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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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"
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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 181410 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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
CHAPTER II
The Dutch and the Natives.
Hottentot Character
At the commencement of British rule in Cape Colony (1806) there were in the country 26,000 persons of European descent, chiefly Dutch; 17,000 Hottentots who wandered around the outskirts of settlement and made a precarious livelihood by raising or stealing cattle; and 29,000 slaves. The Bantu had only occasionally appeared upon the visible horizon to the east and this gathering cloud was not yet a serious subject to the people or their Governors. The yellow-skinned Bushmen had retired from sight and sound of the settlers and were in any case a small and diminishing quantity. The Hottentots were in abject fear of their masters, whether as slaves "tending another's flock upon the fields" which once had been their fathers', or as wandering and homeless vagrants constituting a continuous nuisance to the scattered communities. Apart from their subjection to the Dutch, however, they were a thoughtless, cheerful, good-natured people, ignorant of everything except a little hunting and, in physique and character, were about half-way between the Bantu and the Bushmen. Like the latter they became almost extinct under the recurring attacks of small-pox and the increasing pressure of a white population on the south and the swarming masses of Bantu on the north-east.
Native Tribes
Following the conquest other native elements came into view. Under the earlier Dutch régime Malays from the East Indies had been introduced for purposes of special work and negro slaves from the west coast had been obtained in large numbers. From the union of Hottentots and Malays came a mixed race called "Cape Boys," and from the union of Dutch and Hottentots came the Griquas who afterwards filled a considerable place in local history. From the seventeenth century until the abolition of slavery, in 1834, all the hard and humble work of the community was done by slaves. The Dutch farmer lost all knowledge of menial work and acquired a conviction of personal superiority which became ingrained in his character. Upon his lonely farm he was master of what he surveyed, and even the laws had little real influence or effect upon him. Constant danger from Hottentot inroads and afterwards from the far more serious and deadly Kaffir raids had bred an independence of character which isolation and ignorance deepened into extreme racial narrowness combined with contempt for men of darker colour or alien extraction.
Grievance of the Hottentots
The plowing of ground and fence-building by the Dutch was to the natives a declaration of war upon the rights of Africans—that is, according to the natives themselves, just as the building and mining by the British in the Transvaal is held to be hostile by the Boers who have inherited Hottentot principles with their Hottentot blood. In 1659 Van Riebeck, of Cape Town, wrote to the Governor-General at Batavia that the natives had been in mischief again, that one prisoner spoke "tolerable Dutch," and "being asked why they did us this injury, he declared ... because they saw that we were breaking up the best land and grass, where their cattle were accustomed to graze, trying to establish ourselves everywhere, with houses and farms, as if we were never more to remove, but designed to take, for our permanent occupation, more and more of this Cape Country, which had belonged to them from time immemorial."
Wars with the Natives
Wars with the natives were frequent. The first one with the Hottentots occurred in 1659, and arose out of the natives finding their cattle debarred from accustomed pasture lands. It consisted chiefly in a series of cattle raids and fruitless return expeditions, but was perhaps as annoying as a more real war would have been. The Hottentot tribes could never be found when sought for by the Colonists, and no doubt this mobility on the part of their earliest enemy gave the Dutch settlers lessons from which they profited during the succeeding two hundred years. The last important struggle with this native race was in 1673, and arose out of the destruction by Dutch hunters of antelopes, elephants and other game which were very precious to the Hottentot, and were within the territories of the principal remaining tribe—the Cochoqua. During four years a sort of guerilla war was carried on with Gonnema, the Chief of the clan, and considerable loss of cattle, some loss of life and a great loss of sleep caused to the border settlers before peace was concluded. Their expeditions could never get at Gonnema, although he became eventually tired of living a hunted life in the mountains, moving from hiding-place to hiding-place to escape his pursuers. Gradually, however, the Hottentots disappeared from view, so far as any measure of organized hostility was concerned, and, like the Bushmen, became either wandering pariahs of the veldt or bondsmen in the fields of their fathers.
The Kaffir Wars
A hundred years or more after the war with Gonnema, the Dutch came into collision for the first time with the Bantu, or Kaffirs. During the preceding century this sturdy, vigorous, brave and restless race had spread itself southwest of the Zambesi in all directions, and were now beginning to press ominously upon the tiny fringe of white settlements at the Cape. Wars, already referred to, occurred in 1779 and 1789, and in each case the Dutch Governor endeavored to persuade or compel the Kosas—as this particular division of the Kaffirs was called—to accept the Fish River as the boundary line. But this they would not do with any degree of continuity, and each war was marked by raids south of the River, the capture of cattle, the burning of homes, the murder of settlers and the final driving back of the natives with hastily levied commandos of Dutch Colonists. In 1799, during the years of preliminary British rule, a similar struggle took place with very similar incidents and results. So in 1812 with the fourth Kaffir war, and in 1818 with the fifth contest. But in the two latter British troops had been employed to help the Dutch commandos, as British diplomacy had been used—not very successfully—in order to control the aggressive and quarrelsome Kosas now coming into continuous contact with the equally truculent Colonists.
Missionary Influence
Meanwhile, and during the years preceding the Kaffir war of 1835, a new factor in the general situation had developed in the form of missionary influence, chiefly of the London Missionary Society. Dr. Van der Kemp had come out in 1798 and given himself up, with the most unswerving devotion, to the establishment of a Hottentot mission in the eastern part of the settlement. With other missionaries, who joined him at a later date, he became the guardian of the hapless natives and the natural enemy of the Dutch farmers. To the latter nothing could be more obnoxious than the presence in their midst of men who not only preached to the wandering Bushmen and Hottentots, but treated them as human beings not expressly created for slavery and subjection; and who closely criticised, complained about and reported to headquarters, and finally to the Colonial Office, any arbitrary treatment by the Boers of slaves, or migratory natives, or so-called apprentices. Of course there were two sides to the case which history has developed and which is so important to any adequate conception of the Dutch farmer and his character. To him, through close devotion to the Old Testament and to the peculiarities of its chosen people wandering in the wilderness—of whom he believed his race to be in some sense a prototype—the natives were simply servants raised up by Providence for his especial benefit. They were little better than the surrounding wild animals, and a common inscription over the doors of the Dutch churches, as they slowly spread over the land, was: "Dogs and natives not admitted."
Dutch Prejudices
To the missionary this was not only incomprehensible, but cruel and wicked in the extreme. He did not understand the nature of the Boer as evolved out of conditions of frequent war with environing tribes, and from customs which included slavery, and did not tolerate equality in color, race, or religion. He could not understand a creed of the Boer type—hard, narrow, unsympathetic and essentially selfish. He felt in his own veins the broad sentiment of a sacrificial Christianity, and, in trying to lift up the degraded and light the pathway of life to the darkened eyes of the savage, he frequently failed in comprehension of the reserved, taciturn and bigoted Dutchman. Hence the rivalries which spread from individuals to districts, and were finally transfused into the general Dutch estimate of British Government, and into the relations between the Cape and the Colonial Office and between Dutch and English settlers. Ultimately the missionaries became identified with the British authorities, and Dutch prejudices were intensified by the protection thus given to the natives within their districts; whilst the wilder native tribes outside British limits grew in turn to hate the authorities for the opposite reason afforded by their protection of the Dutch settlers—or their efforts to protect them—against external raids and attack. Thus the Colonial Office, had a double difficulty and a double development on its hands.
RAILROAD NEAR LADYSMITH, VICINITY OF GENERAL WHITE'S BATTLE WITH THE BOERS
PRINCIPAL STREET OF PIETERMARITZBURG, CAPITAL OF NATAL
The Hottentots and Bushmen Within the Colony
It was, in any case, no easy matter to manage the Hottentots and Bushmen within the Colony. Up to the time of Lord Caledon's administration (1807-11) they had been allowed to run wild through the region without restraint other than their somewhat chaotic ideas of chieftainship, their innate belief in the natural superiority of any kind of a white man, and the rude justice, or injustice, of the Dutch farmer. Many of them lived as voluntary dependents of the settlers, and constituted a sort of movable slave class which associated with the permanent slaves and were treated much as they were, while retaining the nominal right to transfer their services. Children born of unions between Hottentot women and the imported slaves constituted a body of apprentices whom the farmers had the right to keep for a certain number of years, and who then became free. Practically, however, they were as much slaves as any other black children pertaining to the property. Those of the Hottentots who did not connect themselves with the farmers in any way became rovers and vagrants, who were willing to do almost anything—except steady work—for brandy and tobacco. This was the material selected by Dr. Van der Kemp and other missionaries for reclamation and protection. When the Circuit Courts were instituted in 1811 two of the best known missionaries brought a number of charges against the Boer families on the frontier, accusing them of varied acts of violence and forms of oppression in connection with their slaves and Hottentot servants. A large number of families and a thousand witnesses were involved, and great expenses were incurred by the accused whether they were found innocent or guilty. Charges of Cruelties No case of murder was proved, though several were charged. Without going minutely into the result of the charges, it seems evident from our knowledge of the Boer character as it then was, and afterwards proved to be, that cruelties were more than probable. At the same time there is every proof of the utter unreliability of native evidence in any matter involving controversies between white men, or affairs in which his own interests, or fancied interests, appear to be at stake.
