CHAPTER VI

THE DUTCH IN AFRICA

Although, as will be seen in a succeeding chapter, British seamen were the first adventurers of other nationalities to follow the Portuguese in the exploration of the African coasts, the Dutch, as settlers and colonists, are almost entitled to rank chronologically next to the Portuguese and Spanish. The Dutch made their first trading voyage to the Guinea Coast in 1595, 16 years after throwing off the yoke of Spain. On the plea of warring with the Spanish Empire, which then included Portugal, they displaced the latter power at various places along the West coast of Africa—at Arguin, at Goree (off Dakar, purchased from the natives 1621), Elmina (1637), and at Saõ Paulo de Loanda about the same time; while they three times threatened Moçambique on the East coast (1604, 1607, 1662), and possessed themselves of the island of Mauritius (1598), which had been a place of call for Portuguese ships. Mauritius, discovered in 1505 by the Portuguese sea-captain, Mascarenhas (after whom the “Mascarene” Islands—the Mauritius-Réunion-Rodriguez groups—have been named), was uninhabited at the time and possessed enormous quantities of a large and monstrous ground fruit-pigeon, the Dodo, which the Dutch sailors and their imported herds of swine exterminated in the course of about a hundred years. On the West coast of Africa, besides supplanting the Portuguese, the Dutch established themselves strongly on the Gold Coast by means of 16 new forts of their own[86], in most cases alongside British settlements, which were regarded by the Dutch with the keenest jealousy.

Dutch hold on the Gold Coast was responsible for an enormous increase of the Slave Trade between West Africa and America and is the reason why such a large proportion of the United States, West Indian, and Guiana negroes are of Ashanti (Coromanti, Kormantyn) and Fanti descent; as is evident from their folk-lore, legends and the linguistic evidence of their dialects. The Dutch were not loath to mingle their blood with that of the Gold Coast negroes; and their long occupancy of these forts produced an impression in the shape of a race of Dutch half-castes, which endures to this day, and furnishes useful employés to the British Government in many minor capacities. But after the abolition of the slave trade Dutch commerce with the Guinea Coast began to wane, and their political influence disappeared also; so that by 1872 the last of the Dutch ports had been transferred to Great Britain in return for the cession on our part of rights we possessed over Sumatra. Meantime Dutch trade had begun to take firm hold over the Congo and Angola Coast; and it is possible that, had the cession of the Gold Coast forts been delayed a few years longer, it would never have been made, for Holland possesses a considerable trade with Africa, and there has been a strong feeling of regret in the Netherlands for some time past at the exclusion of that country’s flag from the African continent.

But a far more important colonization than a foothold on the Slave-trade Coast was made indirectly for Holland in the middle of the 17th century; the Dutch East India Company, desirous of making the Cape of Good Hope something more than a port of call, which might fall into the hands of Portugal, France, England, or any other rival, decided to occupy that important station. The Dutch had taken possession of St Helena in 1645; but a Dutch ship having been wrecked at Table Bay in 1648, the crew landed, and encamped where Cape Town now stands. Here they were obliged to live for five months, until picked up by other Dutch ships; but during this period they sowed and reaped grain, and obtained plenty of meat from the natives, with whom they were on good terms. The favourable report they gave of this country on their return to Holland decided the Dutch Company, after years of hesitation, to take possession of Table Bay. An expedition was sent out under Jan van Riebeek, a ship’s surgeon, who had already visited South Africa. The three ships of Van Riebeek’s expedition reached Table Bay on the 6th of April, 1652[87].

