[Contents]THE AFRICANDERS.CHAPTER I.THE DUTCH AT THE CAPE.(1652–1795.)This is the story, briefly told, of the Dutch Boers in South Africa.The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit the shores of South and Southeastern Africa, but they made no attempt to settle the country south of Delagoa Bay. They were traders. The Hottentots had little to sell that they cared to purchase. The route for Portuguese commerce with the East was west of Madagascar, consequently they found it unnecessary to put into Table Bay; the voyage from St. Helena to Mozambique could be made comfortably without seeking a port of supply.But when the Dutch wrested the eastern trade[12]from the Portuguese, the southeastern portion of Africa assumed an importance to them that it had never before possessed in the esteem of any other nation. Their sea route to the East was south of Madagascar, and it was all but imperative that they should have a port of supply at the turning point of the long voyage between Holland and Batavia. It soon became their practice to call at Table Bay for the purpose of obtaining news, taking in fresh water, catching fish, and bartering with the natives for cattle—in which they were seldom successful.In 1650 the Dutch East India Company, acting upon the reports and suggestions of influential men who had visited Table Bay and resided in Table Valley several months, determined to establish at Table Bay such a victualing station as had been recommended. In accordance therewith the ships Reiger and Dromedaris and the yacht Goede Hoop—all then lying in the harbor of Amsterdam—were put in commission to carry the party of occupation to Table Bay, under the general command of Jan Van Riebeek.On Sunday, 24th of December, 1651, the expedition sailed, accompanied by a large fleet of merchant vessels. On the morning of Sunday, the 7th of April, 1652, after a voyage of one[13]hundred and four days, the site of their future home greeted the eyes of the sea-worn emigrants,—Table Mountain, 3,816 feet high, being the central and impressive feature of the landscape. In due time preparations were made to land and begin the necessary operations in establishing themselves in the new and entirely uncivilized country.The organization of the Dutch East India Company was on a thoroughly military system. It graduated downward from the home Assembly of Seventeen—who were supreme—to a governor-general of India and his council resident in Batavia, and, ranking next below him in their order, to a vast number of admirals, governors and commanders—each having his own council, and acting under the strict rule that whenever these came in contact the lower in rank must give place and render obedience to the higher. It is important to bear this in mind, as it gives a clear insight into the mode of government under which the occupation took place, and which prevailed with little variation for more than a hundred years. The ranking officer of the expedition was Jan Van Riebeek, and next to him in authority were the three commanders as his council in founding the settlement.[14]Van Riebeek and the three skippers, having inspected Table Valley, selected a site for the fort a little in rear of the ground on which the general postoffice of Cape Town now stands. On that spot a great stronghold was built in the form of a square strengthened by bastions at its angles. Each face of the fort measured 252 Rhynland feet—about 260 feet English measure. The walls were built of earth, twelve feet high, twenty feet in thickness at the base, tapering to sixteen feet at the top, and were surmounted by a parapet. Surrounding the whole structure was a moat, into which the water of Fresh River could be turned. Within the walls were dwellings, barracks, storehouses and other conveniences that might be required in a state of siege. Around the fort were clustered a walled kraal for cattle, a separate inclosure for workshops, and the tents in which the settlers began their life in Africa.On the 28th of January, 1653, the last of the ships, the Dromedaris, sailed away and left the colonists to their own resources.The history in detail of this first European settlement in South Africa is of surpassing interest; but, here, it must be sketched in the briefest outline possible, up to the first contact of Boer with Briton.[15]For the first twenty-five years the aim of the colonists was to keep within easy reach of the fort at the Cape. Up to 1680 the most distant agricultural settlement was at Stellenbosch, about twenty-five miles from the Cape. Not till the end of the century did they push pioneering enterprises beyond the first range of mountains.There was a steady though not very rapid increase of population. As early as 1658 the disastrous step was taken of introducing slave labor, performed at first by West African negroes—a step which encouraged in the whites an indisposition to work, and doomed that part of Africa to be dependent on the toil of slaves. To their African slaves the Dutch East India Company added numbers of Malay convicts from Java and other parts of its East Indian territories. These Malays took wives from the female convicts of their own race, and to some extent intermarried with the native African slave-women. From such marriages there arose a mongrel, dark people of the servile order, which became a considerable element in the population of Cape Town and its neighboring regions.In 1689 some three hundred French Huguenots came from Holland in a body and joined the colonists at the Cape. These were a valuable[16]acquisition as an offset to the rapidly increasing servile element. They were mostly persons of refinement, and brought with them habits of industry, strong attachment to the Protestant faith, and a supreme love of liberty. Many of the more respectable colonial families are descended from that stock.The somewhat intolerant government of the Company hastened the blending of the various classes of the population in one. The Huguenots loved their language and their peculiar faith, and greatly desired to found a separate religious community. But the Company forbade the use of French in official documents and in religious services. As a result of this narrow but far-seeing policy, by the middle of the eighteenth century the Huguenots had amalgamated with their Dutch fellow-colonists in language, religion and politics. It was not until 1780 that the Company’s government permitted the opening of a Lutheran church, although many Germans of that persuasion had emigrated to the Cape.The distinctive Africander type of character began to appear at the time when the settlers began to move from the coast into the interior of the country. There was everything to favor the rapid development of a new type of humanity.[17]For the most part the Dutch and the Germans belonged to the humbler classes; the situation was isolated; the home ties were few; the voyage to Europe was so long that communication was difficult and expensive; and so they maintained little connection with—and soon lost all feeling for—the fatherlands. As for the Huguenots, they had no home country to look to. France had banished them, and they were not of Holland—neither in blood nor in speech. Thus it came to pass that the whites of South Africa who went into the interior as pioneers went consenting to the feeling that every bond between Europe and themselves was severed—that they were a new people whose true home and destiny, to the latest generations, were to be in Africa.Many of them became stockmen, roaming with their flocks and herds over vast tracts of grazing lands, for which they paid a nominal rent to the Company. Some of them became mighty hunters of big game—like Nimrod; and even those who herded cattle and sheep were forced to protect themselves and their live stock against lions and leopards and the savage Bushmen who waged a constant warfare in which quarter was neither given nor expected. In such circumstances it is not wonderful that the people who[18]had in their veins the blended blood of Holland and Navarre developed to an almost unparalleled degree courage, self-reliance and love of independence, coupled with a passion for solitude and isolation.As inevitable results of the life they led—so isolated and wild—the children grew up untaught; the women, being served by slaves, lost both the Dutch and French habits of thrift and