The Rev. Dr. Philip
In 1818 Dr. Robert Moffat commenced his long sojourn in South Africa by going out to the far north in what is now Bechuanaland. Two years later one of the most curious figures in Colonial history, the Rev. Dr. Philip, reached Cape Town and took charge of the London Society's Missions. He found the missionaries hampered at every point by Dutch dislike, and under some suspicion also from the Government of the Colony. The latter knew enough of the situation to feel that, beneficent as it was to spread the lessons of Christianity, it was also dangerous to inculcate the principle of absolute racial equality in a mixed population such as that of the Cape. To preach the new dispensation of freedom and equality alike to the haughty Boer and to Malay, slave, and Hottentot, was in perfect harmony with religious enthusiasm and with the growing principles of English conviction; but it was not always politic. The abolition of slavery idea, however, was carrying everything before it at home, and Dr. Philip came out with a feeling in his breast which Thomas Pringle, the South African poet, and afterwards Secretary of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery, so well embodied about this time in the following lines:
"I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing veins,
Still to oppose and thwart with heart and hand
Thy brutalizing sway—till Afric's chains
Are burst, and freedom rules the rescued land—
Trampling oppression and his iron rod."
The Narrow Views of the Dutch
He found the Dutch rigidly opposed to him at every point. The great agencies of civilization in such a country as the Cape then was were the magistrates, the missionaries, the schoolmasters and the traders. But the Boer wanted none of them in the full English sense. He accepted the appointment of magistrates, or lauddrosts, but he desired them to be Dutch and to dispense Dutch law. Any religious element outside of the Dutch Reformed Church—which had become the embodiment of his own narrow views and prejudices—was alien and antagonistic, even without missionary interference amongst the natives. Schoolmasters were only good so far as they taught in accord with his crude and very limited ideas of education; while traders were obnoxious as introducing new and disquieting conditions into the loneliness of the veldt and into his relations with the dark-skinned population. Dr. Philip, however, had a plan to work out, and he proceeded with ability and determination to the end. He established himself at Cape Town, and used an influence which came from the strong feeling known to exist in England against slavery and in favor of sympathetic treatment of colored races, to bring about continuous modification in the relations of master and slave. Sometimes he was right and sometimes wrong, but in every case the Government was between two horns of a dilemma—the Colonial Office at home and the Dutch settlers at the Cape. The latter objected to every change in law or regulation; and every interference, no matter how slight, with their living chattels produced one more ember of smouldering hatred. But, in the fourteen years from the time of his arrival until slavery was abolished, Dr. Philip usually carried his point, and by 1834 had the conditions of servitude so moderated that the Abolition Act itself made substantially little difference to the slave.
The Incident of Slaghter's Nek
The history of this period and of the entire relationship of English and Dutch toward each other and toward the natives is the record of a high civilization and wide code of liberty—though with many admitted weaknesses and errors of judgment—coming into contact, and inevitable conflict, with a wild and crude system of life and an intensely ignorant and isolated people. The famous incident of Slaghter's Nek illustrates this fact most thoroughly. In 1814 a Hottentot apprentice, named Booy, complained to the Cradock magistrate that his master, Frederick Bezuidenhout, refused to allow him to leave his service or to remove his few belongings. Instructions were given to investigate the case and it was found that the man's time of service had expired, as he claimed, and that under the law of the Colony he was, and should be, at liberty to leave his master. Bezuidenhout refused, however, to obey the order issued for the man's release, although admitting the facts to be as stated; declared that such interference between him and his Hottentot was a presumptuous invasion of his rights; and defied the authorities by beating the man and sending him with a message to the magistrate that he would treat him in the same manner if he dared to come upon his grounds to touch the property or person of a native. He treated a summons to appear before the District Court and then before the High Court of Justice with equal contempt; and when a small force was sent to bring him under subjection to the law, he retired to a cave, well supplied with food and ammunition, and fired upon his assailants until he was himself shot dead.
A Small Rebellion
The matter would not have been important, except as illustrating the contempt for law and still greater contempt for the natives which had developed amongst the farmers, had it not been for what followed. The brothers and immediate friends of Bezuidenhout attended his funeral and hatched a small rebellion, in which about fifty men joined—the object being an attack upon the Hottentots of the neighborhood. Loyal Boers of the vicinity joined the forces which were at once sent down to suppress the trouble, and all the rebels were captured, with the exception of Jan Bezuidenhout, who refused to surrender and was shot dead. Thirty-nine prisoners were tried by the High Court and six were sentenced to death. Lord Charles Somerset, after a careful investigation of the whole matter, would only mitigate one of the sentences, and five men were therefore hanged for this wild and almost incomprehensible folly.
Consequences of Slaghter's Nek
From the standpoint of to-day the action of the Government seems harsh, and to the Boers the Slaghter's Nek incident is a vivid and continuously quoted illustration of British tyranny and bloodthirstiness. To men on the spot and comprehending the widespread nature of Bezuidenhout's contempt for British power and law and native rights, a lesson may well have appeared necessary and present sternness better than future and more general disregard of law and order. The fact is, that presumption born of mingled ignorance and pride was even then becoming so ingrained in the nature of the Boer as to have rendered some such incident inevitable. And, although the summary policy pursued planted seeds of bitterness which time has failed to eradicate, it certainly averted serious insurrectionary trouble through all the subsequent changes in the law affecting masters and their slaves, or servants, up to the days of the Great Trek.
Continuous Conflict with Surrounding Natives
While the Dutch settlers were thus cultivating in their silent and morose manner the most intense feelings against England and the English because of the policy of amelioration in the condition of colored races—the making of fresh slaves had been forbidden by law in 1808—the British Government and the Colonial authorities were being dragged into continuous conflict, or controversy, with surrounding natives on behalf of, and in defence of, the Dutch Colonists. The latter were absolutely remorseless in their treatment of bordering tribes. Of course they had suffered from raids and were in fear of future raids, but this was hardly a sufficient reason for urging and obtaining in 1811 the forcible expulsion of all the Kaffirs from within the border, and the driving of some twenty thousand men, women and children across the Great Fish River. And this in spite of most pathetic appeals to the Dutch commando, as in the following case: "We are your friends. We have watched your cattle when they were taken away by our countrymen. Our wives have cultivated your gardens. Our children and yours speak the same language."[[1]] Little wonder that during this and succeeding years many natives hated the English, who had permitted this policy, almost as much as they did the Dutch who had perpetrated it. The fourth Kaffir war had naturally followed, and the fifth had come in 1818 as the result of a British attempt to hold the border intact by endorsing a powerful native chief, without available means to take up the note by force when the chief came under the subjugation of a rival stronger and abler than himself. The Kaffir War of 1835 In 1835 occurred the most important of these wars with the Kosas, or Kaffirs—not so much because of its actual events as of the movement amongst the Dutch which it accelerated. The war was interesting, also, apart from the destruction of Boer property and the loss of life which followed. It illustrated those evils of vacillating administration which have caused so much trouble throughout the modern history of South Africa. Lord Charles Somerset's first policy toward the Kosas had been the maintenance of a vacant strip of territory between the Great Fish and the Keiskama Rivers as a sort of buffer against Boer aggression and native raids. His second plan had been the creation of a buffer native state—a sort of early and shadowy edition of the Afghanistan of a later day. The one had failed because of the lack of coherent action or system amongst the native tribes; the second because of their rivalries and the fact of one chief being paramount to-day and another to-morrow. And, in both cases, the Governor lacked money to persuade the recalcitrant, or men to enforce his decisions.