At different periods in the early part of the 16th century the Dutch had consolidated their sea-going ventures into two great chartered companies—the Dutch Company of the West Indies, and the Dutch Company of the East Indies. The West Indian Company took over all the settlements on the West Coast of Africa, and had the monopoly of trade or rule along all the Atlantic Coast of tropical America. The East India Company was to possess the like monopoly from the Pacific Coast of South America across the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope. The head-quarters of the East India Company, where their Governor-General and Council were established, was at Batavia, in the island of Java. It was not at first intended to establish anything like a colony in South Africa—merely a secure place of call for the ships engaged in the East Indian trade. But circumstances proved too strong for this modest reserve. The inevitable quarrel arose between the Dutch garrison at Table Bay and the surrounding Hottentots. At the time of the Dutch settlement of the Cape all the south-west corner of Africa was inhabited only and sparsely by Hottentots and Bushmen; the prolific Bantu Negroes not coming nearer to the Dutch than the vicinity of Algoa Bay. A little war occurred with the Hottentots in 1659, as a result of which the Dutch first won by fighting, and subsequently bought, a small coast strip of land from Saldanha Bay on the north to False Bay on the south, thus securing the peninsula which terminates at the Cape of Good Hope. French sailing vessels were in the habit of calling at Saldanha Bay; and in 1666 and 1670 desultory attempts were made by the French to establish a footing there. Holland also about this time was alternately at war with England or France or both powers. Therefore the Dutch resolved to build forts more capable of resisting European attack than those which were sufficient to defend the colony against Hottentots. Still, in spite of occasional unprovoked hostilities on the part of the Dutch, they were left in undisturbed possession of the Cape of Good Hope for more than a hundred years. The English had St Helena as a place of call (which they took from the Dutch in 1655); and the French had settlements in Madagascar and at Mauritius, where they succeeded a former Dutch occupation. On the other hand, the officials of the Dutch Company were instructed to show civility to all comers without undue generosity; they might supply them with water for their ships, but they were to give as little as possible in the way of provisions and ships’ stores. It was to the interest of both France and England that some European settlement should exist at the Cape of Good Hope for the refreshment of vessels and the refuge of storm-driven ships. After several attempts, which continued down to 1673, to dispossess the English of St Helena, the Dutch finally surrendered the island to them. They had also in 1598 taken the Island of Mauritius, and commenced a definite occupation in 1640. But this island was abandoned in 1710, and became soon afterwards a French possession. So that the French at Mauritius on the one hand (and also on the Island of Bourbon, now called Réunion) and the English on the other at St Helena, had places of call where they could break the long voyage to and from India, and were therefore content to leave the Dutch East India Company in full possession of South Africa.

The Government of the Netherlands East India Company was thoroughly despotic. It was administered by a Chamber of 17 directors at Amsterdam, with deputies at Batavia. The Commandant at the Cape, who was under the orders of Amsterdam and Batavia alternately and might be overruled by any officer of superior rank who called at his station in passing, was the slave of the Company and had to carry out its orders implicitly. He was advised in his local legislation by an executive council, consisting of a number of officers who assisted him in the administration, and legislating by means of proclamations and orders-in-council without any representation of popular opinion among the colonists, who, however, in time were allowed to elect members of the Council of Justice or High Court.

After the first three years’ hesitation, strenuous efforts were directed to the development of agriculture, especially the cultivation of grain. Wheat was sown in suitable localities, and vines and willows were planted by the banks of streams on the hillsides at the back of Cape Town. Nevertheless the colonists were terribly hampered by restrictions, which made them almost slaves to the Company. White labour proving expensive and somewhat rebellious, an attempt was made to introduce negro slaves from Angola and Moçambique, but they were not a success as field labourers. The Dutch therefore turned towards Madagascar, and above all, to the Malay Archipelago; and from the latter especially workers were introduced who have in time grown into a separate population of Muhammadan freemen of considerable prosperity[88]. As Dutch immigrants still held back from settling the Cape with an abundant population (owing to the greed and despotic meddlesomeness of the Company), it became more and more necessary to introduce black labour; and in the first half of the 18th century many negro slaves were imported from the Gold Coast and from Moçambique. The Cape became a slave-worked colony, but on the whole the slaves were treated with kindness; their children were sent to school, and some attempt was made to introduce Christianity amongst them. The people really to be pitied, however, were not the imported slaves, but the Hottentots, who had become a nation of serfs to the Dutch farmers, and whose numbers began greatly to diminish under the influence of drink and syphilis, and through their being driven away from the fertile, well-watered lands back into the inhospitable deserts. In 1682, after the colony had been established 30 years, a census showed a total of 663 Dutch settlers, of whom 162 were under age or children. For about the same period few if any attempts were made to explore the country 100 miles from Cape Town; but the coast from Little Namakwaland on the west to Zululand on the east had been examined by the end of the 17th century. Indeed the Bay of Natal was purchased by a representative of the Netherlands Company in 1689; but the ship bringing back the purchase deed was lost, and no further attempt was made to push the claim. In 1684 the first export of grain to the Indies took place, and in 1688 some Cape wine was sent to Ceylon. In 1685 and in subsequent years representations were made to the directors in Amsterdam that the colony consisted mainly of bachelors, and that good marriageable girls should be sent out. The result of this appeal was that in 1687 many of the free Burghers (namely, persons more or less independent of the Company) had been furnished with wives; and they and their families amounted to nearly 600, in addition to 439 other Europeans, who were mainly employés of the Company.

