[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, Colonial Secretary of England. PAUL
KRUGER, President of the South African Republic. (Photo from Duffus
Bros.)]
South Africa
AND
The Boer-British War
COMPRISING
A HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA AND ITS PEOPLE, INCLUDING
THE WAR OF 1899 AND 1900
BY
J. CASTELL HOPKINS, F.S.S.
Author of The Life and Works of Mr. Gladstone;
Queen Victoria, Her Life and Reign; The Sword
of Islam, or Annals of Turkish Power;
Life and Work of Sir John Thompson.
Editor of "Canada; An Encyclopedia," in six volumes.
AND
MURAT HALSTEAD
Formerly Editor of the Cincinnati "Commercial Gazette,"
and the Brooklyn "Standard-Union." Author of The
Story of Cuba; Life of William McKinley;
The Story of the Philippines; The History of American
Expansion; The History of the Spanish-American War;
Our New Possessions, and
The Life and Achievements of Admiral Dewey, etc., etc.
_IN TWO VOLUMES_
VOLUME I. IN TWO PARTS
THE BRADLEY-GARRETSON COMPANY, Limited
BRANTFORD, CANADA
THE LINSCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY
LONDON, ENGLAND ---- TORONTO, CANADA
Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, at the
Department of Agriculture, Ottawa, in the year One Thousand
Nine Hundred, by J. L. Nichols & Co.
PREFACE.
To measure the South African War of 1899-1900 merely by the population
of the two Boer Republics, would necessitate its consideration as an
unimportant contest in comparison with the great international
conflicts of the century. To measure it by the real power of the Dutch
in South Africa, under present conditions, and by the principles
involved in its inception and prosecution, makes it a struggle which
rivals in importance the Crimean War, the American Civil War or the
Franco-Prussian conflict. In the first of these, Great Britain, France
and Sardinia united to resist the dangerous designs and aggressive
policy of Russia which threatened their power in the Mediterranean and
the British route to India through its intended seizure or acquisition
of Constantinople. In the second, the United States was fighting a
great conflict for national unity. In the third, Prussia averted a
campaign of "On to Berlin" by speedy and successful military action.
All of these elements find a place in the South African War. The
policy of President Kruger, President Steyn and the Afrikander Bund, of
Cape Colony, has been developing for years into a dangerous and
combined effort for the creation of a United Dutch South Africa and the
seizure of Cape Town--one of the chief stations of British commercial
and maritime power. Mr. Chamberlain precipitated matters, so far as
the Cape Colony Dutch were concerned, by a policy of firmness to which
they were unaccustomed at the hands of the Colonial Office and which,
cautious and conciliatory as it was, forced the hand of the Transvaal
President before his general policy was quite matured. As the
diplomatic negotiations proceeded and the war itself developed it
became a struggle for Imperial unity as truly and fully as was the
American Civil War. Two great Colonies of the Empire were threatened,
the principles of equal right and equal liberty upon which its entire
self-governing portions have been built up and maintained were spurned,
and the feeling of unity which has latterly grown so amazingly amongst
its various countries was openly flouted by the treatment of the
Uitlanders and the attack upon Cape Colony and Natal. Backed by the
undoubted ability of President Kruger, the sentiment of racial unity
amongst the Dutch of all South Africa, the swords and science of
European officers and experts, the immense sums drawn from the
Uitlanders and possibly from Europe, the armaments prepared during a
long term of years with skill and knowledge, the characteristics of a
people admirably adapted through both knowledge and experience for
warfare on South African soil, the Boer cry of "On to Durban" was
really more menacing to British interests and conditions of
unpreparedness than was the cry of the Parisian populace, in 1870, to
the Kingdom of Prussia. A war with France might not have been nearly
as difficult or as serious a matter to Great Britain under existing
conditions as the war with the Boer Republics has turned out to be.
The loss of South Africa, or the failure to assert British supremacy as
the Paramount Power in that region, would not only have humiliated
Great Britain in the eyes of rival nations everywhere and precipitated
peril wherever aggressive foreign ambition could find a desirable
opening, but it would have lost her the respect, the admiration or the
loyalty of rising British nations in Australia and Canada; of lesser
Colonies all over the world; of swarming millions of uncivilized races
in Hindostan, China and Northern Africa. Its influence would have been
a shock to the commercial and financial nerves of the world; a blow to
the independence and liberties of the "little peoples" who now rest
securely under the real or nominal guarantee of British power. In the
Persian Gulf and on the borders of Afghanistan, upon the frontiers of
Siam and the shores of the Bosphorus, in the waters of Australasia and
on the coasts of Newfoundland, upon the banks of the mighty Nile and
along the borders of Canada, the result would have come as the most
menacing storm-cloud of modern history. The power of a great race to
continue its mission of colonization, civilization and construction was
involved; and would be again involved if any future and serious
European intervention were threatened.
The origin of the question itself is too wide and complicated to treat
of in a few brief words. To some superficial onlookers it has been a
simple matter of dispute as to franchise regulations between President
Kruger and Mr. Chamberlain. To the enemies of England it has been a
wicked and heartless attempt on the part of Great Britain to seize a
Naboth's vineyard of gold and territory. To a few Englishmen, even, it
has seemed a product of capitalistic aggression or of the personal
ambition of a Rhodes or a Chamberlain. To many more it has appeared as
a direct consequence of the Gladstone policy of 1881 and 1884. In
reality, however, it is the result of a hundred years of racial
rivalry, during which the Boer character has been evolved out of
intense isolation, deliberate ignorance and cultivated prejudice into
the remarkable product of to-day, while the nature of his British
neighbor has expanded in the light of liberty and through the gospel of
equality, of labor and of world-wide thought, into the great modern
representative of progress in all that makes for good government,
active intellectual endeavor, material wealth and Imperial expansion.
Stagnation as opposed to progress, slavery to freedom, racial hatred to
general unity, isolation and seclusion to free colonization and
settlement, the darkness of the African veldt to the light of European
civilization--these are the original causes of the war. British
mistakes of policy in defending the Boer against the Kaffir or the
Kaffir against the Boer; political errors in making the Conventions of
1852 and 1854, of 1881 and 1884; hesitancy in the annexation of
territory and indifference in the holding of it; have increased the
complications of South African life and government, but have not
affected the root of the evil--the fact of two absolutely conflicting
social and political systems developing side by side during a century
of difficulty and racial rivalry. This antagonism has been absolute.
The Boer love for liberty or independence became simply a love for
isolation from the rest of humanity and a desire to imitate the
slave-owners of Old Testament history. The final result has been the
creation of a foreign, or Hollander, oligarchy in both the Dutch
republics for the purpose of preserving this condition. The British
ideal is freedom in government, in trade, in politics, for himself and
for others, regardless of race, or creed, or color. The Boer principle
of morality has always been a mere matter of color; that of the average
Englishman is very different. The Boer religion is a gospel of
sombreness wrapped in the shadow of Hebrew seclusion and exclusiveness;
that of the true Englishman is a gospel of love and the light of a New
Testament dispensation. Side by side these two types have lived and
struggled in South Africa, and to-day the racial, national, individual
and other differences are being thrown into the crucible of a desperate
conflict. There can only be one local result--the ultimate
organization of a united South Africa in which race and creed and color
will be merged in one general principle of perfect equality and the
practice of one great policy of liberty to all, within the bounds of
rational legislation and honest life. A second and more widely potent
consequence will be the closer constructive union of the British Empire
and the welding of its scattered and sometimes incoherent systems of
defence and legislation and commerce into one mighty whole in which
Canada and Australia and South Africa and, in some measure, India will
stand together as an Imperial unit. A third and very important result,
arising out of the policy of foreign nations during the struggle,
should also be the drawing closer of existing ties of friendship and
kinship between the British Empire and the American Republic.