[[1]] Parliamentary Papers relative to the Cape, 1835, Part I., p. 176
A New Line of Action
Dr. Philip and his party agreed with a portion of this policy. Living five hundred miles from the disturbed frontier; knowing much of the mildness and docility of the Hottentot character, and little of the fiercer and wilder spirit of the Kosa; surrounded by many evidences of Dutch cruelty to the domestic or vagrant colored man, and therefore not disposed to sympathize with the Colonists' real difficulties and sufferings on the border; Dr. Philip supported with ability and earnestness a policy of frontier conciliation instead of coercion. After the conflict of 1835 was over Sir Benjamin D'Urban inaugurated a new line of action. The pressure of the wasting wars of Tshaka and Moselkatze had driven various tribes or remnants of tribes from the north and east down upon the Kosas and into the vicinity of Cape Colony. The Governor therefore took some eighteen thousand Fingoes—as one of these mixed masses of fighting fugitives was called—and established them between the Great Fish and Keiskama Rivers as a new form of the old "buffer" scheme. They and the Kosas hated each other, and he believed that the former would prove a strong British influence upon the frontier. Between the Keiskama and the Keir further to the eastward, certain Kosa clans were proclaimed British subjects, the territory was named the Province of Queen Adelaide, and troops were located at a spot called King Williamstown. But the war had been a bitter one, the natives had been punished for an unprovoked aggression by a somewhat harsh desolation of their country, and the missionary influence at Cape Town saw and seized its opportunity.
Formation of States Ruled by Native Chiefs
Their plan was the formation of states ruled by native chiefs under the guidance and control of missionaries, and from which Europeans not favored by, or favorable to the latter, were to be excluded. It was a very idyllic proposal, and was, of course, based upon an entirely wrong conception of the native character and of the necessity of strong, if not drastic, measures being employed to protect the Colony from the Bantu masses, which were now pressing upon the border tribes in all directions. Dr. Philip Visits London To press these views, however, Dr. Philip visited London with a carefully trained Kosa and a half-breed Hottentot as examples of the wild and gallant races of the east and north, and testified at great length before a Committee of the House of Commons. He was also supported by the evidence of Captain Andries Stockenstrom, a retired Colonial official. The net result of his mission, combined with the English sympathy for colored races which was then at its highest point of expression, and the hardships of the native war just ended, was a victory for the missionary party; a despatch of unmitigated censure from Lord Glenelg, the new Secretary for the Colonies, to the Governor; the public reversal of the latter's policy with the statement that "it rested upon a war in which the original justice was on the side of the conquered, not of the victorious party;" and the still more extraordinary assertion that the Kosas "had a perfect right to endeavor to extort by force that redress which they could not expect otherwise to obtain." British sovereignty was withdrawn from the region beyond the Keiskama, Sir Benjamin D'Urban was recalled, Captain Stockenstrom was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Eastern Cape Colony and shortly afterwards created a baronet, and the whole Colony was thrown into a state of violent commotion.
Sir George Napier's Declaration
Looking back now and placing oneself in the position of a British Minister pledged by duty to protect British subjects, and by the most ordinary rules of policy bound not to encourage or approve the proceedings of an enemy, there appears to be no adequate practical excuse for this line of action. Sir George Napier, who succeeded to the Governorship and went out to carry Lord Glenelg's policy into effect, declared some years afterwards in examination before the House of Commons that: "My own experience and what I saw with my own eyes have confirmed me that I was wrong and Sir Benjamin D'Urban perfectly right." No matter how reckless the Dutch settlers may have been regarding the border natives, there was no justification in policy for such an insensate and ill-timed defence of native invasion. From the standpoint of sentimentality, however, Lord Glenelg had much support in Great Britain as well as amongst the missionaries at the Cape; and there was much of the theoretically beautiful and Christian-like in his conception of the situation. But from the practical point of view of a statesman dealing with diverse races and absolutely different ideals, and responsible, in the first place, for the guardianship of the subjects of the Crown as against irresponsible tribal attacks, the theories and opinions of religious enthusiasts afford poor foundation for such a policy.
Noble Ideals of the British Authorities
At the same time, no one can take the two principles of Government exhibited in the respective incidents of Slaghter's Nek and the results of the sixth Kaffir war without paying an involuntary tribute of admiration to the noble ideal of the British authorities; apart from questions of practical statecraft or wise administration. The Dutch Colonists' principle was the enslavement of the Hottentot; the subjugation of the Kosa within British territory so long as his retention in servitude was safe; the driving of him out of the Colony with ruthless severity when his numbers became considerable; the carrying of fire and slaughter into native regions when war broke out. The policy of succeeding British Governors seems to have been an attempt at compromising between the views of a local missionary party which could see no gleam of good in the Dutch character and the feeling of the latter that all natives were created for the special footstool of a chosen people. The British public, while knowing little of the Dutch farmers beyond their belief in slavery felt very strongly the duty of Great Britain as a guardian of inferior races, and was willing to go so far in defence of an ideal of freedom as to tacitly approve—without probably fully understanding—the extreme development of this policy in the action of Lord Glenelg. The latter was philanthropic, it was Christian-like in a high and cosmopolitan sense, but it was also injurious to the interests of British and Dutch settlers and to the welfare and peace of the Empire. Had a large force of British troops been kept in the Colony to enforce British theories of liberty and high-minded justice, as between natives who knew nothing and could comprehend nothing of either and Boers who would sooner starve than accept the principles thus propounded, the ideal might in the end have been put into praiseworthy practice. As it was the policy of Lord Glenelg helped to promote the Great Trek and to lay the foundation in a territorial sense of that South African question which in its racial connection had now been developing for a couple of centuries.
CHAPTER III
The Great Trek and its First Results.
Abolition of Slavery
The abolition of slavery is one of the landmarks in South African history. The motive for the expenditure of a hundred million of dollars in freeing slaves within the bounds of the British Empire was noble beyond all criticism. The act itself was wise and necessary. But the immense distance of the British Government from the scene in South Africa and the unfortunate ignorance of the Colonial Office, at times, concerning conditions in those far-away regions, produced mistakes in the carrying out of their policy of freedom which created a distinct injustice and made memories which still rankle in the breasts of Dutchmen from the Cape to the Zambesi. The Slave Emancipation Act came into force in Cape Colony on December 1st, 1833, and by the terms of its administration $6,235,000 was apportioned to the Cape proprietors, as against the $15,000,000 at which they had valued their property. The difference was considerable and, as many of the slaves were mortgaged it is apparent that some measure of trouble must have followed even had the whole six million dollars been promptly distributed amongst the farmers. As it was, the period of seven years' apprenticeship originally granted in order to prepare all parties for the inevitable change of condition was shortened to five years, while the money itself was doled out from London after individual proof of claim. The result, through a natural and complete ignorance of procedure amongst the farmers, was the wholesale disposal of claims against the Government for mere trifles and the enrichment of hordes of agents at the expense of the settlers.
A Disastrous Measure
To many this meant ruin. Their source of labour was gone; they could not, or would not, themselves perform manual work; their discontent with the British Government was intensified by a bitter feeling that the missionaries were their sworn enemies and were installed at the ear of the Governor and in the heart of the Colonial Office; their belief in British power was at a minimum owing to weakness in dealing with the Kaffirs; their homes had been harried along the border during many Kaffir wars and sometimes in days of peace; their pleas for a vagrancy law which should restrain wandering Kaffirs or Hottentots while within the Colony had been refused from fear of harshness in its local administration; their whole social system, religious sentiment and racial pride seemed in a state of revolt against existing conditions. At this unfortunate moment another Kaffir war broke out. There had been warning signs of danger along the eastern frontier of the Province, much alarm had been felt and expressed and appeals were sent to Cape Town for protection. Dr. Philip, the political missionary and self-constituted defender of all natives, declared these fears unwarranted, and Sir Benjamin D'Urban, who had just come out as Governor, failed to take any serious measures for defence. The result was that on December 23rd, 1834, 10,000 Kaffirs swept over the frontier, plundered the farms, murdered fifty Europeans within a week and, before the Colony was cleared of them, had wholly, or partially destroyed 806 farm-houses and captured, or destroyed sixty wagons, 5700 horses, 111,000 horned-cattle and 161,000 sheep. This was the final blow to thousands of Dutch settlers. Had they been naturally loyal to British institutions and allegiance, their repeated misfortunes must have produced some discontent, and, as it was, they were said to create an absolutely impossible situation. The Trek Commences Disregarded by their own slaves, whom they despised and often ill-treated; pillaged by the native tribes, whom they hated with a bitter hatred and oppressed wherever possible; governed by the English, whom they had learned to dislike intensely and to in some measure despise; controlled by rules of administration which they failed to understand and by laws of liberty which aimed at their individual right of control over human chattels, while striving to permeate by education the dense mass of their inherited ignorance; they prepared their caravan-covered wagons, gathered together their household possessions and flocks and herds, and withdrew in thousands from the Colony, and, as they hoped, from British rule.