cleanliness; and the men became indifferent to the elegancies of life, and grew more and more stern and narrow-minded on all questions of public policy and religion. But there was no declension of religious fervor. In all their wanderings the Bible went with them as an oracle to be consulted on all subjects, and the altar of family worship never lacked its morning and evening sacrifice. And they retained a passionate love of personal freedom which no effort of the Company’s government could bring under perfect discipline.Magistrates and assessors were appointed in some of the distant stations, but they failed to control the wandering stockmen, who were called Trek Boers because they “trekked” from place to place. Being good marksmen and inured to conflict with wild beasts and wilder[19]men, they formed among themselves companies of fighting men whose duty it was to disperse or destroy the savage Bushmen. These independent military organizations the government recognized and approved by appointing over them a field commander for each district and a subordinate called a field cornet for each subdivision of a district. These officers and their respective commands became permanent features of the system of local government, and the war bands—called commandos—have always been recognized in the records of military operations by the Boers.The administration, through a governor and council appointed by the Dutch East India Company in Holland, was never popular with the colonists. The governor was in no sense responsible to the people he governed. This was one of the causes which prompted the Boers to go out into the wilderness, where distance from the center of authority secured to them greater freedom.In 1779 the disaffected colonists sent commissioners to Holland to demand of the States-General redress of the grievances suffered under the rule of the Dutch East India Company and a share in the government of the colony. This action was due, in part, to actual wrongs inflicted[20]on a liberty-loving people, and, in part, to the spirit of independence which characterized the temper of the age and had led the British colonists in North America to throw off the control of their mother country.After prolonged negotiations the States-General sent out two commissioners to investigate the state of affairs in the Cape colony and to recommend measures of reform. The degree of relief proposed was considered inadequate—especially by those who dwelt in the more distant settlements. Therefore, in 1795, the people of the interior rose up in revolt against the Company’s government—professing, however, unabated loyalty to the mother country. The magistrates appointed by the company were deposed, and little republics were set up, each with a representative assembly. It would have been an easy matter for the government at the Cape to have suppressed these uprisings by cutting off their food supplies. But just then other events claimed the attention of both the governor and the governed—events which drew South Africa into the tumultuous tide of European politics and led to the immediate contact of Boer and Briton, and initiated a struggle between the two[21]which has been renewed at intervals, with varying fortunes, for more than a hundred years.Before going forward to the event of 1795—the first contact of Boer and Briton—it will be well to note some of the more important features of the condition in which that contact found the Boer.The total Boer population of South Africa in 1795 was about seventeen thousand, with a rapid rate of increase. In the mixed blood of the people the proportions of national elements were: Dutch, a little less than two-thirds; French, one-sixth; the remainder was principally German, with a sprinkling of other nationalities.The popular language differed largely from that of Holland at the close of the eighteenth century. The amalgamation with a large body of foreigners, the scant instruction in book learning, and above all the necessity of speaking to the slaves and Hottentots in the simplest manner possible had all tended to the destruction of grammatical forms. The language in common use by the Boer had become a mere dialect, having a very limited vocabulary. But the Dutch Bible—a book that every one read—greatly increased the number of words with which he was familiar. With this addition, however,[22]most of the uneducated South African colonists were unable to understand fully the contents of a newspaper of the time printed in Holland, or a book treating of a subject unfamiliar to them. Naturally this dialect of the Dutch was greatly beloved by the people using it—it was the language of mother, of lover, of friend to friend in parting to meet no more.In no other country were women more completely on an equality with men than in South Africa. Property belonging to a woman while she was single, or acquired by her after marriage, was secured to her in perpetuity so that her husband could neither squander it nor dispose of it in any way without her consent. Neither was it subject to seizure for debts contracted by him, but was as absolutely hers as if no marriage existed.The rights of children to be provided for were sacredly guarded. An individual having five or more children could only dispose by will of half the estate; the remainder belonged to the children, and upon the death of the parent it was equally divided among them; if any were minors their share was taken in trust for them by guardians provided by law. If there were[23]not more than four children the parent could dispose by will of two-thirds of the estate.The industrial pursuits of the people outside of Cape Town were almost entirely agricultural and pastoral. There were no mining interests. There was abundance of fish, but the taking of them was discouraged by government prohibitions of fishing in any waters but Table Bay in summer and False Bay in winter. This measure was taken to save the Company the expense of providing military protection for fishermen at a distance from the fort. In 1718 it was permitted to fish in Saldanha Bay, also, but as one-fifth of the product was exacted as a tax the license was not accepted.The making of wagons and carts of the peculiar kind needed in Africa at that time was carried to great perfection. This, however, was the only important manufacturing industry in the country. For the most part families supplied themselves with homemade articles of use, such as soap, candles, furniture, leather, cloth, harness and farming implements. Everything thus produced was crude and clumsy, but the articles were durable and served the purpose fairly well.All in all, they were a worthy and a very[24]peculiar people—these Boers. They differed largely from all others in habits, language and ideals; but they were loyal to their ideals, and acted with rare good sense and manly energy in carrying them into effect. They were so far free from the prevailing spirit of religious bigotry that in 1795, besides the Dutch Reformed Church—in a sense the national church—the Lutheran and the Moravian denominations were tolerated.The territory in South Africa that had been explored, up to 1795, included the Cape colony, the western coast as far north as Walfish Bay, the eastern coast to the Zambesi River and the Zambesi Valley to a point above Tete, and a few localities in the region now known as Rhodesia. Possibly some roving elephant hunters had crossed the Orange River, but, if so, they were silent as to any discoveries made.The Bushmen had retired from the populous parts of the Colony, and were numerous only along the mountain range in the interior. The Hottentots had dwindled away to a few thousand. The thinning out of these native races was due not so much to mortal conflict with the whites as to the ravages of smallpox and strong drink. Like all savage people they[25]seemed to melt away before these scourges as stubble before flames.And here we close this chapter of the history of the Boers. We leave them, for the moment, divided as to the government of the Dutch East India Company, but a homogeneous people seventeen thousand strong, and having developed out of the elements mixed in their blood and the peculiar environment and experiences in which they lived a new race of civilized men to be known in the history of commerce, diplomacy and war as Africanders.[26]