J. CASTELL HOPKINS.
[Illustration: THE RT. HON. SIR BARTLE FRERE, G.C.B. High Commissioner
for South Africa, 1877-1881. THE RT. HON. SIR GEORGE GREY, K.C.B.
High Commissioner for South Africa, 1854-1862.]
[Illustration: MR. CECIL J. RHODES, The Diamond King and Promoter of
the Cape-to-Cairo Railroad, South Africa. LORD ROBERTS, V.C., G.C.B.,
G.C.I.E., Commander-in-Chief British Forces, South Africa.]
Part I.
LIST OF CHAPTERS AND SUBJECTS
CHAPTER I.
Early Scenes of Settlement and Struggle.
The Dark Continent--The Old-time Natives of the South--The Bantu,
Hottentots and Bushmen--The Portuguese of South Africa--The Dutch East
India Company--A Dutch Colony at the Cape--The First
Slaves--Introduction of Asiatics--The Boer Pioneer Farmer--Arrival of
the Huguenots--Wars with the Bantu or Kaffirs--Extension of Settlement
and Exploration--The First British Occupation--Final British
Conquest--The Dutch, the English, the French and the Natives--Birth of
the South African Question
CHAPTER II.
The Dutch and the Natives.
The Early Dutch Character--Contempt for Coloured Races--The
Commencement of Slavery, Its Nature and Practices--The Wandering Native
Tribes Learn to Hate the Dutchman--English and Dutch Views in
Antagonism--The Missionary Interferes--Unwise Action in Some
Cases--Policy of Dr. Philip--Dutch Hostility to England Increased by
Dislike of Mission Work and Antagonism to Slavery--Missionary Influence
upon the Latter--The Dutch and the Kaffir Wars--Hardships of the
Settlers--Rise of the Zulu Power under Tshaka--The Matabele and
Moselkatze--Moshesh and the Basutos--A Second Period in the South
African Problem Begins
CHAPTER III.
The Great Trek and its First Results.
The British Abolition of Slavery--The Immediate Effects of the Measure
Disastrous to Both Dutch and Natives--The Trek of 1836 Commences--The
Emigrant Farmer, Qualities and Mode of Life--Nature of the Country
Traversed Character of the Various Native Tribes--Ruthless Warfare--The
Boer Skill in Marksmanship--The Boers North of the Orange River--Their
Subjugation of the Matabele--Pieter Retief and His Party in
Natal--Massacre by Dingaan--Boer War with the Zulus--Conquest of
Dingaan and His Followers by Pretorius--Dutch Treatment of the
Natives--Boers Develop Strength in War But Show Signal Weakness in
Government--Collision with the English in Natal--The Cape Governor
Decides that the Natives Must be Protected--Conflict Between Boers and
English--The Republic of Natalia Becomes a British Country--The Boers
Trek North of the Vaal River and Colonize the Transvaal--Establishment
of Moshesh by the British as Head of a Border Native State--The
Griquas--A Third Phase of the South African Question
CHAPTER IV.
Birth of the Dutch Republics.
English Policy in South Africa During the Middle of the
Century--Non-interference, no Expansion, Limitation of
Responsibility--Brief Exception in the Case of the Orange River
Boers--Annexation, in 1848, and Establishment as the Orange River
Sovereignty--English Protection of the Boers Against the
Natives--Rebellion of Pretorious and Defeat of the Dutch at Boomplaatz
by Sir Harry Smith--A New Governor at the Cape and a Hastily Changed
Policy--Independence of the Transvaal Boers Recognized in 1852--The
Sand River Convention--English Campaign Against the Basutos in Defence
of the Orange River Boers--Arrival of Sir George Clerk with
Instructions to Withdraw British Authority from the Orange River
Country--Protests of the Loyal Settlers--Formation and Recognition of
the Orange Free State--A New Setting for an Old Problem
CHAPTER V.
Development of Dutch Rule.
Divergent Lines of Growth in the Republics--The Orange Free State and
the Basutos--Early Difficulties and Laws--Rise of President Brand into
Power--His High Character and Quarter of a Century's Wise
Administration of the Free State--Diamond Discoveries and the Keate
Award--Liberal Policy of the Free State and General Friendship with
England--In the Transvaal--Troubles of the Emigrant Farmers North of
the Vaal--Four Little Republics--Union Under Martin W. Pretorius, in
1864, after a Period of Civil War--Rise of S. J. P. Kruger into
Prominence--Conflicts with the Natives--T. F. Bergers Becomes
President--General Stagnation, Developing by 1877 into Public
Bankruptcy--Failure to Conquer Sekukuni and the Bapedis--Danger from
the Zulus under Cetywayo--Annexation to the British Empire--A New Link
Forged in the Chain of Events
CHAPTER VI.
Development of Cape Colony.
Gradual Growth of Population after the Great Trek--Climate, Resources
and Government--Agriculture and the Dutch Settlers--Lack of
Progressiveness--The English and the Cultivation of Special
Industries--Partial Self-government Granted to the Cape--Executive
Council, Schools and Courts--English as the Official Language--Elective
Council and Assembly Constituted in 1853--Extensive German
Colonization--Railways and Diamonds--Incorporation of New
Territories--The Establishment of Responsible Government--The Dutch and
the English in Politics--Representative Men of the Colony--Cecil Rhodes
Appears on the Scene--Racial Conditions in 1877--The Confederation
Scheme Defeated in the Cape Parliament--Religion, Education and
Trade--The Afrikander Bund Formed at the Cape--It Becomes a Most
Important Element in the South African Situation
CHAPTER VII.
Imperial Policy in South Africa.
The Early Governors of Cape Colony and Their Difficulties--The Colonial
Office and its Lack of Defined and Continuous Policy--Growth in England
of Public Indifference to Colonies--Its Unfortunate Expression in
1852-54--Fluctuating Treatment of the Natives--Good Intentions and
Mistaken Practices--Sir George Grey and South Africa--A Wise
Statesman--His Policy of Confederation and Conciliation--Hampered by
the Colonial Office and the Anti-Expansion School in England--The
Non-intervention Policy and the Natives--Conditions in
Natal--Importance of the Cape to the Empire--Importance of South Africa
to the British People--Slow-growing Comprehension of these Facts in
England--Sir Bartle Frere at the Cape--Eventual Repudiation of His
Plans and Recall of the Best of South African Governors--The Gladstone
Government's Responsibility for Succeeding Evils--The Absence of a
Continuous Policy toward the Natives and Varied Questions of
Territorial Extension Involve the Colonists in Constant Trouble and the
Imperial Exchequer in Immense Expenditures--A Story of Imperial
Burdens, Mistakes and Good Intentions; of Colonial Difficulties,
Protests and Racial Complexities
CHAPTER VIII.