Qualities and Mode of Life
Such is a brief pen-picture of the immediate and surface causes of the Great Trek. It gives the most favorable view for the emigrant farmer, and constitutes, in various forms, the basis for the belief in foreign countries that the Boers were forced to migrate from Cape Colony by British tyranny or maladministration; that they deserved their independence if ever a people did; and that Great Britain had no right to interfere further with them in the interior. Such an opinion is far from correct. As we have seen in preceding pages, the British Government had made sundry serious mistakes in policy; but they had occurred under conditions of exceptional difficulty and from motives of the highest and best. The Boers, in fact, did not want firm government or free institutions; they desired liberty to do as they liked with their own living chattels and with the natives of the soil. They deliberately cultivated modes of life and thought diametrically opposed to everything the Englishman holds dear, and carefully fanned the smouldering embers of dislike and distrust in their own breasts until they became a flame of active hatred. The development of conditions, therefore, which in Canada or Australia would have produced protests and elicited eventual and satisfactory reforms only served, in South Africa, to intensify individual bitterness, to increase the racial misunderstandings and prejudices, and to hasten the great migration into the interior.
There are some important details to consider in this connection. Many of England's troubles in administering the eastern part of the Colony were due to Boer arrogance and contempt of native rights and property; while the wars which resulted in the destruction of Dutch property, in turn, were natural though regrettable ebullitions of that spirit of revenge which is not always confined to savages. Unwise as Lord Glenelg's despatch to Sir Benjamin D'Urban was, its terms clearly prove this fact. As to the Trek itself, there is a possibility that it would have occurred in any case. The Boers were accustomed to a wandering life in wagons, and, in time, their laagers must inevitably have extended further and further into native territory. The loss of their slaves would have naturally driven parties of the more enterprising and youthful into the vast interior, and the spirit with which they slaughtered natives as readily and as cheerfully as they did wild beasts would have surely established Dutch communities to the north and east without the provocations afforded by missionary charges of cruelty, the Slaghter's Nek incident, the freeing of the slaves, or native raids of retribution across the frontier. The pity of it is that the feeling of hatred toward England and Englishmen was so early in its origin and so deep-seated in its nature that some of these occurrences, which superficial writers give as the undoubted cause of the sentiment, were in reality more like the froth and foam upon the top of a slow-gathering wave of sullen and stubborn resentment against a superior racial civilization.
Troubles with the Natives
The Boers who migrated were chiefly those of the eastern part of the Colony, far away from the seat of Government and almost entirely isolated from communication with English settlers—largely by their own desire. They were accustomed to fighting the natives, and had the authorities allowed them at pleasure to throw off their allegiance and move into the interior in detached bodies, there would have been no end to complications with the native tribes, while a prolonged series of little wars in partial defence of men who were alien in race and thought and policy would have resulted. At this period, too, England still maintained throughout the world the principle that he who is born a British subject is always one, and in South Africa, up to 1836, it was really good policy to prevent isolated Dutch settlements in the native regions. When the migration became too large and too well organized to prevent, later developments made it still necessary to press this claim of allegiance in order to try and control, or check, the new régime of strife and bloodshed which the Boer commandos had established and which threatened both British interests and settlers in Natal. There was much of the picturesque and something of the apparently heroic in this famous migration. Out of Egypt and from the bondage of the Englishmen—who would not let them retain their bondsmen—the Boers went to the number of at least ten thousand, and traversed the vast wilderness stretching through what is now Griqualand East into the Natal of to-day; or else trekked into the regions north of the Orange and Vaal Rivers. The interest and striking features of the migration were undoubted, but the heroism was not at first so clear. As events turned out there was much of danger and death in these determined raids into native territory—conquered and partially cleared of population by the wars of Moselkatze and Tshaka—but at first the contempt of the Boers for all savages, their absolute belief in themselves as a chosen people and in their shotguns as invincible allies, made the movement an apparently simple matter.
Preparations and First Party of Trekkers
In 1836 the Great Trek began. All through the frontier districts sounded the hum of preparation, while the still primitive roads became crowded with large wagons laden with household goods, provisions, ammunition and the families of the men who rode on either side or guarded the droves of cattle and horses and the flocks of sheep and goats which accompanied each caravan. The parties travelling together were usually made up of related families, and were led by one of themselves duly elected to the post and to the title of Commandant. The first party to start was divided into two sections of about fifty individuals each. One section met the not uncommon fate of over-confident invaders in a land of savages, and its members were destroyed with the exception of two children. The other went away up to the north and east, and only a few finally reached the Portuguese settlement at Delagoa Bay alive. Fever and the Tsetse fly had been too much for the expedition. The Second Party The second party was a large one under command of an able leader—Hendrik Potgieter. Slowly and carefully he guided his people up to an extensive strip of land lying between the Vet and Vaal Rivers, and of this they took possession. It was not long, however, before Moselkatze, the potent Chief of the Matabele, heard of this invasion of his sphere, and some isolated parties of the farmers were killed by his warriors. Then came the news that a grand attack was to be made and the settlement wiped out. Potgieter at once selected a suitable elevation, made a strong defence with wagons and trees, and with forty men awaited the attack. The result of fierce onslaughts upon such a position by the naked bodies and brandishing spears of a Matabele army was what might have been expected, and 155 corpses of the enemy were finally left outside the laager.
BRITISH COURIER CARRYING THE NEWS OF THE BEGINNING OF WAR TO THE ENGLISH SETTLERS
INSPECTION BY THE COMMANDANT OF THE ASSEMBLED "COMMANDO" IN THE MARKET PLACE OF A DORP.
BEGINNING OF THE WAR-BOERS LEAVING PRETORIA FOR THE FRONT.
The Third Contingent
Relief came to the party from a third contingent of emigrants under Gerrit Maritz, who soon after joined forces with them, and then the Boers with their characteristic and inborn contempt for the natives organized an expedition of one hundred and seven farmers to attack the nearest kraal of the Chief whose name was a household word of terror amongst alien tribes and a force for unity and fighting power amongst his own people. The commando surprised a large kraal from which both Moselkatze and his Induna happened to be absent, slew at least four hundred warriors, fired the village and returned to camp with nearly seven thousand cattle as trophies of victory. The emigrants then established themselves at a place on the Vet River, which they called Wynburg, and here they were soon joined by other families from Cape Colony, and, notably, by one band with Pieter Retief at its head. The latter was elected Commandant-General, and a skeleton of a constitution, after the Dutch plan, was framed. Instinct, however, with the roving spirit of their people, many of the continually arriving bands would not settle down even at this spot, and hankered after the lowlands and sea-coast of Natal. Pieter Uys, one of the leaders, had visited this region a couple of years before, and was eloquent in praise of its beauty, fertility and delightful climate. The fact that Natal had been partially colonized as early as 1825 by Englishmen, under arrangements with Tshaka; that it was claimed as a British possession, and that, in 1835, the settlers at Durban had petitioned the Imperial Government to take them formally under its protection; does not seem to have greatly concerned the Boers. The only point in question was how Dingaan, who had succeeded Tshaka as head of the Zulus, could be persuaded or coerced into a cession of territory outside the immediate sphere of British settlement on the coast. How they Obtained Land To this end Retief himself crossed the Drakensberg mountains, paid a visit to Dingaan in what is now Zululand, and found him apparently quite willing that the farmers should settle in Natal. Meantime a second Dutch expedition against the Matabele in the west had been organized, and the result, as told by Dr. Theal, the Cape Town historian,[[1]] is so typical of Boer methods and character in warfare that no apology is needed for its reproduction here:
[[1]] The Story of South Africa. By George M. Theal, LL.D. London, 1895.