[Contents]THE AFRICANDERS.CHAPTER I.THE DUTCH AT THE CAPE.(1652–1795.)This is the story, briefly told, of the Dutch Boers in South Africa.The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit the shores of South and Southeastern Africa, but they made no attempt to settle the country south of Delagoa Bay. They were traders. The Hottentots had little to sell that they cared to purchase. The route for Portuguese commerce with the East was west of Madagascar, consequently they found it unnecessary to put into Table Bay; the voyage from St. Helena to Mozambique could be made comfortably without seeking a port of supply.But when the Dutch wrested the eastern trade[12]from the Portuguese, the southeastern portion of Africa assumed an importance to them that it had never before possessed in the esteem of any other nation. Their sea route to the East was south of Madagascar, and it was all but imperative that they should have a port of supply at the turning point of the long voyage between Holland and Batavia. It soon became their practice to call at Table Bay for the purpose of obtaining news, taking in fresh water, catching fish, and bartering with the natives for cattle—in which they were seldom successful.In 1650 the Dutch East India Company, acting upon the reports and suggestions of influential men who had visited Table Bay and resided in Table Valley several months, determined to establish at Table Bay such a victualing station as had been recommended. In accordance therewith the ships Reiger and Dromedaris and the yacht Goede Hoop—all then lying in the harbor of Amsterdam—were put in commission to carry the party of occupation to Table Bay, under the general command of Jan Van Riebeek.On Sunday, 24th of December, 1651, the expedition sailed, accompanied by a large fleet of merchant vessels. On the morning of Sunday, the 7th of April, 1652, after a voyage of one[13]hundred and four days, the site of their future home greeted the eyes of the sea-worn emigrants,—Table Mountain, 3,816 feet high, being the central and impressive feature of the landscape. In due time preparations were made to land and begin the necessary operations in establishing themselves in the new and entirely uncivilized country.The organization of the Dutch East India Company was on a thoroughly military system. It graduated downward from the home Assembly of Seventeen—who were supreme—to a governor-general of India and his council resident in Batavia, and, ranking next below him in their order, to a vast number of admirals, governors and commanders—each having his own council, and acting under the strict rule that whenever these came in contact the lower in rank must give place and render obedience to the higher. It is important to bear this in mind, as it gives a clear insight into the mode of government under which the occupation took place, and which prevailed with little variation for more than a hundred years. The ranking officer of the expedition was Jan Van Riebeek, and next to him in authority were the three commanders as his council in founding the settlement.[14]Van Riebeek and the three skippers, having inspected Table Valley, selected a site for the fort a little in rear of the ground on which the general postoffice of Cape Town now stands. On that spot a great stronghold was built in the form of a square strengthened by bastions at its angles. Each face of the fort measured 252 Rhynland feet—about 260 feet English measure. The walls were built of earth, twelve feet high, twenty feet in thickness at the base, tapering to sixteen feet at the top, and were surmounted by a parapet. Surrounding the whole structure was a moat, into which the water of Fresh River could be turned. Within the walls were dwellings, barracks, storehouses and other conveniences that might be required in a state of siege. Around the fort were clustered a walled kraal for cattle, a separate inclosure for workshops, and the tents in which the settlers began their life in Africa.On the 28th of January, 1653, the last of the ships, the Dromedaris, sailed away and left the colonists to their own resources.The history in detail of this first European settlement in South Africa is of surpassing interest; but, here, it must be sketched in the briefest outline possible, up to the first contact of Boer with Briton.[15]For the first twenty-five years the aim of the colonists was to keep within easy reach of the fort at the Cape. Up to 1680 the most distant agricultural settlement was at Stellenbosch, about twenty-five miles from the Cape. Not till the end of the century did they push pioneering enterprises beyond the first range of mountains.There was a steady though not very rapid increase of population. As early as 1658 the disastrous step was taken of introducing slave labor, performed at first by West African negroes—a step which encouraged in the whites an indisposition to work, and doomed that part of Africa to be dependent on the toil of slaves. To their African slaves the Dutch East India Company added numbers of Malay convicts from Java and other parts of its East Indian territories. These Malays took wives from the female convicts of their own race, and to some extent intermarried with the native African slave-women. From such marriages there arose a mongrel, dark people of the servile order, which became a considerable element in the population of Cape Town and its neighboring regions.In 1689 some three hundred French Huguenots came from Holland in a body and joined the colonists at the Cape. These were a valuable[16]acquisition as an offset to the rapidly increasing servile element. They were mostly persons of refinement, and brought with them habits of industry, strong attachment to the Protestant faith, and a supreme love of liberty. Many of the more respectable colonial families are descended from that stock.The somewhat intolerant government of the Company hastened the blending of the various classes of the population in one. The Huguenots loved their language and their peculiar faith, and greatly desired to found a separate religious community. But the Company forbade the use of French in official documents and in religious services. As a result of this narrow but far-seeing policy, by the middle of the eighteenth century the Huguenots had amalgamated with their Dutch fellow-colonists in language, religion and politics. It was not until 1780 that the Company’s government permitted the opening of a Lutheran church, although many Germans of that persuasion had emigrated to the Cape.The distinctive Africander type of character began to appear at the time when the settlers began to move from the coast into the interior of the country. There was everything to favor the rapid development of a new type of humanity.[17]For the most part the Dutch and the Germans belonged to the humbler classes; the situation was isolated; the home ties were few; the voyage to Europe was so long that communication was difficult and expensive; and so they maintained little connection with—and soon lost all feeling for—the fatherlands. As for the Huguenots, they had no home country to look to. France had banished them, and they were not of Holland—neither in blood nor in speech. Thus it came to pass that the whites of South Africa who went into the interior as pioneers went consenting to the feeling that every bond between Europe and themselves was severed—that they were a new people whose true home and destiny, to the latest generations, were to be in Africa.Many of them became stockmen, roaming with their flocks and herds over vast tracts of grazing lands, for which they paid a nominal rent to the Company. Some of them became mighty hunters of big game—like Nimrod; and even those who herded cattle and sheep were forced to protect themselves and their live stock against lions and leopards and the savage Bushmen who waged a constant warfare in which quarter was neither given nor expected. In such circumstances it is not wonderful that the people who[18]had in their veins the blended blood of Holland and Navarre developed to an almost unparalleled degree courage, self-reliance and love of independence, coupled with a passion for solitude and isolation.As inevitable results of the life they led—so isolated and wild—the children grew up untaught; the women, being served by slaves, lost both the Dutch and French habits of thrift and cleanliness; and the men became