The Native Races of South Africa,
Origin, Character and Customs--The Bantu or Kaffirs--Offshoots Such as
the Matabele and Zulus--Some Great Chiefs--Tchaka, Dingaan, Moshesh,
Cetywayo and Khama--Merciless Character of Native Wars--Dealings with
the English and the Dutch--Difference in National Methods of Treating
Savages--Force, or Evidence of Power, the Surest Preservative of
Peace--The Slaves of the Boer and the Slaves of the Savage--Result of
Emancipation upon the Native--Result of Missionary Labour amongst the
Tribes--Livingstone and Moffat--Imperial Problems in the Rule of
Inferior Races--Strenuous British Efforts at Justice and Mercy--The
Bible and the Bayonet, the Missionary and the Soldier--Extremes Meet in
the Policy of the Dutch and English
CHAPTER IX.
Character of the South African Boer.
A Peculiar Type--Mixture of Huguenot and Netherlands' Dutch--Divergence
Between the Permanent Settler at the Cape and the Emigrant Farmer in
the Two Republics--Good Qualities and Bad Curiously Mixed--A Keen
Desire for Independence in the Form of Isolation--A Patriotism Bred of
Ignorance and Cultivated by Prejudice--A Love of Liberty for Himself
and of Slavery for Inferiors--The Possessor of Intense Racial Sentiment
and of Sincere Religious Bigotry--Modification of these Qualities in
Cape Colony by Education and Political Freedom--Moderate Expression of
them in the Orange Free State as a Result of President Brand's
Policy--Extreme Embodiment of them in the Transvaal--The Dutch Hatred
of Missionaries--Dr. Livingstone on Dutch Character and
Customs--Throughout South Africa the Dutch Masses are Slow and Sleepy,
Serious and Somewhat Slovenly, Averse to Field Labour, Ignorant of
External Matters and Without Culture--The Transvaal Boer the Most
Active, Hardy and Aggressive in Character--Hatred of the English and
His Wandering Life the Chief Reason--Morality and Immorality--Different
Types of Dutch--Kruger and Pretorius, Joubert and Steyn--Hofmeyr and
DeVilliers, Representative of the Higher Culture of Cape Colony
CHAPTER X.
The Annexation of the Transvaal.
Condition of the Republic in 1877--Dangers Without and Difficulties
Within--The British Policy of Confederation--Public Opinion in England
not Sufficiently Advanced--Lord Carnarvon, and Mr. J. A. Froude's
Mission--Sir T. Shepstone Takes Action--A Peaceful Annexation Quietly
Carried Out--Neither Force nor Serious Persuasion Used--The Ensuing
Administration--Self-government not Granted--Sir Owen Lanyon's
Mistakes--The Failure of the Confederation Scheme--Mr. Gladstone's
Political Campaign in England--Effect of His Utterances in South
Africa--He Comes into Power--Protests against Annexation Develop--Dutch
Delegates in England--Refusal to Reverse the Annexation--Boer Rebellion
and Ultimate British Repudiation of Pledges and Policy--Magnanimity
Appears to the Dutch as Pusillanimity and Paves the Way for Years of
Trouble and Much Bloodshed
CHAPTER XI.
Natal and the Zulu War.
Slow Progress of Natal--Limited White Population--Constitution and
General History--Rise of the Zulu Power--From the Days of Tshaka to
those of Cetywayo--A Curious British Encouragement of Native
Strength--Bravery and Good Qualities of the Zulus--Lust of Conquest and
Cruelty in War--Cetywayo's Impis Threaten the Boers of the Transvaal
and the English of Natal--Sir Bartle Frere Arrives at Cape Town as High
Commissioner and Considers War Necessary in Order to Avert
Massacre--Takes the Initiative and British Forces Invade Zululand--Lord
Chelmsford in Command--Isandlhwana, Rorke's Drift and Ulundi--Sir
Bartle Frere Recalled and Sir Garnet Wolseley Sent Out--Settlement of
the Zulu Troubles--A Curious Portion of a Complex Problem--Ensuing
Advancement of Natal
CHAPTER XII.
A Review of the South African Question.
British Views of Government and Treatment of Natives Antagonistic to
those of the Dutch--No Question of Republicanism versus Monarchy--The
Dutch at the Cape Possessed of a Larger Share in Public Administration
than the Boers of the Transvaal--The Language Question a Serious
One--Equality of Population and Opportunity and Privilege at the Cape
Without Equality of Education or Knowledge--The British Government and
the Missionaries--The Dutch and Slavery--The Non-intervention Policy
and Confederation--The Question of Cape Colony Extension--Cecil Rhodes
and South Africa--Progress versus Stagnation--The Latter Wins at Majuba
Hill and for a Time Turns Back the Hand of Destiny--The South African
Question Enters on its Last Phase
CHAPTER XIII.
The Colonies and the War.
Sentiment in the Colonies Regarding Imperial Defence--Changes within a
Few Years--Australians and Canadians in the Soudan--Public Feeling in
Canada and Australia concerning the Transvaal Negotiations--General
Sympathy with Great Britain--Expressions of Public Opinion and
Parliamentary Resolutions--The Outbreak of War--Action Taken by New
Zealand and Queensland, by Victoria and New South Wales--Other Colonies
Move--The Sudden Outburst of Feeling in Canada--Colonel Hughes and the
Volunteer Movement--The Premier and Parliament--Public Opinion Impels
Immediate Action--The Government Does its Duty in a Patriotic
Manner--Mr. Israel Tarte and the French Canadians--Attitude of Sir
Charles Tupper--The Contingent Enrolled--Popular Enthusiasm during the
Enlistment--The Officers Chosen--Lieutenant-Colonel W. D. Otter
Commands the "Second Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment"--Sir
Charles Holled-Smith in Command of the Australasians--Departure of the
Canadian Contingent amid Scenes of Unprecedented Popular
Enthusiasm--Similar Incidents in Australia--Speeches by Lord Brassey,
Governor of Victoria, and by Lord Minto, Governor-General of
Canada--Attitude of the Imperial Government toward the Colonies--Mr.
Chamberlain's Correspondence--Dr. W. H. Fitchett on Australian
Loyalty--The New-South-Wales Lancers in London--Arrival and Great
Reception of the Colonial Forces at Cape Town--Second Contingent
Offered--The Colonies and the Empire
LIST OF CHAPTERS AND SUBJECTS.
PART II.
Introduction.
The Origin of the Recent War--Boers' Policy Against
Immigrants--Characteristics of the Boers--Antagonism to British
Rule--British Government in South Africa--Telling Statistics--A
Magnificent Project--Opinions of the Canadians
CHAPTER I.
The Battle of Majuba Hill.
Lord Rosebery's Reflections--The Sting of Majuba Hill--The Gordon
Highlanders at Majuba Hill--Testimony of an Eye Witness--Proclamation
of President Steyn--Reply to the Boer Proclamation--The First Right to
the Transvaal Gold--The Broukhorst Spruit--The Laing's Nek--Terms of
Settlement
CHAPTER II.
The President of the South African Republic.
Birth, Education, etc.--Paul Kruger at Ten Years--Appearance and
Manners--The Boer of Boers--Daily Life--His Grand Passion--Facts of
History--Kruger's Chinese Wall--A Misleading Reputation--Racial
Prejudices--Free and Independent Krugerism--Kruger's Nepotism
CHAPTER III.
The Boers and British Gold and Diamonds.
Solomon's Ophir--How the Gold was Discovered--Early Gold Finds--Gold
Production in 1897 and 1898--A Clear and Impartial Statement--Boss and
Caste Government--Boer Intolerance--The "Dog in the Manger"--Commerce
of the Transvaal--The First Stamp Mill--Diamonds for Toys--Boyle's
Statement--Star of South Africa--Dry Diggings--Qualities of the Cape
Diamonds--"Nature's Freemasonry"
CHAPTER IV.