Ruthless Warfare
"It consisted of one hundred and thirty-five farmers in two divisions, under Hendrik Potgieter and Pieter Uys. Moselkatze was found on the Marikwa, about fifty miles north of Mosega, and he had with him at least twelve thousand warriors, all splendidly trained and as brave as any troops who ever lived. But the advantage of the farmers in their guns and horses was so great that the hundred and thirty-five did not hesitate to attack a force which was to theirs as ninety to one. For nine days the Matabele tried to reach their opponents, but all their efforts were in vain. The farmers were more than once nearly surrounded; still their plans were so perfect that they were never quite entrapped. They had little else but dried meat to live upon, and they had no resting-place but the bare ground with a saddle for a pillow. Only the hardiest of men and horses could have carried on aggressive operations so long. The loss of the Matabele was great, so great that at the end of the nine days Moselkatze gave up the contest and sought only to escape. With his people and his cattle he fled to the north, and in the country beyond the Limpopo commenced to destroy the Mashona tribes as he had destroyed the southern Betshuana. The farmers were too wearied to follow him, and indeed they could not have continued in the field much longer under any circumstances, so they contented themselves by seizing six or seven thousand head of cattle, with which they returned to Wynburg."
Subjugation of Matabele
There seems to have been no particular reason for the expedition except the driving of the Matabele out of a region which the Boers wanted and the making of their own position more secure. It is probable that negotiation would have answered the purpose, as Moselkatze was more amenable to reason than other native potentates had proved to be, and was to some slight extent under the influence of Dr. Moffat. But the emigrant farmers wanted territory, and despised the native owners too much to care about taking time and trouble for its acquisition. Better a bold assault, a speedy and successful slaughter of the enemy, than an ordinary and peaceful but prolonged settlement. The immediate result of this raid was a proclamation issued by Commandant Potgieter in which he declared territory now including the greater part of the Transvaal, a half of the Orange Free State, and the whole of northern Bechuanaland, to belong to the emigrant farmers. Pieter Retief Not satisfied with this immense acquisition, or annexation of territory, Retief, in the succeeding year (1838) led a large party of Boers over the Drakensberg, and went on himself with about seventy men to Dingaan's capital—Umkungunhlovu, where he claimed the formal cession of that part of Natal which had been previously promised him. The Zulu Chief expressed his approval of the deed which had been drawn up, affixed his mark to it, and then invited the visitors into his own private part of the kraal. Unsuspiciously leaving their guns behind them, the entire party seated themselves, and were then seized, bound and slaughtered by surrounding guards. Immediately afterwards ten thousand Zulus left the kraal, and after a march of eleven days fell upon the nearest Boer encampment at a place since called Weenen, and destroyed men, women, children and slaves. The horrors of that massacre have never been forgotten or forgiven by the Dutch. Had not one young man, sleeping at a distance from the camp, awakened in time to save himself on a swift horse, every Dutch emigrant in Natal must have suffered the same fate. As it was, he succeeded in warning the other scattered parties in time for them to form their simple laagers and to shoot down the attacking Zulus until surrounded, literally, by heaps of dead savages.
War with the Zulus
Immediately upon hearing of the disaster Potgieter and Uys collected every available fighting man and crossed the mountains to the relief of their comrades. The Englishmen of Port Natal, or Durban, also offered their assistance. Finally, a force of 347 Boers rode straight for the Zulu capital, intent only on vengeance. After five days' journey they were, however, drawn into an ambush and lost ten men, including Commandant Uys, and much ammunition and baggage. About the same time seventeen Englishmen, leading fifteen hundred friendly natives, of whom some four hundred were armed with muskets, started out to help the Dutch. A little south of the Tugela River they came upon a Zulu regiment, and were in turn drawn into an ambush on April 17, 1838, which resulted in one of the bloodiest battles ever fought in that region of almost continuous conflict. The little force found itself between the wings of a Zulu army numbering at least 7,000 men and with thousands more coming in during the battle. Three times the Englishmen and their little force beat back the enemy. One division, with four white men and four hundred blacks, did fight its way down the steep bank of the Tugela and across the river. The other division, after battling for hours with the serried masses of savage warriors, was finally overpowered and slaughtered. Natal Overrun by Native Soldiers Natal was now overrun by Dingaan's soldiers, and the remaining Boer families were gathered together in fortified camps, which the Zulu armies could not carry by storm.
Pretorius in Command
In November, 1838, however, a change came over the scene. Andries Pretorius, a Boer leader of great natural skill and characteristic self-confidence, arrived in Natal, was elected to the command of the scattered forces, and speedily succeeded in getting together a compact and mobile little army of 464 men. With prayers and psalms the men rode straight for the place where they expected to find the enemy. Every precaution against surprise or ambush was taken, and wherever they camped they were surrounded with a circle of wagons lashed together; while scouts were maintained continuously in all directions. A vow was made that if victory came to the little troop they would build a church and set apart a yearly thanksgiving day in commemoration. On the 16th of December, Dingaan's army of ten or twelve thousand men attacked their camp on the margin of a stream which has ever since been called Blood River, and for two hours the brave Zulu warriors faced the storm of bullets from that deadly laager. It was useless, however. The guns and artillery of the invaders killed over three thousand of the enemy before they finally broke and fled. Pretorius followed them to the Zulu capital, which Dingaan meantime set on fire, and then tried without success to capture the Zulu Chief, who had fled with some thousands of men to a part of the country where cavalry could not operate. Finally, the commando returned to Natal with some 5,000 head of cattle and the loss of six white men in the entire campaign. Dingaan also returned and rebuilt his capital, while the Dutch founded Pietermatitzburg, erected a church in memory of their victory, and commenced the annual celebration of Dingaan's Day which is still maintained.
Durban Re-occupied by the British
Meanwhile Durban had been re-occupied by a small British force in accordance with a proclamation issued by Sir George Napier, Governor of Cape Colony, and dated November 14, 1838, which declared that it was intended "to put an end to the unwarranted occupation of the territories belonging to the natives by certain emigrants from Cape Colony, being subjects of Her Majesty." No definite interference was effected, however, and a year later the troops were withdrawn in one of the multiform mutations of Colonial Office policy; though Sir George Napier absolutely refused to recognize any right of control over the country by the Boers, and declared in January, 1841, that "Her Majesty could not acknowledge the independence of her own subjects." Despite this Pretorius acted as if he were the head of a free and all-powerful community, and with a degree of autocratic contempt for other races and peoples which was very characteristic. Dingaan, during the year succeeding the battle on the banks of the Blood River, remained passive, and does not appear to have had any aggressive intentions. Invasion of Zululand In September, 1839, however, the Boers made common cause with a local rebellion raised by his brother Panda, joined the latter in January, 1840, with four hundred men under Pretorius, invaded Zululand and defeated Dingaan with great slaughter. The latter fled to the Delagoa Bay region, and was shortly afterwards murdered, being replaced by Panda as "King of the Zulus" under the terms of a curious proclamation signed by the Boer leader as "Commandant-General of the Right Worshipful Volksraad of the South African Society," and in which he claimed for the farmers the whole of Natal by right of conquest. During this campaign against Dingaan—from which the Dutch farmers received a booty of 40,000 head of cattle—an event occurred for which there is no adequate excuse, and which illustrates the unscrupulous nature of Boer warfare. Dingaan, at one stage of the invasion, tried to come to terms with his enemy, and sent an officer named Tambusa to negotiate for peace. Contrary to all the rules of war, savage or civilized, Pretorius had the envoy arrested, tried by court-martial for an alleged but unproven share in the Umkungunhlovu massacre, and executed.
Republic of Natalia Established
What was called by the Boers the Republic of Natalia, stretching from the Umzimvubu to the Tugela and including a claim to much of modern Zululand, was thus established. The first act of its Government, toward the close of 1840, was to attack a chief named N'Capai, living two hundred miles from the territory of the alleged Republic, and not far from the border of Cape Colony. Without apparent rhyme or reason, the men were slaughtered, their cattle captured, and seventeen young children carried away into slavery. This at last aroused the Colonial Government, and, in turn, the Home authorities. Sir George Napier promptly sent some soldiers into the region to watch events and prevent further aggression upon the natives, announced his intention to resume the military occupation of Natal, and at the same time appealed to the Colonial Office for further aid and instructions. Ultimately it was decided to occupy Natal permanently. But before this was done there had to be some fighting with the irrepressible farmers. A small British force had been sent to defend Durban, but before it reached that place was surprised and almost surrounded by a number of Boers. After fighting for some time the British retired, losing their guns and oxen and some nineteen men. Captain Smith found a new position, strengthened it, and stood a siege at the hands of Pretorius and his six hundred men, until he was relieved on June 25, 1842, by troops from Cape Town, who came to his rescue by sea.
