided for were sacredly guarded. An
individual having five or more children could only dispose by will of
half the estate; the remainder belonged to the children, and upon the
death of the parent it was equally divided among them; if any were
minors their share was taken in trust for them by guardians provided by
law. If there were not more than four children the parent could dispose
by will of two-thirds of the estate.
The industrial pursuits of the people outside of Cape Town were almost
entirely agricultural and pastoral. There were no mining interests.
There was abundance of fish, but the taking of them was discouraged by
government prohibitions of fishing in any waters but Table Bay in
summer and False Bay in winter. This measure was taken to save the
Company the expense of providing military protection for fishermen at a
distance from the fort. In 1718 it was permitted to fish in Saldanha
Bay, also, but as one-fifth of the product was exacted as a tax the
license was not accepted.
The making of wagons and carts of the peculiar kind needed in Africa at
that time was carried to great perfection. This, however, was the only
important manufacturing industry in the country. For the most part
families supplied themselves with homemade articles of use, such as
soap, candles, furniture, leather, cloth, harness and farming
implements. Everything thus produced was crude and clumsy, but the
articles were durable and served the purpose fairly well.
All in all, they were a worthy and a very peculiar people—these Boers.
They differed largely from all others in habits, language and ideals;
but they were loyal to their ideals, and acted with rare good sense and
manly energy in carrying them into effect. They were so far free from
the prevailing spirit of religious bigotry that in 1795, besides the
Dutch Reformed Church—in a sense the national church—the Lutheran and
the Moravian denominations were tolerated.
The territory in South Africa that had been explored, up to 1795,
included the Cape colony, the western coast as far north as Walfish
Bay, the eastern coast to the Zambesi River and the Zambesi Valley to a
point above Tete, and a few localities in the region now known as
Rhodesia. Possibly some roving elephant hunters had crossed the Orange
River, but, if so, they were silent as to any discoveries made.
The Bushmen had retired from the populous parts of the Colony, and were
numerous only along the mountain range in the interior. The Hottentots
had dwindled away to a few thousand. The thinning out of these native
races was due not so much to mortal conflict with the whites as to the
ravages of smallpox and strong drink. Like all savage people they
seemed to melt away before these scourges as stubble before flames.
And here we close this chapter of the history of the Boers. We leave
them, for the moment, divided as to the government of the Dutch East
India Company, but a homogeneous people seventeen thousand strong, and
having developed out of the elements mixed in their blood and the
peculiar environment and experiences in which they lived a new race of
civilized men to be known in the history of commerce, diplomacy and war
as Africanders.