The Cause of War.
Conference With Kruger--Many Points of Difference--Kruger's Objection
to Franchise--Qualifications for Citizenship--An Absolutely Fair
Proposition--Ireland and Transvaal--What Mr. Chamberlain Wrote--A
Statement by Kruger--Petition from Natal--Resolutions of the House of
Commons of Canada--Kruger's Views on the Question--President Steyn as
Peace-maker
CHAPTER V.
The Boer Declaration of War and the Gathering of the Armies.
Both Sides Surprised--The Boer Ultimatum--Centres of Combat Quickly
Defined--Important Decisions--Early Days of the War--Public
Opinion--Two Popular Illusions
CHAPTER VI.
The First Bloodshed.
First Battle of the War--Battle of Elandslaagte--Hard Work on Both
Sides--General Buller Arrives--The Strategy of the Boers--Difficulties
in Mobilizing the Troops--Boers Select Their Time Judiciously
CHAPTER VII.
The Magersfontein Battle.
Heavy Losses on Both sides--The Hottest Fight of the British
Army--Gatacre's Serious Reverse--Methuen's Failure--The Losses--What
Dispatches Say--Sudden Change of Public Sentiment--The Official Boer
Account
CHAPTER VIII.
Battle of Colenso.--Defeat of General Buller.
"Tied by the Leg"--American and Boer Revolution Compared--New
Conditions of Warfare--Plan of the Fight--Mistaken but Heroic
Advance--Attack Fruitless--Boers Capture the Guns--Why Were the Guns
Lost?--Conduct of the Men--Bad Light and no Smoke--Defeat
Admitted--Dazed by Defeat--A Foredoomed Failure
CHAPTER IX.
The Siege of Ladysmith.
Location of Ladysmith--Timely Arrival of the Naval Brigade--First
Serious Reverse--Excitement in London--Symon's Death and
Victory--Closing in of Ladysmith--A Narrow Escape--Caves Excavated for
Families--Town Hall Struck--Midnight Bombardment--Hard Pressed--Boer
Attempt to Storm--Thrilling Encounters--Relief at Last--British Troops
Enter the Town
CHAPTER X.
The Relief of Kimberley--The Turn of the Tide of War Against the Boers.
Difference in Positions of Roberts and Buller--A White Man's War--Each
Step Carefully Considered--A Remarkable Cavalry Movement--Kimberley
Relieved--Roberts and Buller in Co-operation--Roberts' Public
Utterances--What a Military Specialist Says--The Spion Kop Affair--The
Kop Retaken by the Boers
CHAPTER XI.
Cronje's Surrender and the Occupation of Bloemfontein.
Cronje Hard Pressed--Cronje Capitulates--Cronje and Roberts Meet--The
Detailed Report of Roberts--Kruger Willing to Compromise--From Modder
River to Bloemfontein--Kruger and Steyn's Address to Lord
Salisbury--Lord Salisbury's Answer--The British Cordially Greeted in
Bloemfontein--The Press on Mediation
Official List.
of the Royal Canadian Soldiers Gone to South Africa
NOTE.--Official lists of Second and Third Contingents not being
complete at time of issuing FIRST VOLUME, they will be inserted in full
in SECOND VOLUME.
Illustrations.
The Illustrations in this volume have NO FOLIOS. There are 64 FULL
PAGES of PLATES, and 448 pages of reading matter, making a total of 512
pages.
Glossary of Boer Terms.
That the readers of this volume may understand the meaning of certain
Boer names and words which the author has found it necessary to use, we
append the following glossary of those most frequently employed:
Aarde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Earth, ground
Afgang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Slope
Baas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Master
Beek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brook
Berg . . . . . . . Mountain (the plural is formed by adding en)
Boer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Farmer
Boom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tree
Boschveldt . . . . . . . . . . . An open plain covered with bush
Broek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marsh, pool
Buitenlander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Foreigner
Burg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A town
Burgher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A citizen
Commandeer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To levy troops
Commando . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A body of armed men
Daal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A valley
Dorp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A village
Drift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A ford
Dusselboom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pole of an ox wagon
Fontein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A spring or fountain
Gebied . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . District
Hout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wood, timber
Inspan . . . . . . . . . . To harness or tether horses or cattle
Jonkher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gentleman of the Volks Raad
Karroo . . . . . . . A geographical term for a certain district.
In Hottentot, a "dry place"
Kerel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A chap, or fellow
Klei . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clay
Kloof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A valley or ravine
Kop, or Kopje . . . . . . . . . . . . A hill or small mountain
Kraal . . . . . . . . . . . . A place of meeting, headquarters
Kruger . . . . . . . . . The family name of present president of
South African Republic
Krantz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A precipice
Laager . . . . A fortified camp, but often applied to any camp,
fortified or not
Landdrost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Local governor
Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Course, channel
Modder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mud
Mooi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pretty
Nachtmal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lord's Supper
Nieuwe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New
Oom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Uncle
Pan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bed of a dried-up salt marsh
Poort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A passage between mountains
Raad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Senate
Raadsher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Senator
Raadhuis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Senate hall
Raadzael . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Parliament house
Rand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edge, margin
Rooinek . . . . . Term of contempt applied to British by Boers
Ruggens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A barren, hilly country
Schantze . . . . . . A heap of stones used to protect a marksman
against opposing rifle fire
Slim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cunning, crafty
Sluit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A ditch
Spruit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Creek
Staat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . State
Stad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A town or city
Transvaal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Across the valley
Trek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A journey
Trekken . . . . . . . . . . . . . To travel, or pull away from
Uit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Outside
Uitspan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To unharness, to stop
Uitlander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An outsider or newcomer
Vaal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Valley
Veldt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A prairie, or treeless plain
Veldtheer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The general in command
Vley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A prairie-like meadow
Volks Raad . . . . . . . . . House of commons or representatives
Voortrekkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pioneers
Vrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Housewife
Witwaterstrand . . . . . . . . . . . The edge of the White Water
Zuid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . South
The correct pronunciation of Boer words is very difficult to a speaker
of the English tongue, hence the attempt to give it in above glossary
is omitted. The language is as peculiar to South Africa as the jargon
French of lower Louisiana is to that country and even more unlike
Holland Dutch than the Creole dialect is unlike Parisian French. While
the Boer speech was primarily Dutch, it has been so modified by
isolation from the mother country for more than two centuries, and by
contact with the native African tribes, and by the influx of French,
Spanish and Maylay elements, that a native Hollander is scarcely able
to understand it, even when written, and to speak it, as the Boers do,
he finds impossible.
PART I.
OF VOL. I.
EARLY HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF
SOUTH AFRICA
BY
J. CASTELL HOPKINS
[Illustration: GENERAL SIR WILLIAM GATACRE,
GENERAL LORD KITCHENER,
THE HON. FREDERICK W. BORDEN,
Canadian Minister of Militia and Defence,
GENERAL JOUBERT
Commander-in-Chief of the Dutch Forces.
Died at Pretoria, March 27th, 1900.]
[Illustration: WILLIAM BRYANT, KINGSTON, CANADA,
and Batt. Royal Fusiliers, Imperial
Army, in South Africa.
VICTORIA CONTINGENT FOR THE TRANSVAAL,
Troops marching through Melbourne on Oct. 28th, 1899,
_Photo by Bishop, Prahran_.
MAJOR DUNCAN STUART, LONDON, ONT.,
With B Co., 1st Canadian Contingent
in South Africa]
CHAPTER I.