Further Developments
The further developments of the situation were peaceful. Lord Stanley, then Colonial Secretary, wrote a despatch on December 13, 1842, appointing Mr. Cloete as British Commissioner at Durban, and laying down definite and important rules in a new system of administration for the country. Under these instructions the white people were to be called together and given every opportunity for stating the nature of the institutions they desired, although full legislative power was not yet to be granted. "I think it probable," said Lord Stanley, "looking to the nature of the population, that they will desire those institutions to be founded on the Dutch rather than on the English model, and however little some of those institutions may be suited to a more advanced state of civilization, it is the desire of Her Majesty's Government that, in this respect, the contentment of the emigrants, rather than the abstract merits of the institutions, should guide our decision." There were, of course, to be certain limitations in this connection. No distinction or disqualification founded on "color, origin, language or creed," was to be recognized. No "aggression upon natives beyond the Colony" was to be tolerated or sanctioned. Slavery in any shape or form was to be "absolutely unlawful." But the Boers were incorrigible. They would not meet with the British Commissioner or fairly discuss his terms. They would not accept the principle of racial and religious equality under any condition of affairs. They would not accept any restriction upon their right to take whatever territory they liked from the natives outside of Natal and at any time they might feel disposed. They would not endure the principle of negro freedom in this new region any more than in the older Colony at the Cape. Apart from these basic principles of government, practical details also galled them. The establishment of a Land Court to limit and define the possessions of settlers and to give legal rights of ownership to the natives, was especially objectionable, and, by 1847, most of the emigrant farmers had again trekked away to the Orange Free State and the country beyond the Vaal.
British Principles of Government
There seems to have been no valid reason for this movement. The British Government, outside of certain fundamental principles of morality and administration, desired to give the farmers every possible latitude. It had no wish for territorial expansion, and would never have interfered at all if the aggressive policy of the Boers meeting the wild instincts of the Bantu, or Zulus, half-way, had not drenched the region with blood. But the deterioration of the Boer character, or rather the expression of that character in a sphere where it was practically uncontrolled, had assumed a form in which the possession of large tracts of land and the compulsory service of natives appeared as absolute essentials of life, which they had the right to take by force—in the same way as Moselkatze and Tshaka had done previously and with apparently no higher motives than those which had actuated savage chiefs at war with weaker tribes. Moreover, they had failed signally in this first effort at self-government, and the rivalry of leaders like Hendrick Potgieter, Gerrit Maritz and Andries Pretorius had not only helped to prevent the establishment of any form of administration amongst the people capable of levying taxes and compelling obedience to the state, but had made constant raids upon neighboring native tribes appear almost essential to the holding together of the scattered communities in a common bond of conflict and territorial acquisition.
The Trek North of the Vaal River
With the failure to acquire and hold Durban and to rule themselves or the regions of Natal which they had taken from the Zulus ended the first Boer effort to reach the sea and to establish Dutch independent communities in touch with the external world. The bulk of the farmers, as already stated, trekked north of the Orange or the Vaal. Here they found conditions, in 1845-47, which were scarcely less perplexing and troubled than their own had been. Over an area of some 700 miles long and 300 wide was established a Dutch population of about fifteen thousand persons which was constantly at war with the natives, and, as a result of losses in this connection, did not increase greatly in numbers despite the numerous accessions from Cape Colony and Natal. Nominally, and by British theory, they were still British subjects; practically, from the Orange to the Limpopo they were independent communities whom the Colonial Office would have preferred to forget altogether rather than to assert claims over or make demands upon. But their relation of permanent and bitter hostility towards the natives appears to have made absolute British neutrality impossible. Accordingly, in 1843, an effort was made to further isolate the Boers from Cape Colony, and "buffer states" of native or half-breed tribes were established and recognized; much in the same way as in the days of the Kosa tribes on the eastern frontier of the Colony. Then, however, it was for the protection of the Dutch farmers against the natives; now it was for the protection of native and Colonial interests against the turbulent Boers.
Moshesh the Basuto
Moshesh the Basuto was at this time established in much strength upon the borders of the present Orange Free State and in territory now known as Basutoland. He was one of the ablest men produced by the Bantu, or Kaffir, race, and, unlike chiefs of the type of Moselkatze the Matabele or Tshaka the Zulu, did not build his fortunes and his power upon bloodshed and devastation. When the regions afterwards covered by the Dutch republics and Natal were swept by a sanguinary tide of conquest under the leadership of the two chiefs mentioned, Moshesh followed in the wake of the wave of slaughter, gathered together scattered remnants of tribes, conciliated, strengthened and united them until, by almost imperceptible degrees, he had established a strong state around the rock-ribbed heights of Thaba Bosigo—the centre of his kraal and his kingdom. In 1843, therefore, when the British authorities were looking around for some means of restricting the sphere of Boer difficulties and aggressions upon the natives, Moshesh seemed an ideal instrument. He was intensely ambitious to extend and consolidate his power. He was not a savage or barbarous potentate in the sense of Dingaan or his predecessor; and to him the proffered alliance, a small annual subsidy, an extension of recognized territorial rights and supremacy over minor chiefs in contiguous regions, was extremely attractive and easily acceptable. West of his territory lived a tribe of Griquas—a half-breed people of mixed Dutch and Hottentot blood—numbering about two thousand and ruled over by a man named Adam Kok. They were largely influenced by missionaries, and were an inoffensive and, as it turned out, perishing race. Establishment of a Border Native State With Kok a similar arrangement of alliance was made, and he was recognized as ruler of all the territory from the Basuto border westward to where Andries Waterboer—another Griqua chief—held sway over the region afterwards dominated by Kimberley and including Modder River and the southern portion of the present Free State. East of Moshesh and the Basuto territory a similar alliance was made with the Pondo Chief, Faku, and thus the girdle, or league of allied states between British territory and the Boers was complete.
Rebellion by the Boers
But the plan did not work out as well as was expected. The racial elements involved were too mutable, the conditions too loose, the Governments too inadequate in strength and prestige, the Dutch too aggressive and hostile in character, to admit of its permanent success. A strong man, backed up continuously with plenty of British troops, might have saved the situation and averted the wars which followed; but continuity of policy for these fluctuating frontiers seems to have never prevailed at either London or Cape Town. The Treaty States did not prevent personal and commercial intercourse between the Boers of the Cape and of the interior. They did not avert further emigration or encourage the return of those who had left the Colony. The Dutch population in Adam Kok's territory did not like being ruled by a half-breed chief, and the greater part of them repudiated the right of Great Britain to support him in this government. Some of the minor native chiefs refused to accept the sovereignty of Moshesh. The first result was a small Boer rebellion against Kok and the defeat of 250 men by some British troops under Colonel Richardson. The second was an entire rearrangement of existing matters by Sir Peregrine Maitland, who had meantime become Governor at the Cape. Kok's sovereignty over the whole region was still acknowledged, but he was limited in government to the portion of it occupied by Griquas; while the whites living in the other section were placed under the supervision or rule of a British officer, who, in 1846, established himself at a small place called Bloemfontein, where some three hundred Boers of a friendly disposition took the oath of allegiance to the Queen. The rest moved north to Wynburg and out of the region thus controlled by Major Warden. With Moshesh much less could be done. He had been far too shrewd to violate directly the terms of his arrangement with Great Britain or to accept any proposals which would seriously alleviate the differences between himself and the bordering tribes or neighboring Boers. Thus the State, which had been strengthened with a view to maintaining peace, now threatened to promote conflict instead, and in this condition matters rested when Sir Harry Smith came out to Cape Town in 1848 as Governor and High Commissioner. Now the events which immediately followed came the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic.
CHAPTER IV.
Birth of the Dutch Republics.