indifferent to the elegancies of life, and grew more and more stern and narrow-minded on all questions of public policy and religion. But there was no declension of religious fervor. In all their wanderings the Bible went with them as an oracle to be consulted on all subjects, and the altar of family worship never lacked its morning and evening sacrifice. And they retained a passionate love of personal freedom which no effort of the Company’s government could bring under perfect discipline.Magistrates and assessors were appointed in some of the distant stations, but they failed to control the wandering stockmen, who were called Trek Boers because they “trekked” from place to place. Being good marksmen and inured to conflict with wild beasts and wilder[19]men, they formed among themselves companies of fighting men whose duty it was to disperse or destroy the savage Bushmen. These independent military organizations the government recognized and approved by appointing over them a field commander for each district and a subordinate called a field cornet for each subdivision of a district. These officers and their respective commands became permanent features of the system of local government, and the war bands—called commandos—have always been recognized in the records of military operations by the Boers.The administration, through a governor and council appointed by the Dutch East India Company in Holland, was never popular with the colonists. The governor was in no sense responsible to the people he governed. This was one of the causes which prompted the Boers to go out into the wilderness, where distance from the center of authority secured to them greater freedom.In 1779 the disaffected colonists sent commissioners to Holland to demand of the States-General redress of the grievances suffered under the rule of the Dutch East India Company and a share in the government of the colony. This action was due, in part, to actual wrongs inflicted[20]on a liberty-loving people, and, in part, to the spirit of independence which characterized the temper of the age and had led the British colonists in North America to throw off the control of their mother country.After prolonged negotiations the States-General sent out two commissioners to investigate the state of affairs in the Cape colony and to recommend measures of reform. The degree of relief proposed was considered inadequate—especially by those who dwelt in the more distant settlements. Therefore, in 1795, the people of the interior rose up in revolt against the Company’s government—professing, however, unabated loyalty to the mother country. The magistrates appointed by the company were deposed, and little republics were set up, each with a representative assembly. It would have been an easy matter for the government at the Cape to have suppressed these uprisings by cutting off their food supplies. But just then other events claimed the attention of both the governor and the governed—events which drew South Africa into the tumultuous tide of European politics and led to the immediate contact of Boer and Briton, and initiated a struggle between the two[21]which has been renewed at intervals, with varying fortunes, for more than a hundred years.Before going forward to the event of 1795—the first contact of Boer and Briton—it will be well to note some of the more important features of the condition in which that contact found the Boer.The total Boer population of South Africa in 1795 was about seventeen thousand, with a rapid rate of increase. In the mixed blood of the people the proportions of national elements were: Dutch, a little less than two-thirds; French, one-sixth; the remainder was principally German, with a sprinkling of other nationalities.The popular language differed largely from that of Holland at the close of the eighteenth century. The amalgamation with a large body of foreigners, the scant instruction in book learning, and above all the necessity of speaking to the slaves and Hottentots in the simplest manner possible had all tended to the destruction of grammatical forms. The language in common use by the Boer had become a mere dialect, having a very limited vocabulary. But the Dutch Bible—a book that every one read—greatly increased the number of words with which he was familiar. With this addition, however,[22]most of the uneducated South African colonists were unable to understand fully the contents of a newspaper of the time printed in Holland, or a book treating of a subject unfamiliar to them. Naturally this dialect of the Dutch was greatly beloved by the people using it—it was the language of mother, of lover, of friend to friend in parting to meet no more.In no other country were women more completely on an equality with men than in South Africa. Property belonging to a woman while she was single, or acquired by her after marriage, was secured to her in perpetuity so that her husband could neither squander it nor dispose of it in any way without her consent. Neither was it subject to seizure for debts contracted by him, but was as absolutely hers as if no marriage existed.The rights of children to be provided for were sacredly guarded. An individual having five or more children could only dispose by will of half the estate; the remainder belonged to the children, and upon the death of the parent it was equally divided among them; if any were minors their share was taken in trust for them by guardians provided by law. If there were[23]not more than four children the parent could dispose by will of two-thirds of the estate.The industrial pursuits of the people outside of Cape Town were almost entirely agricultural and pastoral. There were no mining interests. There was abundance of fish, but the taking of them was discouraged by government prohibitions of fishing in any waters but Table Bay in summer and False Bay in winter. This measure was taken to save the Company the expense of providing military protection for fishermen at a distance from the fort. In 1718 it was permitted to fish in Saldanha Bay, also, but as one-fifth of the product was exacted as a tax the license was not accepted.The making of wagons and carts of the peculiar kind needed in Africa at that time was carried to great perfection. This, however, was the only important manufacturing industry in the country. For the most part families supplied themselves with homemade articles of use, such as soap, candles, furniture, leather, cloth, harness and farming implements. Everything thus produced was crude and clumsy, but the articles were durable and served the purpose fairly well.All in all, they were a worthy and a very[24]peculiar people—these Boers. They differed largely from all others in habits, language and ideals; but they were loyal to their ideals, and acted with rare good sense and manly energy in carrying them into effect. They were so far free from the prevailing spirit of religious bigotry that in 1795, besides the Dutch Reformed Church—in a sense the national church—the Lutheran and the Moravian denominations were tolerated.The territory in South Africa that had been explored, up to 1795, included the Cape colony, the western coast as far north as Walfish Bay, the eastern coast to the Zambesi River and the Zambesi Valley to a point above Tete, and a few localities in the region now known as Rhodesia. Possibly some roving elephant hunters had crossed the Orange River, but, if so, they were silent as to any discoveries made.The Bushmen had retired from the populous parts of the Colony, and were numerous only along the mountain range in the interior. The Hottentots had dwindled away to a few thousand. The thinning out of these native races was due not so much to mortal conflict with the whites as to the ravages of smallpox and strong drink. Like all savage people they[25]seemed to melt away before these scourges as stubble before flames.And here we close this chapter of the history of the Boers. We leave them, for the moment, divided as to the government of the Dutch East India Company, but a homogeneous people seventeen thousand strong, and having developed out of the elements mixed in their blood and the peculiar environment and experiences in which they lived a new race of civilized men to be known in the history of commerce, diplomacy and war as Africanders.[26]
THE AFRICANDERS.CHAPTER I.THE DUTCH AT THE CAPE.(1652–1795.)