Early Scenes of Settlement and Struggle.
[Sidenote: The Dark Continent]
From the date of its discovery by Bartholomew Diaz, in
1486, until the first Dutch settlement by Van Riebeeck, in
1650, the Cape of Good Hope was simply a finger post on
the route to India--a convenient and temporary anchorage for
Portuguese, Dutch, English, Spanish and French
ships. And around its stormy and rock-bound
headlands had passed the richly laden ships of the
English and Dutch East India Companies for half a century
before the latter founded its pioneer establishment.
Henceforward, however, the shores of Table Bay, with its towering and
mountainous mass of granite sheltering the Castle of the Dutch
Governor and the tiny settlement of Cape Town, was to be the
scene and centre of a gradual colonization, of continuous struggle
with innumerable natives, of peculiar trade conditions and curious
governing experiences, of capture by the English and of varied
experiments in British government.
[Sidenote: The First Settlement]
The first Dutch settlement was really a station for supplying
the passing ships of the Dutch East India
Company. No idea of territorial extension was
present in the minds of those who proceeded to
erect a fort and to barter with wandering natives. They knew
nothing of the vast interior of the Dark Continent and its two
or three hundred millions of black or brown population, its
merciless wars and campaigns, its savage customs and cruelties, its
vast lakes and rivers and mountains and rolling plains. They
were equally unaware that about the time of their own establishment
in the south, under the protecting shelter of the vast square
mass of Table Mountain, a tribe of dark-skinned natives, called
the Bantu, had swarmed down upon the far
eastern coast and were preparing to overrun
from their home in Central Africa all the great
region of barren upland and rolling veldt and level Karoo plain
known now by the common name of South Africa. The tiny
settlements of the Dutch were thus unconsciously preparing
for a future in which the persistent pressure of millions of Bantu,
or Kaffirs, from the north and east upon the white colonies of the
south was to make history of a most prolonged and painful
character.
[Sidenote: The Old-Time Natives]
At first little was seen of the natives excepting members of
a degraded coast tribe whom the Colonists called Bushmen and who
lived more like animals than human beings. A little higher in the
scale were the Hottentots, who, in large numbers, formed a fringe
of wandering tribes along the whole of the southern part of the
continent. Fighting continually amongst themselves, trading
occasionally with the white men and stealing cattle wherever possible
from the gradually extending settlement, these natives proved a
source of much trouble to the pioneers.
[Sidenote: The Dutch East India Company]
Between 1652 and 1783 the European population of the Cape
increased to about twenty-five thousand persons, in comparison
with an increase of four millions in the English
population of the thirteen American Colonies
during much the same period. But conditions
were different and the character of the settlers still more so.
The Dutch East India Company ruled with despotic power,
and its regulations read like a product of romantic imagination.
Slaves were, of course, permitted and encouraged, and,
in 1754, the penalty of death was fixed for any slave raising his hand
against his master, and that of a severe flogging for any who loitered
outside the church doors during service time.
[Sidenote: How the French Huguenots were Received]
The French
Protestants, or Huguenots, who came out in 1688-90, were welcomed as
settlers, but were very soon shown that no ideas of racial equality
pervaded the Dutch mind. A schoolmaster was imported expressly
to teach the children the language of the dominant race. No
separate communities were allowed, and the French were carefully
mixed amongst the Dutch and other settlers. Requests for distinct
church organization were stigmatized as impertinent,
and the use of the language was forbidden in official
or public life. By the middle of the eighteenth century
it had entirely died. Sumptuary laws of the most extraordinary
character prevailed. Any person seeing the Governor approach had
to stop his carriage and get out of it. No one lower in rank than a
merchant could use a large umbrella, and only the wives and
daughters of those who were, or had been, members of the Council could
do so. The trade monopoly of the Company was so rigorous that
Colonists were entirely debarred from external commerce, and were
dependent upon officials for the sale and price of their products.
They had not the most elementary self-government, and at the end
of the eighteenth century did not possess a printing press. Cut off
from all literature, having nothing but the Bible and a metrical
version of the Psalms, they developed a type of character unique in
itself and productive of most serious consequences.
[Sidenote: The System of "Loan Leases"]
Nor was permanency of settlement encouraged by the Dutch
authorities. From 1705 to 1770 the Government issued what were
termed "loan leases," or licenses to occupy land in the interior for
grazing purposes upon the payment of a small rental and with a
right to re-assume possession at any time retained by the Government.
Combined with changes in the seasons and the pasturage,
and the desire to obtain better locations, this system encouraged the
formation of that peculiar characteristic called "trekking," which has
marked the pages of South African history with so
much bloodshed and trouble. It also brought the
wandering farmers, or Boers, into contact or conflict
with the wandering natives. Even the Dutch officials at Swellendam
and Stellenbosch complained at last of a plan under which the farmers
"did not scruple to wander about hither and thither several days'
journey from their loan farms;" and finally, in 1770, the system was
abolished. Meantime a region larger than the British Isles had been
taken from the Hottentots and their cattle driven away from the best
grass-land available for their use, and which had been theirs for
centuries. The natural result of cattle-stealing which ensued upon the
part of the natives was punishment by the Colonists in the form of
war; in the holding of captured children as apprentices or slaves;
and in the occasional application of torture to individual savages.
[Sidenote: Successive Racial Importations]
This matter of relations with the natives and of slavery was
complicated at an early date (1658) by the introduction of some negro
slaves from a Portuguese ship. They were brought from the coast
of Guinea and sold to the Government for rough labor in the
neighborhood of Cape Town, and also to some of the more distant
settlers. Naturally inclined, already, to utilize natives for any work of
a manual nature, this official encouragement
immediately complicated the relations between
Hottentots and Bushmen and the Dutch farmers. The
latter, having once tasted the pleasures of slave-ownership in the
midst of vast reserves of dark-skinned people, soon put the principle
into the fullest practice and application. From time to time further
consignments of slaves from other parts of Africa were introduced
by those inveterate dealers, the Portuguese, and to them were soon
added large numbers of native criminals from Malacca, Java and the
Spice Islands, who were sent by the Batavian Government to serve
out terms of punishment or slavery at the Cape. They were, of
course, more intelligent than the imported slaves from Guinea and
Mozambique, and often made excellent masons, harness-makers,
coopers and tailors; but their influence upon the moral tone of the
white community amongst whom they were placed is not hard to
estimate. From their arrival dates one of the many mixed races
with which South Africa swarms. Another class of imported Asiatics
of a higher type consisted of political offenders sent from Java
at a later date to live, with their families, upon fixed Government
allowances. They received occasional accessions up to 1781, when
the last batch came out. As a result of these successive racial
importations Cape Colony came in time to include a most singular
and varied half-breed population in which Dutch and Hottentots and
Malay and Negro were all intermixed.
[Sidenote: European Population in 1759]
In 1759, a century and a half after the Colony was established,
its population contained 9,782 Europeans, of whom
1,486 were women and 8,104 slaves. How many
natives there were it is difficult to estimate, as they
were always a very movable quantity. Up to the end of the
century this population lived and slowly increased under conditions
which absolutely precluded real progress and evolved the character
of singular stagnation which met the English conquerors in 1795.
In 1779 the Dutch settlers pleaded in vain with the Directors of the
East India Company for a limited privilege of making purchases
directly in Holland instead of through the Company's stores at Cape
Town. In vain the so-called burghers also asked for the most
elementary political rights--though even then entirely unwilling to
concede any rights to the surrounding natives. In vain they petitioned
for printed copies of the laws and regulations of the Government
and for a printing press.