British Policy During the Middle of the Century
By the middle of the century there were some twenty thousand emigrant farmers scattered over the region between the Orange and Vaal Rivers and north of the latter. They had no organized government; no bond of union except a feeling of hostility to British sovereignty and a common love of independent isolation; no adequate security against sudden attacks from surrounding savages. Occasionally they combined in small forces and fell with merciless severity upon tribes which had aroused their displeasure. They would brook no control, even from self-constituted authorities, and at first endeavoured to govern themselves by general meetings of citizens. Distances were too great, however, to render this practicable, and small elective Assemblies in several semi-republican communities eventually developed. But the Boer character possessed a positive genius for disobedience, and the feuds of families and communities soon became as marked as those of the native tribes around them—whose cattle they delighted to capture and whose children were occasionally enslaved by Dutch commandos. The settlers were not seriously interfered with by the British Government in London, or in Cape Town. A general supervision, or pretence at supervision, over their relations with the natives was maintained and with ultimately important results. But for some years following the Natal annexation nothing of importance occurred. No formal recognition of their feeble efforts at self-government was given, they remained British subjects in the eyes of the law, and Sir Peregrine Maitland's Proclamation of August 21, 1845, at the Cape, expressly reserved the rights of the Crown in this connection.
Moshesh the Basuto
Meanwhile, however, two other communities had developed in their neighbourhood. East of what afterwards became the Orange Free State and in territory which the emigrant farmers, or Boers as they were beginning to be called, claimed for themselves, an exceedingly able native chief, in the person of Moshesh the Basuto, had risen into power and had welded together the scattered fragments of tribes which had been crushed by the raids of the Matabele and Zulus. From the rugged heights of Thaba Bosigo he dominated a large extent of country, an increasing native population and much spoil in cattle and slaves. To the south and west of the Boers two half-breed leaders named Adam Kok and Waterboer had established themselves respectively with strong, armed bands of Griquas—the name given to the offspring of Dutch farmers and Hottentot women—and had become a recognized force. With Moshesh they constituted the elements of a new British policy which was inaugurated in 1843. The Colonial Office did not want at this time to extend its territories. South Africa, indeed, appeared during the first portion of this century as the least promising, and the most turbulent and troublesome, of all British possessions. The soil was supposed to be arid and without fertility or minerals, the population seemed hostile and the net result of colonization and administration had been a series of costly Kaffir wars. In dealing with the Kaffirs, or Kosas, on the eastern frontier of the Colony the British Government had shown this disinclination with quite sufficient clearness. But to allow the emigrant Boers to repudiate their allegiance was another matter, and even to the not very far-seeing statesmen of the Colonial Office of that day it presented possibilities deserving of consideration. With Sir Harry Smith's arrival and the termination of the Kaffir War of 1846-47 came another development of the situation. The new Governor of Cape Colony, who for the first time had also been appointed High Commissioner with power of control over native matters outside of the bounds of the Colony, visited the Orange River region, looked into the results of the Treaty State policy, came to the conclusion that agreements with native chiefs were like arrangements made with little children, and determined to suppress these creations of missionary statecraft as soon as might be possible.
Orange River Sovereignty
Meanwhile the High Commissioner was well received at Bloemfontein, and soon made arrangements with Adam Kok and Moshesh which greatly curtailed their authority and independence. On February 3, 1848, he announced the annexation to British dominions of the whole territory between the Vaal and Orange Rivers and the Drakensberg mountains under the name of the Orange River Sovereignty. The colored population was left under the control of its chiefs, and their land was carefully reserved for their own use. All relations between tribes, however, or with Europeans, were to be guided by British authorities. Major Warden was continued at Bloemfontein as the Governor, or Resident, and Sir Harry Smith returned to Cape Town after having carried out a policy which should have been effected long before. And it was now too late. Although without any definite government amongst themselves, or any allegiance to the little republics which had sprung up over the Vaal, a certain number of Dutch farmers in the new Sovereignty would not accept British rule, and they were speedily aided by the Transvaal Boers under Pretorius in a direct attack upon Bloemfontein. Major Warden was compelled to surrender, and the British officials were speedily driven out of the country. Sir Harry Smith, however, was too vigorous and able a commander to stand this sort of thing, and he hastily got some troops together, crossed the Orange River, attacked Pretorius in a strong position at a place called Boomplaatz, defeated him and re-established the Sovereignty Government. Those of the Boers who were inveterately opposed to British rule at once crossed the Vaal and were not interfered with by British officials. Their places, to some extent, were taken by fresh emigrants from Cape Colony, many of them English, and from this time forward the Orange River State was populated by white settlers more or less passively friendly toward England and composed of the least hostile amongst the emigrant farmers with a certain proportion of Englishmen.
Rebellion of Molitsane
For a time all went apparently well. Then, in 1851, Moshesh, finding his power had been restricted by the new arrangements, and knowing that he was much stronger in a military sense than the British authorities had any conception of, began to foment disturbances between his own people and native clans in the Sovereignty. He did not appear publicly in the matter, but his policy was none the less effective in drawing both Major Warden and the Cape Governor into a determination to punish Molitsane—a vassal of Moshesh—who was a distinct offender. With 162 soldiers, 120 Boers and some fifteen hundred natives, Major Warden marched out from Bloemfontein, and at Viervoet was drawn into a trap and suffered a disastrous defeat. It is said that Moshesh himself was surprised at the easy result. At any rate, he at once threw off the mask and joined forces with his vassal. A section of the Boers also repudiated the Sovereignty Government, so far, at least, as to promise Moshesh absolute neutrality if he would leave their cattle and property unharmed. This he promised and fulfilled by plundering without mercy the Boers who remained loyal. Major Warden was now helpless at Bloemfontein, as Cape Colony was in the throes of another Kaffir war. and not a soldier could be spared—a fact of which Moshesh and the disloyal Dutch were perfectly aware. The latter added to the difficulties of the situation by suggesting to Pretorius that now was his time to avenge Boomplaatz. He was not unwilling, but thought a primary duty lay to his own adherents beyond the Vaal; so he wrote Warden that if the independence of the Boers of that region were definitely acknowledged he would refrain from participation in the struggle.
The Sand River Convention
Major Warden reported to Sir Harry Smith that the safety of the Sovereignty for the time lay in assenting to this proposal, as he could not hold it against the Basutos and the Transvaal Boers combined. The result was the appointment of Commissioners and the negotiation in 1852 of the Sand River Convention "with the Commandant and Delegates of the Boers living beyond the Vaal," by which the British Government "guaranteed to the emigrant farmers beyond the Vaal River the right to manage their own affairs and to govern themselves according to their own laws without any interference on the part of the British Government." Provisions were included by which the British authorities disclaimed all alliances with colored peoples north of the Vaal, and the Boers accepted the declaration (on paper) that "no slavery is or shall be permitted or practiced" in the country under their control. This arrangement finally severed the two communities, carried across the Vaal another migration of the anti-British element, and in time consolidated the bitterly hostile and prejudiced sections of population into the present Transvaal Republic. Meanwhile, peace had been made with the Kaffirs, and Sir George Cathcart, who was now Governor at the Cape, invaded Basutoland with a considerable force of regulars for the purpose of punishing Moshesh. As usual in South African warfare, he under-estimated the numbers and fighting skill of his opponents as well as the natural strength of this Switzerland of the Veldt. Thaba Bosigo was too hard a nut for his force to crack, and he was, besides, drawn into an ambush and defeated. Moshesh, however, was wise enough not to press his advantage too far, and with statecraft which was worthy of a greater sphere, asked and received peace on terms very beneficial to himself.
Changed Policy
But the Colonial Office was now in the hands of the Manchester School party, England was living in the exhilaration of a period of great and growing commercial prosperity, and her politicians were sick of the prolonged succession of petty and costly wars which had marked South African history. It was decided that all further responsibility must be avoided, that existing boundaries must be drawn back wherever possible, and that extension of territory must be imperatively resisted. The first point of contact with this feeling was the Sovereignty, and the Duke of Newcastle, who was then acting as Colonial Secretary, sent Sir George Russell Clerk out in 1853, as a Special Commissioner: "To ascertain whether it was practicable to make arrangements for the abandonment of the whole of that territory." Then followed the most extraordinary and perhaps regrettable incident in all the turbulent and troubled history of South Africa. The Commissioner had called a Convention of European Delegates for the purpose of taking over the government of the Sovereignty. But these twenty-four men sounded public opinion, and they had soon found that the feeling was clear and unmistakable that from every standpoint of right, honor and expediency Great Britain should retain its authority and continue its protection. Sir George Clerk, however, was under definite instructions, and any protests from the Delegates, or from the public meetings which were hastily held, were simply regarded as so much unnecessary obstruction to the fulfilment of his mission. The Convention refused to accept in any way his proposition, and was promptly dissolved. Formation of the Orange Free State A small body of men were found, however, to favor independence, and with these representatives of a distinct minority Sir George concluded an agreement on February 23, 1854, by which the country was practically handed over to them as the Orange Free State. This precious document "guarantees on the part of Her Majesty's Government the future independence of that country and Government"—although it also provides "that this independence shall, without unnecessary delay, be confirmed and ratified by an instrument promulgated in such form and substance as Her Majesty shall approve, finally freeing them from their allegiance to the British Crown, and declaring them, to all intents and purposes, an independent people." So far as can be ascertained this instrument was never actually promulgated, and it may be a delicate technical point as to whether the Free State people have ever been legally freed from their allegiance to Great Britain.[[1]]
[[1]] Westminster Review. April, 1869.