This is the story, briefly told, of the Dutch Boers in South Africa.The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit the shores of South and Southeastern Africa, but they made no attempt to settle the country south of Delagoa Bay. They were traders. The Hottentots had little to sell that they cared to purchase. The route for Portuguese commerce with the East was west of Madagascar, consequently they found it unnecessary to put into Table Bay; the voyage from St. Helena to Mozambique could be made comfortably without seeking a port of supply.But when the Dutch wrested the eastern trade[12]from the Portuguese, the southeastern portion of Africa assumed an importance to them that it had never before possessed in the esteem of any other nation. Their sea route to the East was south of Madagascar, and it was all but imperative that they should have a port of supply at the turning point of the long voyage between Holland and Batavia. It soon became their practice to call at Table Bay for the purpose of obtaining news, taking in fresh water, catching fish, and bartering with the natives for cattle—in which they were seldom successful.In 1650 the Dutch East India Company, acting upon the reports and suggestions of influential men who had visited Table Bay and resided in Table Valley several months, determined to establish at Table Bay such a victualing station as had been recommended. In accordance therewith the ships Reiger and Dromedaris and the yacht Goede Hoop—all then lying in the harbor of Amsterdam—were put in commission to carry the party of occupation to Table Bay, under the general command of Jan Van Riebeek.On Sunday, 24th of December, 1651, the expedition sailed, accompanied by a large fleet of merchant vessels. On the morning of Sunday, the 7th of April, 1652, after a voyage of one[13]hundred and four days, the site of their future home greeted the eyes of the sea-worn emigrants,—Table Mountain, 3,816 feet high, being the central and impressive feature of the landscape. In due time preparations were made to land and begin the necessary operations in establishing themselves in the new and entirely uncivilized country.The organization of the Dutch East India Company was on a thoroughly military system. It graduated downward from the home Assembly of Seventeen—who were supreme—to a governor-general of India and his council resident in Batavia, and, ranking next below him in their order, to a vast number of admirals, governors and commanders—each having his own council, and acting under the strict rule that whenever these came in contact the lower in rank must give place and render obedience to the higher. It is important to bear this in mind, as it gives a clear insight into the mode of government under which the occupation took place, and which prevailed with little variation for more than a hundred years. The ranking officer of the expedition was Jan Van Riebeek, and next to him in authority were the three commanders as his council in founding the settlement.[14]Van Riebeek and the three skippers, having inspected Table Valley, selected a site for the fort a little in rear of the ground on which the general postoffice of Cape Town now stands. On that spot a great stronghold was built in the form of a square strengthened by bastions at its angles. Each face of the fort measured 252 Rhynland feet—about 260 feet English measure. The walls were built of earth, twelve feet high, twenty feet in thickness at the base, tapering to sixteen feet at the top, and were surmounted by a parapet. Surrounding the whole structure was a moat, into which the water of Fresh River could be turned. Within the walls were dwellings, barracks, storehouses and other conveniences that might be required in a state of siege. Around the fort were clustered a walled kraal for cattle, a separate inclosure for workshops, and the tents in which the settlers began their life in Africa.On the 28th of January, 1653, the last of the ships, the Dromedaris, sailed away and left the colonists to their own resources.The history in detail of this first European settlement in South Africa is of surpassing interest; but, here, it must be sketched in the briefest outline possible, up to the first contact of Boer with Briton.[15]For the first twenty-five years the aim of the colonists was to keep within easy reach of the fort at the Cape. Up to 1680 the most distant agricultural settlement was at Stellenbosch, about twenty-five miles from the Cape. Not till the end of the century did they push pioneering enterprises beyond the first range of mountains.There was a steady though not very rapid increase of population. As early as 1658 the disastrous step was taken of introducing slave labor, performed at first by West African negroes—a step which encouraged in the whites an indisposition to work, and doomed that part of Africa to be dependent on the toil of slaves. To their African slaves the Dutch East India Company added numbers of Malay convicts from Java and other parts of its East Indian territories. These Malays took wives from the female convicts of their own race, and to some extent intermarried with the native African slave-women. From such marriages there arose a mongrel, dark people of the servile order, which became a considerable element in the population of Cape Town and its neighboring regions.In 1689 some three hundred French Huguenots came from Holland in a body and joined the colonists at the Cape. These were a valuable[16]acquisition as an offset to the rapidly increasing servile element. They were mostly persons of refinement, and brought with them habits of industry, strong attachment to the Protestant faith, and a supreme love of liberty. Many of the more respectable colonial families are descended from that stock.The somewhat intolerant government of the Company hastened the blending of the various classes of the population in one. The Huguenots loved their language and their peculiar faith, and greatly desired to found a separate religious community. But the Company forbade the use of French in official documents and in religious services. As a result of this narrow but far-seeing policy, by the middle of the eighteenth century the Huguenots had amalgamated with their Dutch fellow-colonists in language, religion and politics. It was not until 1780 that the Company’s government permitted the opening of a Lutheran church, although many Germans of that persuasion had emigrated to the Cape.The distinctive Africander type of character began to appear at the time when the settlers began to move from the coast into the interior of the country. There was everything to favor the rapid development of a new type of humanity.[17]For the most part the Dutch and the Germans belonged to the humbler classes; the situation was isolated; the home ties were few; the voyage to Europe was so long that communication was difficult and expensive; and so they maintained little connection with—and soon lost all feeling for—the fatherlands. As for the Huguenots, they had no home country to look to. France had banished them, and they were not of Holland—neither in blood nor in speech. Thus it came to pass that the whites of South Africa who went into the interior as pioneers went consenting to the feeling that every bond between Europe and themselves was severed—that they were a new people whose true home and destiny, to the latest generations, were to be in Africa.Many of them became stockmen, roaming with their flocks and herds over vast tracts of grazing lands, for which they paid a nominal rent to the Company. Some of them became mighty hunters of big game—like Nimrod; and even those who herded cattle and sheep were forced to protect themselves and their live stock against lions and leopards and the savage Bushmen who waged a constant warfare in which quarter was neither given nor expected. In such circumstances it is not wonderful that the people who[18]had in their veins the blended blood of Holland and Navarre developed to an almost unparalleled degree courage, self-reliance and love of independence, coupled with a passion for solitude and isolation.As inevitable results of the life they led—so isolated and wild—the children grew up untaught; the women, being served by slaves, lost both the Dutch and French habits of thrift and cleanliness; and the men became indifferent to the elegancies of life, and grew more and more stern and narrow-minded on all questions of public policy and religion. But there was no declension of religious fervor. In all their wanderings the Bible went with them as an oracle to be consulted on all