They were regarded at this time by the Batavian Government
much as the Transvaal authorities regarded the Uitlanders of
another century. The Law Officer of the Cape Government, to
whom the petitions were referred in 1779 by the Home authorities,
declared that: "It would be a mere waste of words to dwell on the
remarkable distinction to be drawn between burghers whose
ancestors nobly fought for and conquered their freedom and such as are
named burghers here, who have been permitted as matter of grace
to have a residence in a land of which possession has been taken by
the Sovereign Power, there to gain a livelihood as tillers of the
earth, tailors and shoemakers."[1] At the end of the nineteenth
century the Uitlanders believed themselves to have been taxed and
treated in the Transvaal with very much similar motives and entirely
from the point of view of Dutch revenues and the strengthening of
Dutch supremacy. The Boers had been well taught this peculiar lesson
in government, and nowhere better than in another part of this same
document: "Now it is clear, and requires no lengthy argument, that
for the purpose of enabling a subordinate Colony to flourish as a
Colony it is not always expedient to apply those means which,
considered in the abstract, might be conducive to its prosperity. The
object of paramount importance in legislating for Colonies should
be the welfare of the parent state, of which such Colony is but a
subordinate part and to which it owes its existence."
[1] _Three Lectures on the Cafe of Good Hope_,
Judge Watermeyer. Cape Town, 1857.
[Sidenote: The Afrikander Dialect]
Meanwhile, to the degradation of character which came from
the possession of slaves by a people naturally narrow in view and
necessarily ignorant through their unfortunate
environment, was added the creation and cultivation
of a curious _patois_, or Afrikander dialect, which
increased their isolation and intensified the problems of the future.
The Huguenots had been compelled to learn and to speak Dutch, and
probably did not do it very well; the Boers were themselves
compelled to frequently speak the language of the natives; there was
no school system and no sifting of the culture of a higher class of
permanent residents down through the grades of other settlers;
there was no emigration of population from Holland which might
have helped to maintain the _morale_ of the language; and the result
was the evolution of a dialect which became neither Dutch nor
French, nor native, but a mixture of all three called the _Taal_. Olive
Schreiner has given the following explanation and description[2] of
this product of seventeenth century evolution amongst the Boers:
"The Dutch of Holland is as highly developed a language and as
voluminous and capable of expressing the finest scintillations of
thought as any in Europe. The vocabulary of the _Taal_ has shrunk
to a few hundred words, which have been shorn of almost all their
inflections and have been otherwise clipped.... Of the
commonest pronouns many are corrupted out of all resemblance to their
originals. Of nouns and other words of Dutch extraction most are
so clipped as to be scarcely recognizable. A few words are from
Malay and other native sources; but so sparse is the vocabulary
and so broken are its forms that it is impossible in the _Taal_ to
express a subtle emotion, an abstract conception, or a wide
generalization."
[2] _The Story of South Africa_.
By W. Basil Worsfold, M.A. London, 1898.
[Sidenote: The Batavian Republic]
In 1792 a Commission came out from Holland to investigate
the affairs and government of the now decadent and bankrupt
Company; and shortly afterwards the widespread colonial system of that
famous organization was taken over by the Home
Government of Holland, or, as it became under
French influence, the Batavian Republic. Minor
reforms were introduced at the Cape, but they were not sufficient to
meet the current conditions of corruption and stagnation, and by
1795, when Cape Town capitulated to Admiral Elphinstone and
General Craig, during one of the varied phases of the Napoleonic
wars and European combinations against England, much of the
interior Colony was in a state of rebellion, and two little republics had
been established amongst the settlers away to the north and east of
the capital. Thus ended a system of Government which the late
Judge Watermeyer, of Cape Town, has declared was "in all things
political purely despotic; in all things commercial purely
monopolistic;" and which the Historiographer to the Cape Government has
summarized in the words:[3] "It governed South Africa with a view
to its own interests, its method of paying its officials was bad, its
system of taxation was worse, in the decline of its prosperity it
tolerated many gross abuses."
[3] George M. Theal, LL. D., in "Story of the Nations' Series."
[Sidenote: Preliminary Period of British Rule]
In this way were laid the foundations of character and custom
upon which have been built the developments of the nineteenth
century in South Africa. So far, however, there had been no real
antagonism felt towards Great Britain, no apparent
reason for its creation and no direct cause for its
application. But, with the entrance of Holland into
the league against England in 1795 and the evolution of India as
an important dependency of the Island Kingdom, had come the first
real clash of English and Dutch interests in South Africa through
the capture of Cape Town. This preliminary period of British rule
in the country lasted until 1803. Everything possible was done to
conciliate the Dutch population, which in the country districts refused
at first to have anything to do with, or to in any way acknowledge,
the new Government. The people of Cape Town were treated with
generosity. Officials taking the oath of allegiance were, as a rule,
retained in their posts; the depreciated currency, amounting to a
quarter of a million pounds sterling, was accepted by the authorities
at its full nominal value; some very obnoxious taxes were abolished
and a popularly chosen Council or burgher Senate was established
in the capital. More important than all, the announcement was
made that anyone might now buy and sell as he would, deal with
whom he chose in a business way, and come and go as suited him
upon land and water. The farmers were invited to Cape Town to trade
as they might wish, and to lay any matters they desired before the
Governor. The early British administrators included Major-General
Sir J. H. Craig, the Earl of Macartney, Sir George Yonge and
Major-General Sir Francis Dundas.
[Sidenote: The New Government Unpopular]
Unfortunately, the weaknesses inherent in the British Colonial
system of that time soon manifested themselves in South Africa.
While free trade was allowed and promoted throughout the Colony,
and a great advance thus made on previous conditions it was soon
found that external trade to the East was restricted by the existing
monopoly of the British East India Company; while duties were, of
course, imposed upon goods coming from the West in any but
British ships. Even in this, however, there was an advance upon
the previous limitations under which goods could not be imported at
all by the people, even in Dutch ships. These regulations, it must
also be remembered, applied equally, under the strict navigation
laws of that time, to British Colonies in North America, including
French Canada and the West Indies, as well as to
South Africa. It was not an easy population to
govern. The Dutch farmer did not like the oath of
allegiance, although it was made as easy as possible for him to take.
The very strictness of the new Government and the absence of
corruption made it unpopular in some measure. The fact that Holland
had become a Republic, which in time percolated through the
isolation of the public mind, added to the prejudice against monarchical
government which already existed as a result of the despotism of the
Dutch East India Company. Naturally and inevitably positions under
the Government soon drifted into the hands of men who could speak
English and who possessed British sympathies. It is not difficult to
realize that the somewhat sullen character of a Cape Town
Dutchman who was always looking forward to some change in the
European kaleidoscope--of which he naturally knew more than the
farmers of the interior and therefore hoped more from--made
co-operation difficult and at times unpleasant.
[Sidenote: Kaffir Wars]
In the interior there had been one or two petty insurrections, or
rather riots, amongst the farmers, and in the last year of the century
occurred the third Kaffir war. The first had been fought in 1779
under Dutch rule, and the troublesome Kosa tribe
driven back over the Fish River which, it was hoped,
could be maintained as a permanent frontier between
the Colonists and the Kaffirs. The second was a similar but less
important struggle with the same tribe in 1789. One was now to
take place under British rule. The clans along the north bank of
the River joined in a sudden raid into the Colony in February, 1799,
took possession of a large strip of country, drove the fleeing settlers
before them, attacked and almost surprised a force of British troops
marching under General Vandeleur upon another errand to Algoa
Bay, cut off a patrol of twenty men and killed all but four. By
August, when a large body of Dutch volunteers and some British
regulars were got together, all the border country had been harried.