Large popular gatherings were held to protest against the policy of dismemberment, and the Chairman and another member of the late Convention were sent to England to bring the whole case before the Queen's Government. But it was all in vain. Hardly any notice had been taken in Great Britain of the Sand River Convention, and even less concern was exhibited over this new development of weak and nerveless Colonial administration. A motion upon the subject in the House of Commons had to be withdrawn for lack of a seconder, and Parliament voted $240,000 as a compensation to loyal settlers—presumably as a solace for having forced them to give up their allegiance. By the terms of the Bloemfontein Convention—already quoted from—no slavery or trade in slaves was to be permitted and the Government was made free to levy import duties and to buy ammunition in the British Colonies. In this way were two Boer Republics founded in South Africa, and the evils which might naturally have been expected from the intense isolation and ignorance of the emigrant farmers crystallized into constitutional shape, and finally into military form. These Conventions of 1852 and 1854 legalized a lasting and bitter schism in the small European population of South Africa, and even the conditions and interests of the Free State and the Transvaal were not, for many years afterwards, considered identical by the Boers themselves.
CHAPTER V.
Development of Dutch Rule
Development of the Two Republics
From 1854 to 1877 the two Republics developed along very different lines. Their general principle of government was the same, but it was not administrated in the same way. In form their constitutions were nominally republican; in practice they became essentially arbitrary and absolutely antagonistic to British and Colonial ideas of government. The coloured people who, in hundreds of thousands, were established around the Dutch, had few civil rights and no political ones. They were the prey of small military bodies, the source of an enforced labour which could not in practice be distinguished from slavery, the object of personal contempt and with little protection from public law or private conscience. Citizenship was practically limited to the Boer, in the Transvaal; and in the Orange Free State, through the stringent military conditions connected with the privilege, the same result followed for some years. The right of participating in the Government of the country was thus confined to one class, the burghers or native-born Dutch citizens. These alone could elect the President, the Executive Council and the Volksraad, or popular Assembly.
Important Differences
There were important differences, however, in the further evolution of the Republics. Something of this was due to the modified feeling of the Orange River Boers towards England, to their proximity to the Cape and to the fact of English settlers being scattered amongst them with the natural result of friendly association and occasional intermarriage. They, therefore, approximated in character and type to the Dutchmen of Cape Colony. The Boer of the Transvaal, on the other hand, was entirely isolated, of unmixed stock and with sentiments of hostility toward everything British as strong and stern as they were when he first left Colonial territory. Both Republics were allowed to develop their own institutions in their own way and were, as the Bloemfontein Convention of 1854 declared, "to all intents and purposes a free and independent people." No slavery, or trade in slaves, was to be permitted, however, and what might be termed Imperial rights of control over native questions was retained along lines enunciated as follows, by Sir M. E. Hicks-Beach, in a despatch dated November 20, 1879: "Neither by the Sand River Convention of 1852, nor at any other time, did Her Majesty's Government surrender the right and duty of requiring that the Transvaal should be governed with a view to the common safety of the various European communities." The same principle, of course, covered the Free State position and, later on, was applied in connection with Moshesh and the Basuto question.
Early Organization
Without roads and bridges, churches and schools, or the ordinary machinery of government, the Dutch of the Free State commenced the work of organization in 1854, and the ultimate result reflects considerable credit upon the ignorant burghers of those scattered communities. As in the Cape Colony and the Transvaal the fundamental law was the old Roman system as modified by the Legislature of Holland prior to 1652. The official language was Dutch, and the Courts were constituted after the Dutch fashion. For a short period Josias Hoffman was President, and then Jacobus Nicolaus Boshof was elected to the position. Relations with Moshesh and the Basuto tribe constituted the chief trouble of this early period. The continuous object of this ambitious ruler was to recover certain territory which had once belonged to tribes of which the remnants now acknowledged his rule. The Boers wished to retain regions which had in great part appeared as wild and empty wastes when they had settled there. Apart from the general question, both sides were aggressive and warlike. Each hated the other, and the intermittent struggles which ensued were of the usually merciless character. But Moshesh was too much for the Boers in skill and craft, and, in 1858, the Free State President, after appealing in vain to his Transvaal brethren for aid, turned to Sir George Grey, who was then Governor of the Cape. Sir George accepted the position of mediator, studied the situation closely, and came to the apparent conclusion that the claims of Moshesh were in a measure just. To him, therefore, he gave a piece of territory which the Boers believed to be theirs, and handed over to the latter an outlying mission station which had hitherto acknowledged Basuto authority. Mr. Boshof promptly resigned the Presidency, and was succeeded by Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, a son of the famous general. He devoted himself to effecting a union with the Transvaal republics of the time, but was unsuccessful, owing to conflicting interests and jealousies and to the declaration from Cape Town that such action would dissolve the Conventions with Great Britain.
Chronic Condition of War
Meantime, and during the greater part of the years from 1854 to 1868, the Boers of the Free State were in a chronic condition of war with the Basutos. There were few direct conflicts, and the troubles consisted mainly in raids, the burning of houses or kraals, the stealing of cattle, or the kidnapping of children. The Basutos fought in much the same Fabian manner that the Boers themselves practiced, and met invaders concealed behind rocks or cairns or the ever-present kopje. The region ruled by Moshesh was a compact and round-shaped territory lying between Natal, Cape Colony and the Free State. Its surface was broken by steep hills or mountains with more or less flat summits admirably fitted for villages or kraals, and with every requisite for defence in the form of perpendicular wall-like sides. The Basutoland Between these natural fortresses were the sweeping and fertile valleys where the Basutos grew their corn and raised their cattle, and which for years it was the delight of the Boers to raid; as it was the primal pleasure of the Basutos to pour down in sudden forays from their rocky fastnesses upon Dutch territory. This constant interchange of robbery and pillage embittered the character of both peoples, but naturally had the most degrading effect upon that of the Boer. For a presumably civilized and Christian race to be engaged year in and year out in the seizure of cattle from a savage enemy and in the occasional enslavement of children or the shooting down of stray individuals and small parties of a mobile enemy could not but have an evil influence upon a character so peculiar as was that of even the best and most enlightened of the emigrant farmers.
Basutoland Overrun
After a decade of this sort of intermittent struggle, however, the Boers were encouraged by familiarity with that part of the Basuto country which lay in the valleys and fields to try the task of storming some of the strongholds of the enemy. With the aid of a few small cannon, the first attempts were successful and surprisingly easy. Thus encouraged, within the three years following 1865, the greater part of Basutoland was overrun and the best cornfields captured. They were promptly "annexed" to the Free State, and then attention was devoted to the French missionaries, who had, meanwhile, been doing a splendid work amongst the natives. They were turned out of the country in which half a million of dollars had been expended upon their stations; their homes were plundered and the private property of men who had, in some cases, been laboring for thirty years in the region was confiscated; furniture, books and other items of value were destroyed, and all redress was refused. Permission was afterwards given to re-occupy their stations, not as such, but as farms for which $500 was in each case to be paid the Boer Government. Much of the conquered territory was also surveyed and sold. But the power of the Boers was a very fitful one. With a weak Government at home they were unable to hold the regions which they captured from time to time, and the result was a re-occupation by the Basutos, an attempt to cultivate their fields, further reprisals, and more attacks upon the mountain strongholds. Upon one occasion the Boers destroyed all the growing crops of an extensive section. But Thaba Bosigo, the central fortress of the country, could not be subdued by any force available.