subjects, and the altar of family worship never lacked its morning and evening sacrifice. And they retained a passionate love of personal freedom which no effort of the Company’s government could bring under perfect discipline.Magistrates and assessors were appointed in some of the distant stations, but they failed to control the wandering stockmen, who were called Trek Boers because they “trekked” from place to place. Being good marksmen and inured to conflict with wild beasts and wilder[19]men, they formed among themselves companies of fighting men whose duty it was to disperse or destroy the savage Bushmen. These independent military organizations the government recognized and approved by appointing over them a field commander for each district and a subordinate called a field cornet for each subdivision of a district. These officers and their respective commands became permanent features of the system of local government, and the war bands—called commandos—have always been recognized in the records of military operations by the Boers.The administration, through a governor and council appointed by the Dutch East India Company in Holland, was never popular with the colonists. The governor was in no sense responsible to the people he governed. This was one of the causes which prompted the Boers to go out into the wilderness, where distance from the center of authority secured to them greater freedom.In 1779 the disaffected colonists sent commissioners to Holland to demand of the States-General redress of the grievances suffered under the rule of the Dutch East India Company and a share in the government of the colony. This action was due, in part, to actual wrongs inflicted[20]on a liberty-loving people, and, in part, to the spirit of independence which characterized the temper of the age and had led the British colonists in North America to throw off the control of their mother country.After prolonged negotiations the States-General sent out two commissioners to investigate the state of affairs in the Cape colony and to recommend measures of reform. The degree of relief proposed was considered inadequate—especially by those who dwelt in the more distant settlements. Therefore, in 1795, the people of the interior rose up in revolt against the Company’s government—professing, however, unabated loyalty to the mother country. The magistrates appointed by the company were deposed, and little republics were set up, each with a representative assembly. It would have been an easy matter for the government at the Cape to have suppressed these uprisings by cutting off their food supplies. But just then other events claimed the attention of both the governor and the governed—events which drew South Africa into the tumultuous tide of European politics and led to the immediate contact of Boer and Briton, and initiated a struggle between the two[21]which has been renewed at intervals, with varying fortunes, for more than a hundred years.Before going forward to the event of 1795—the first contact of Boer and Briton—it will be well to note some of the more important features of the condition in which that contact found the Boer.The total Boer population of South Africa in 1795 was about seventeen thousand, with a rapid rate of increase. In the mixed blood of the people the proportions of national elements were: Dutch, a little less than two-thirds; French, one-sixth; the remainder was principally German, with a sprinkling of other nationalities.The popular language differed largely from that of Holland at the close of the eighteenth century. The amalgamation with a large body of foreigners, the scant instruction in book learning, and above all the necessity of speaking to the slaves and Hottentots in the simplest manner possible had all tended to the destruction of grammatical forms. The language in common use by the Boer had become a mere dialect, having a very limited vocabulary. But the Dutch Bible—a book that every one read—greatly increased the number of words with which he was familiar. With this addition, however,[22]most of the uneducated South African colonists were unable to understand fully the contents of a newspaper of the time printed in Holland, or a book treating of a subject unfamiliar to them. Naturally this dialect of the Dutch was greatly beloved by the people using it—it was the language of mother, of lover, of friend to friend in parting to meet no more.In no other country were women more completely on an equality with men than in South Africa. Property belonging to a woman while she was single, or acquired by her after marriage, was secured to her in perpetuity so that her husband could neither squander it nor dispose of it in any way without her consent. Neither was it subject to seizure for debts contracted by him, but was as absolutely hers as if no marriage existed.The rights of children to be provided for were sacredly guarded. An individual having five or more children could only dispose by will of half the estate; the remainder belonged to the children, and upon the death of the parent it was equally divided among them; if any were minors their share was taken in trust for them by guardians provided by law. If there were[23]not more than four children the parent could dispose by will of two-thirds of the estate.The industrial pursuits of the people outside of Cape Town were almost entirely agricultural and pastoral. There were no mining interests. There was abundance of fish, but the taking of them was discouraged by government prohibitions of fishing in any waters but Table Bay in summer and False Bay in winter. This measure was taken to save the Company the expense of providing military protection for fishermen at a distance from the fort. In 1718 it was permitted to fish in Saldanha Bay, also, but as one-fifth of the product was exacted as a tax the license was not accepted.The making of wagons and carts of the peculiar kind needed in Africa at that time was carried to great perfection. This, however, was the only important manufacturing industry in the country. For the most part families supplied themselves with homemade articles of use, such as soap, candles, furniture, leather, cloth, harness and farming implements. Everything thus produced was crude and clumsy, but the articles were durable and served the purpose fairly well.All in all, they were a worthy and a very[24]peculiar people—these Boers. They differed largely from all others in habits, language and ideals; but they were loyal to their ideals, and acted with rare good sense and manly energy in carrying them into effect. They were so far free from the prevailing spirit of religious bigotry that in 1795, besides the Dutch Reformed Church—in a sense the national church—the Lutheran and the Moravian denominations were tolerated.The territory in South Africa that had been explored, up to 1795, included the Cape colony, the western coast as far north as Walfish Bay, the eastern coast to the Zambesi River and the Zambesi Valley to a point above Tete, and a few localities in the region now known as Rhodesia. Possibly some roving elephant hunters had crossed the Orange River, but, if so, they were silent as to any discoveries made.The Bushmen had retired from the populous parts of the Colony, and were numerous only along the mountain range in the interior. The Hottentots had dwindled away to a few thousand. The thinning out of these native races was due not so much to mortal conflict with the whites as to the ravages of smallpox and strong drink. Like all savage people they[25]seemed to melt away before these scourges as stubble before flames.And here we close this chapter of the history of the Boers. We leave them, for the moment, divided as to the government of the Dutch East India Company, but a homogeneous people seventeen thousand strong, and having developed out of the elements mixed in their blood and the peculiar environment and experiences in which they lived a new race of civilized men to be known in the history of commerce, diplomacy and war as Africanders.[26]
This is the story, briefly told, of the Dutch Boers in South Africa.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit the shores of South and Southeastern Africa, but they made no attempt to settle the country south of Delagoa Bay. They were traders. The Hottentots had little to sell that they cared to purchase. The route for Portuguese commerce with the East was west of Madagascar, consequently they found it unnecessary to put into Table Bay; the voyage from St. Helena to Mozambique could be made comfortably without seeking a port of supply.