There was nothing else to plunder, and the Kaffirs therefore
withdrew before the advancing force, and readily accepted terms of peace
which General Dundas offered against the wish and advice of the
settlers. Three years later the war was renewed, as a result of
continued and isolated Kaffir depredations and, this time, the initial
movement was made by a Dutch commando. It was defeated, but
the Kaffirs soon became tired of a struggle in which there was no profit
to them, and a new peace was patched up. Meanwhile, in this same
year, a fresh and important element of the future was introduced into
South African life by the arrival of the first Agents of the London
Missionary Society, and in February, 1803, a temporary lull having
occurred in the European conflict, Cape Colony was restored to the
Holland Government and a Dutch garrison of 3,000 men placed at
Cape Town under the control of a Governor of high military
reputation and personal worth--Jan Willem Janssens.
[Sidenote: Restored to Holland Government]
During the next six years the Colony was governed under some
of the milder laws of its mother-land; though not always to the
liking of Dutch settlers, who objected to political
equality--even in the limited application of the the
phrase which was then in vogue--being given to
"persons of every creed who acknowledged and worshipped a
Supreme Being." To them there was only one Church as well as only
one people, and religious or political equality was as extraneous to
their ideas as racial equality. Nor would they have anything to do
with the state schools which the Batavian Government tried to
establish amongst them as being some improvement upon the few
and feeble schools connected with the churches. All useful discussion
or development of such tentative efforts at reform were checked,
however, by the renewed outbreak, in 1803, of war in Europe, and
by the appearance in Table Bay, on January 4, 1806, of a British
fleet of sixty-three ships, with 7,000 soldiers under the command of
Major-General (afterward Sir) David Baird. The troops landed on
the beach at Blueberg, defeated a very motley force of German
mercenaries, Dutch soldiers, volunteers, Malays, Hottentots and slaves
under General Janssens and marched toward Cape Town. Capitulation
followed, and, on March 6th, transports took away from South
Africa the last representative of direct Dutch rule.
[Sidenote: Again Under British Rule]
The settlers did not take kindly to the new Government, and
lived in continuous anticipation of some fresh change in the European
kaleidoscope--so far as they could, in a very vague way, follow
situation--which would once more revive the power of the Batavian
Republic through a renewed French triumph, and thus give them back
their allegiance. It was not that they had greatly
prized Dutch rule when it was theirs without the
asking; that the brief period of republican
administration had really soothed their wild ideas of liberty or
removed the dangers of Kaffir raid and native aggression; or that
they had forgotten the century and a half of oppressive government
and hurtful restriction which they had suffered from the Dutch East
India Company. It was simply the earlier form of that racial feeling
of antagonism which--unlike the sentiment of civilized peoples like
the French in Canada and the better class Hindoos, or educated
Mohammedans of India, and the wild natures of Sikhs and Ghoorkas
and kindred races in the Orient--has never given way before the
kindness and good intentions of British administration. Mistakes
were, of course, made by England, as they have been made in
Lower Canada as well as in Upper Canada, in Ireland as in India;
but the resulting dissatisfaction should not have been permanent.
However that may be, the new Government started out wisely.
Under the Earl of Caledon, a young Irish nobleman, who ruled from
1807 to 1811, the system of the first period of British administration
was revived and guided by the established Colonial principles of the
time. In the matter of representative institutions and commercial
regulations the Dutch of the conquered Colony were treated neither
better nor worse than the Loyalists of Upper Canada, the French of
Lower Canada, or white subjects in the East and West Indies. As
was really necessary in a community so cut off from European
civilization, so inert in an intellectual connection and so morosely
ignorant of constitutional freedom, Lord Caledon governed with much
strictness and even autocracy; but with boundless personal
generosity and amiability.
[Sidenote: The Fourth Kaffir War]
What is termed the fourth Kaffir war was
fought with the Kosas in 1812, and this time, under the command
of Lieut.-Colonel John Graham, the result was eminently satisfactory
to the Europeans concerned. In the preceding year
Sir John Cradock had become Governor, and he
also proved himself a man of high character. Under
his rule autocracy was again given its best form and application.
[Sidenote: Finally Ceded to Great Britain]
Meanwhile, events in Europe were tending towards the final
triumph of British arms and diplomacy and subsidies over the
tremendous military power of Napoleon. Holland, once freed from
French domination, overthrew the peculiar republican system which
Napoleon had established, and accepted, in 1813, the Prince of
Orange--who for eighteen years had been living in England in
exile--as its ruler. An agreement was at once made with him by
the British Government, and, in return for a payment of $30,000,000,
Cape Colony and some Dutch Provinces in South America were
formally and finally ceded to Great Britain by a
Convention signed at London in August, 1814. In
this way the Dutch of the Cape became British subjects.
Not through a conquest preceded, as in the case of French
Canada, by a century of continuous conflict or a rivalry which was
as keen as war, but through the medium of an almost peaceful
annexation succeeded by a friendly purchase of territory and
ratification of the annexation on the part of their Mother-land. Had
the character of the Boers not been so peculiar and exceptional,
there was consequently every ground for the hope of eventual
contentment under British rule and of assimilation with the developing
life of the Empire during the ensuing century. There was no
inherited legacy of civil war or racial hatred. The Mother-lands of
England and Holland had fought with each other, it is true, but more
often they had stood side by side in Europe for the cause of religious
and popular freedom.
[Sidenote: A Period Tending to Racial Co-operation]
And, at the Cape, during the succeeding years from 1806 to 1814,
there were few causes of real friction. The voices of the missionaries
were occasionally heard in criticism of the Dutch treatment of
natives; but the antagonism had not yet become acute. The
Courts of law and public offices under British administration were
found to be ruled by considerations of justice, and the local language
was still in use. Dutch churches increased, the clergymen were paid
by the State and six new magistracies were established.
Inter-marriages were also common amongst the various racial
elements--sometimes too much so--and everything pointed to a period of
gradually developed internal unity and racial co-operation. What
followed was regrettable, and the blame for it is very
hard to adequately and fairly apportion. Lord
Charles Somerset, who governed the Colony from
1814 to 1826, is accused of drawing far too heavy a salary--ten
thousand pounds a year--from the revenues of the country; of
having treated the Dutch rebels under Bezuidenhout with too great
severity; of having mismanaged relations with the Kaffirs on the
northern frontier; of prohibiting the Dutch language in the Courts
and official documents; and of having weakened the values of paper
money to such an extent as to ruin many of the settlers. Taken
altogether, there was enough in these charges, if true, to explain a
considerable measure of discontent; but there was hardly enough
in them to cause the absolute hatred of England and Englishmen
which had developed amongst the Dutch farmers by the end of the
first quarter of the century. As it was, many of the circumstances
mentioned have more than the traditional two sides. If the
Governor received a large salary, he certainly spent it freely in the
struggling Colony. He had an expensive establishment to maintain, and
the duties and pecuniary responsibilities of the position were much
greater in those days than they are now. He was, in himself,
practically the entire Government of the country, and without Ministers
to share either expense or duties. The Castle was the centre of a
hospitality which was in constant requisition for
visiting fleets and passing travellers of rank to, or
from, the Orient.