But when the Dutch wrested the eastern trade[12]from the Portuguese, the southeastern portion of Africa assumed an importance to them that it had never before possessed in the esteem of any other nation. Their sea route to the East was south of Madagascar, and it was all but imperative that they should have a port of supply at the turning point of the long voyage between Holland and Batavia. It soon became their practice to call at Table Bay for the purpose of obtaining news, taking in fresh water, catching fish, and bartering with the natives for cattle—in which they were seldom successful.
In 1650 the Dutch East India Company, acting upon the reports and suggestions of influential men who had visited Table Bay and resided in Table Valley several months, determined to establish at Table Bay such a victualing station as had been recommended. In accordance therewith the ships Reiger and Dromedaris and the yacht Goede Hoop—all then lying in the harbor of Amsterdam—were put in commission to carry the party of occupation to Table Bay, under the general command of Jan Van Riebeek.
On Sunday, 24th of December, 1651, the expedition sailed, accompanied by a large fleet of merchant vessels. On the morning of Sunday, the 7th of April, 1652, after a voyage of one[13]hundred and four days, the site of their future home greeted the eyes of the sea-worn emigrants,—Table Mountain, 3,816 feet high, being the central and impressive feature of the landscape. In due time preparations were made to land and begin the necessary operations in establishing themselves in the new and entirely uncivilized country.
The organization of the Dutch East India Company was on a thoroughly military system. It graduated downward from the home Assembly of Seventeen—who were supreme—to a governor-general of India and his council resident in Batavia, and, ranking next below him in their order, to a vast number of admirals, governors and commanders—each having his own council, and acting under the strict rule that whenever these came in contact the lower in rank must give place and render obedience to the higher. It is important to bear this in mind, as it gives a clear insight into the mode of government under which the occupation took place, and which prevailed with little variation for more than a hundred years. The ranking officer of the expedition was Jan Van Riebeek, and next to him in authority were the three commanders as his council in founding the settlement.[14]
Van Riebeek and the three skippers, having inspected Table Valley, selected a site for the fort a little in rear of the ground on which the general postoffice of Cape Town now stands. On that spot a great stronghold was built in the form of a square strengthened by bastions at its angles. Each face of the fort measured 252 Rhynland feet—about 260 feet English measure. The walls were built of earth, twelve feet high, twenty feet in thickness at the base, tapering to sixteen feet at the top, and were surmounted by a parapet. Surrounding the whole structure was a moat, into which the water of Fresh River could be turned. Within the walls were dwellings, barracks, storehouses and other conveniences that might be required in a state of siege. Around the fort were clustered a walled kraal for cattle, a separate inclosure for workshops, and the tents in which the settlers began their life in Africa.
On the 28th of January, 1653, the last of the ships, the Dromedaris, sailed away and left the colonists to their own resources.
The history in detail of this first European settlement in South Africa is of surpassing interest; but, here, it must be sketched in the briefest outline possible, up to the first contact of Boer with Briton.[15]
For the first twenty-five years the aim of the colonists was to keep within easy reach of the fort at the Cape. Up to 1680 the most distant agricultural settlement was at Stellenbosch, about twenty-five miles from the Cape. Not till the end of the century did they push pioneering enterprises beyond the first range of mountains.
There was a steady though not very rapid increase of population. As early as 1658 the disastrous step was taken of introducing slave labor, performed at first by West African negroes—a step which encouraged in the whites an indisposition to work, and doomed that part of Africa to be dependent on the toil of slaves. To their African slaves the Dutch East India Company added numbers of Malay convicts from Java and other parts of its East Indian territories. These Malays took wives from the female convicts of their own race, and to some extent intermarried with the native African slave-women. From such marriages there arose a mongrel, dark people of the servile order, which became a considerable element in the population of Cape Town and its neighboring regions.
In 1689 some three hundred French Huguenots came from Holland in a body and joined the colonists at the Cape. These were a valuable[16]acquisition as an offset to the rapidly increasing servile element. They were mostly persons of refinement, and brought with them habits of industry, strong attachment to the Protestant faith, and a supreme love of liberty. Many of the more respectable colonial families are descended from that stock.
The somewhat intolerant government of the Company hastened the blending of the various classes of the population in one. The Huguenots loved their language and their peculiar faith, and greatly desired to found a separate religious community. But the Company forbade the use of French in official documents and in religious services. As a result of this narrow but far-seeing policy, by the middle of the eighteenth century the Huguenots had amalgamated with their Dutch fellow-colonists in language, religion and politics. It was not until 1780 that the Company’s government permitted the opening of a Lutheran church, although many Germans of that persuasion had emigrated to the Cape.
The distinctive Africander type of character began to appear at the time when the settlers began to move from the coast into the interior of the country. There was everything to favor the rapid development of a new type of humanity.[17]For the most part the Dutch and the Germans belonged to the humbler classes; the situation was isolated; the home ties were few; the voyage to Europe was so long that communication was difficult and expensive; and so they maintained little connection with—and soon lost all feeling for—the fatherlands. As for the Huguenots, they had no home country to look to. France had banished them, and they were not of Holland—neither in blood nor in speech. Thus it came to pass that the whites of South Africa who went into the interior as pioneers went consenting to the feeling that every bond between Europe and themselves was severed—that they were a new people whose true home and destiny, to the latest generations, were to be in Africa.
Many of them became stockmen, roaming with their flocks and herds over vast tracts of grazing lands, for which they paid a nominal rent to the Company. Some of them became mighty hunters of big game—like Nimrod; and even those who herded cattle and sheep were forced to protect themselves and their live stock against lions and leopards and the savage Bushmen who waged a constant warfare in which quarter was neither given nor expected. In such circumstances it is not wonderful that the people who[18]had in their veins the blended blood of Holland and Navarre developed to an almost unparalleled degree courage, self-reliance and love of independence, coupled with a passion for solitude and isolation.