[Sidenote: Some of the Earliest Grievances]
Moreover, as in all the Colonies
at that time, the local revenue was largely supplemented from London,
the Army Chest was at the frequent service of the Governor, and an
expensive military establishment was maintained by the Home
authorities. The figures for this immediate period are not available;
but a little later,[4] in 1836, the local military expenditure by Great
Britain was £161,412, or over eight hundred thousand dollars.
[Sidenote: The Fifth Kaffir War]
The
Bezuidenhout matter will be considered in a succeeding chapter, and
the fifth Kaffir war, in 1818, was simply another of the inevitable
struggles between a race of pastoral farmers who openly despised and
ill-treated the natives and tribes which possessed much savage spirit,
bravery and natural aggressiveness. In any case,
Lord Charles Somerset anticipated attack by
attacking first, and turned over a page of history
which Sir Bartle Frere was destined to repeat with the Zulus many
decades after. His policy was certainly plainer and more promptly
protective to the Boers than had been the action of any preceding
Governor. Still, there was a period of surprise and frontier
devastation, and this the Dutch settlers once again resented.
[4] Montgomery Martin. _History of the Colonies
of the British Empire_. London, 1843.
[Sidenote: British Immigration Encouraged]
The prohibition of the language in official and legal matters
was a more important grievance. It arose out of the movement of
English-speaking settlers into the country after 1819, when it was
found, according to the Census of that year, that there were only
42,000 white people in the whole region. The Colonial Office and
Parliament thereupon resolved to encourage colonization, voted
$250,000 for the purpose, and, between 1820 and 1821, established
some five thousand immigrants of British birth in the Colony. Within
a few years about one-eighth of all the Colonists were
English-speaking, and it was then decided to issue the order
regarding the official use of the one language. It
was a very mild copy of the principle which the
Dutch had formerly applied to the Huguenots and which the United
States has never hesitated to apply to subject races such as the
French in Louisiana or the Spaniards and Mexicans elsewhere. It
must be remembered also that the white population of the Colony
was not at the time larger than that of a third-class English town,
and that the statesmen in question were trying to legislate for a
future population in which it was naturally supposed the English
people would constitute a large majority. The policy did not go
far enough, was not drastic enough, to effect the object in view, and
may in any case have been a mistake; but in Lower Canada, where
the opposite course was taken, the tiny French population of 1774
has developed into nearly two millions of French-speaking people
in 1899, and not a small part of the population of the present
Dominion think that a great error was made in the liberal practice
inaugurated by the Quebec Act. It is hard to satisfy everyone.
By 1828 the language arrangement was completed, so far as laws
could effect it, but without the autocratic educational regulations
which had made the Dutch treatment of the Huguenots so thorough.
The policy certainly had an irritating effect upon the Dutch settlers,
who promptly refused, as far as possible, to have anything to do
with the Government, or the Courts, or the high-class Government
schools which had been for some time established throughout the
country, and where English was, of course, the language taught.
[Sidenote: The Paper Money Policy]
The paper money matter was a more complicated affair, and one
which the ignorant settlers were naturally unable to comprehend.
The monetary system of the Colony was practically an inheritance
from the days of Dutch rule. The Company had not been very
scrupulous about the security of its paper money, and the succeeding
Batavian Government seems to have been utterly
unscrupulous. In 1807 Lord Caledon found
mercantile transactions in an almost lifeless state, and
the currency not only depreciated and contracted, but the subject of
usurious charges of all kinds. Every effort was made by him and
succeeding Governors to effect a betterment in the mass of
half-useless paper which was floating about, and, by 1825, there remained
only some three and a half million dollars' worth in nominal value,
of which one-third had been created by the British authorities in
various attempts to ease the financial situation, while the greater
part of the balance was of Dutch origin. Lord Charles Somerset
finally took the desperate, but apparently necessary, course of
cutting down the currency to three-eighths of its nominal value and
making British silver money a legal tender at that rate of exchange.
The result was the practical ruin of a number of people and the
creation of much discontent; but at the same time the measure
placed trade and commerce upon a permanent footing and laid the
basis of future monetary safety. For the time, however, it was like
the amputation of a limb in the case of an ignorant and unsatisfied
patient--producing suffering and discontent without that feeling
which a belief in the necessity of the operation and confidence in the
skill of the physician would have given.
[Sidenote: Other Grievances or Reforms]
These were some of the earlier grievances which are claimed to
have caused the evolution of Dutch feeling against the British. Others
arose between 1826 and 1836, when the Great Trek was inaugurated.
In 1828 the Courts were all remodelled upon the English plan, and
the existing Dutch system replaced by a Supreme Court, in which the
Judges were appointed by the Crown and were to be independent
of the Governor. Minor and local matters were in the hands of
Civil Commissioners and resident magistrates and justices of the
peace in the various scattered communities. The Dutch code, or
law, was to be retained, but English forms and
customs were to be observed. It is hard to see
why this rearrangement and admitted improvement
should have added so deeply to the sullen discontent of the Boers or
Dutch farmers. In being allowed the retention of their own peculiar
laws they were given more than any other country would have
granted in those days and at the same time they obtained what
French Canada was not to have for years afterwards--an
independent Judiciary. The only explanation is the fact that hatred
toward the more progressive and liberal Englishman (or
English-speaking man) was swelling strongly and surely in the Dutchman's
breast, and that every British reform or change had the effect of
deepening this sentiment. The reform in the legal system was
accompanied by changes in the municipal system of the capital.
The antiquated "burgher senate" of Cape Town was abolished, and
the Government assumed charge of the municipal and miscellaneous
duties performed by that body. The measure was beneficial on the
score of efficiency; but, of course, it produced some dissatisfaction
amongst the Dutch residents. There were also some disputes in
the interior districts as to the necessity of all jurymen understanding
English, and this was eventually settled by an ordinance issued in
1831 which defined the qualifications required but omitted any
language test. At the same time official salaries were greatly reduced
and one of the standing causes of complaint thus removed.
[Sidenote: Governor D'Urban's Policy]
In 1828 Sir Lowry Cole became Governor and made several
legislative experiments in connection with the Hottentots, which
were looked upon by the Dutch with open suspicion and dislike.
Four years later Sir Benjamin D'Urban succeeded with a policy of
extensive retrenchment in expenditures and the inauguration of
Legislative and Executive Councils after the style of other Colonial
Governments of the time. Some petitions had previously been sent
to England asking for representative institutions, but the Colonial
Office naturally shrank from giving popular power into the hands
of the evidently discontented Dutch settlers--ignorant as they were
of all constitutional principles and practices. Moreover, public
opinion in England would not then have permitted the grant of any
legislative authority which would have limited the right of the
Colonial Office, for good or ill, to manage native affairs and protect
native interests. The Council of Advice, which had previously
existed, was, however, changed into an Executive Council composed of
four high local officials, and the new Legislative Council was made
up of the Governor, as President, five of the highest
officials and five representative Colonists selected
by the Governor. But the primary and central
object of Sir Benjamin D'Urban's policy was the emancipation of the
slaves, and this touched a subject of so much importance as to
require the fullest consideration. It was from the early evolution of
peculiar and unique racial characteristics in the Dutch farmer that
the South African question has been born; but it was from the
opposing principles connected with the Dutch and English view, or
treatment, of native affairs that the first pronounced phase of that
question was produced. All other considerations were subsidiary.