As inevitable results of the life they led—so isolated and wild—the children grew up untaught; the women, being served by slaves, lost both the Dutch and French habits of thrift and cleanliness; and the men became indifferent to the elegancies of life, and grew more and more stern and narrow-minded on all questions of public policy and religion. But there was no declension of religious fervor. In all their wanderings the Bible went with them as an oracle to be consulted on all subjects, and the altar of family worship never lacked its morning and evening sacrifice. And they retained a passionate love of personal freedom which no effort of the Company’s government could bring under perfect discipline.
Magistrates and assessors were appointed in some of the distant stations, but they failed to control the wandering stockmen, who were called Trek Boers because they “trekked” from place to place. Being good marksmen and inured to conflict with wild beasts and wilder[19]men, they formed among themselves companies of fighting men whose duty it was to disperse or destroy the savage Bushmen. These independent military organizations the government recognized and approved by appointing over them a field commander for each district and a subordinate called a field cornet for each subdivision of a district. These officers and their respective commands became permanent features of the system of local government, and the war bands—called commandos—have always been recognized in the records of military operations by the Boers.
The administration, through a governor and council appointed by the Dutch East India Company in Holland, was never popular with the colonists. The governor was in no sense responsible to the people he governed. This was one of the causes which prompted the Boers to go out into the wilderness, where distance from the center of authority secured to them greater freedom.
In 1779 the disaffected colonists sent commissioners to Holland to demand of the States-General redress of the grievances suffered under the rule of the Dutch East India Company and a share in the government of the colony. This action was due, in part, to actual wrongs inflicted[20]on a liberty-loving people, and, in part, to the spirit of independence which characterized the temper of the age and had led the British colonists in North America to throw off the control of their mother country.
After prolonged negotiations the States-General sent out two commissioners to investigate the state of affairs in the Cape colony and to recommend measures of reform. The degree of relief proposed was considered inadequate—especially by those who dwelt in the more distant settlements. Therefore, in 1795, the people of the interior rose up in revolt against the Company’s government—professing, however, unabated loyalty to the mother country. The magistrates appointed by the company were deposed, and little republics were set up, each with a representative assembly. It would have been an easy matter for the government at the Cape to have suppressed these uprisings by cutting off their food supplies. But just then other events claimed the attention of both the governor and the governed—events which drew South Africa into the tumultuous tide of European politics and led to the immediate contact of Boer and Briton, and initiated a struggle between the two[21]which has been renewed at intervals, with varying fortunes, for more than a hundred years.
Before going forward to the event of 1795—the first contact of Boer and Briton—it will be well to note some of the more important features of the condition in which that contact found the Boer.
The total Boer population of South Africa in 1795 was about seventeen thousand, with a rapid rate of increase. In the mixed blood of the people the proportions of national elements were: Dutch, a little less than two-thirds; French, one-sixth; the remainder was principally German, with a sprinkling of other nationalities.
The popular language differed largely from that of Holland at the close of the eighteenth century. The amalgamation with a large body of foreigners, the scant instruction in book learning, and above all the necessity of speaking to the slaves and Hottentots in the simplest manner possible had all tended to the destruction of grammatical forms. The language in common use by the Boer had become a mere dialect, having a very limited vocabulary. But the Dutch Bible—a book that every one read—greatly increased the number of words with which he was familiar. With this addition, however,[22]most of the uneducated South African colonists were unable to understand fully the contents of a newspaper of the time printed in Holland, or a book treating of a subject unfamiliar to them. Naturally this dialect of the Dutch was greatly beloved by the people using it—it was the language of mother, of lover, of friend to friend in parting to meet no more.
In no other country were women more completely on an equality with men than in South Africa. Property belonging to a woman while she was single, or acquired by her after marriage, was secured to her in perpetuity so that her husband could neither squander it nor dispose of it in any way without her consent. Neither was it subject to seizure for debts contracted by him, but was as absolutely hers as if no marriage existed.
The rights of children to be provided for were sacredly guarded. An individual having five or more children could only dispose by will of half the estate; the remainder belonged to the children, and upon the death of the parent it was equally divided among them; if any were minors their share was taken in trust for them by guardians provided by law. If there were[23]not more than four children the parent could dispose by will of two-thirds of the estate.
The industrial pursuits of the people outside of Cape Town were almost entirely agricultural and pastoral. There were no mining interests. There was abundance of fish, but the taking of them was discouraged by government prohibitions of fishing in any waters but Table Bay in summer and False Bay in winter. This measure was taken to save the Company the expense of providing military protection for fishermen at a distance from the fort. In 1718 it was permitted to fish in Saldanha Bay, also, but as one-fifth of the product was exacted as a tax the license was not accepted.
The making of wagons and carts of the peculiar kind needed in Africa at that time was carried to great perfection. This, however, was the only important manufacturing industry in the country. For the most part families supplied themselves with homemade articles of use, such as soap, candles, furniture, leather, cloth, harness and farming implements. Everything thus produced was crude and clumsy, but the articles were durable and served the purpose fairly well.
All in all, they were a worthy and a very[24]peculiar people—these Boers. They differed largely from all others in habits, language and ideals; but they were loyal to their ideals, and acted with rare good sense and manly energy in carrying them into effect. They were so far free from the prevailing spirit of religious bigotry that in 1795, besides the Dutch Reformed Church—in a sense the national church—the Lutheran and the Moravian denominations were tolerated.
The territory in South Africa that had been explored, up to 1795, included the Cape colony, the western coast as far north as Walfish Bay, the eastern coast to the Zambesi River and the Zambesi Valley to a point above Tete, and a few localities in the region now known as Rhodesia. Possibly some roving elephant hunters had crossed the Orange River, but, if so, they were silent as to any discoveries made.
The Bushmen had retired from the populous parts of the Colony, and were numerous only along the mountain range in the interior. The Hottentots had dwindled away to a few thousand. The thinning out of these native races was due not so much to mortal conflict with the whites as to the ravages of smallpox and strong drink. Like all savage people they[25]seemed to melt away before these scourges as stubble before flames.
And here we close this chapter of the history of the Boers. We leave them, for the moment, divided as to the government of the Dutch East India Company, but a homogeneous people seventeen thousand strong, and having developed out of the elements mixed in their blood and the peculiar environment and experiences in which they lived a new race of civilized men to be known in the history of commerce, diplomacy and war as Africanders.[26]