In 1685, Louis XIV unwittingly dealt a fearful blow to France in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which resulted in thousands of French Protestants emigrating to other countries where they might enjoy freedom of religion. The Protestant Dutch sympathized with the homeless Huguenots; and the Netherlands Company decided to give free passages and grants of land to a number of these refugees. By 1689 nearly 200 French emigrants had been landed at the Cape and settled in the mountain country behind Cape Town. Here, however, they were not allowed to form a separate community. They were scattered amongst the Dutch settlers, their children were taught Dutch, and in a few years they were thoroughly absorbed in the Dutch community; though they have left ineffaceable traces of their presence in the many French surnames to be met with amongst the South African Dutch at the present day (always pronounced however in the Dutch way), and in the dark eyes, dark hair, and handsome features so often seen in the best-looking type of Boer. Handsomer men and women than are some of the Afrikanders it would be impossible to meet with; but this personal beauty is usually traceable to Huguenot ancestry. The French settlers taught the Dutch improved methods of growing corn and wine, and altogether more scientific agriculture. Towards the latter end of the 17th century the Dutch introduced the oak tree into the Cape Peninsula and the suburbs of Cape Town, where it is now such a handsome and prominent feature. All this time the Hottentots gave almost no trouble. They were employed here and there as servants; but they attempted no insurrection against the European settlers, though they quarrelled very much amongst themselves. In 1713 large numbers of them were exterminated by an epidemic of smallpox. The Dutch had not yet come into contact with the so-called Kaffirs[89].

Towards the middle of the 18th century the Dutch Company ceased to prosper, suffering from French and English competition. Already, at the beginning of the 18th century, its oppressive rule, and the abuse of power on the part of its governors, who used its authority and its servants to enrich themselves, resulted in an uprising amongst the settlers; and although some of these were arrested, imprisoned, and exiled, the Company gave some redress to their grievances by forbidding its officials in future to own land or to trade. Even before this the Company had found it necessary to place a special official, answering to an Auditor-General and an independent judge combined, alongside the Commandant or Governor, directly responsible to the Directors and independent of the Governor’s authority; but this institution only led to quarrels and divided loyalty. Amongst the governors there were some able and upright men; and special mention may be made of Governor Tulbagh, who ruled without reproach and with great ability for twenty years (1751-71)[90].

In spite of licences and monopolies, tithes, taxes, and rents, the Company could not pay its way in Cape Colony. In 1779, it was more closely associated with the State in Holland by the appointment of the Stadhouder (or Head of the State) as perpetual Chief Director. With this change, the Company, partly supported by the State, managed to continue the direction of its affairs; and there was possibly some lessening of restrictions, which enabled settlers to live further afield. Until the beginning of the 18th century a standing order had forbidden trading between the settlers and the natives; but this order being abolished, the farmers commenced to buy cattle from the Hottentots, and the population became more scattered. In leasing land to the farmers the Company laid down the rule that clear spaces of three miles should intervene between one homestead and the next; and this rule brought about a wider distribution of European settlers than was contemplated in the Company’s policy.

By the beginning of the 18th century the Dutch settlers had begun to cross the mountains which lie behind the narrow belt of coast land that forms a projection into the ocean on either side of the Cape of Good Hope. Seventy years later the boundaries of Cape Colony on the north and west were the Berg River and the Zwartebergen Mountains, and on the east the Gamtoos River. A few years later the pioneers of colonization had crossed the Berg River, and had established themselves as far north as the Olifants River, so named because earlier explorers had seen on its banks herds of hundreds of elephants. The Orange River was first discovered in 1760; and in 1779 Captain Gordon, a Scotchman in the service of the Dutch Company, had traced it for some distance down to its mouth, and had named it after the head of the Dutch State. Hitherto, the Dutch Government was confined to a narrow coast strip; but in 1785 the district of Graaf Reinet[91] was formed, and the same name was given to the village which formed its capital. Then the Dutch boundary crept up to the Great Fish River, which rises far away to the north, near the course of the Orange River. This Great Fish River remained the easternmost boundary of the Colony in Dutch times. To the north its limits were vague, and in one direction reached nearly to the Orange River, beyond the second great range of South African mountains—the Sneeubergen. But beyond the immediate limits of Cape Colony the Dutch displayed some interest in the fate of South-East Africa. They opened up a furtive and occasional trade with the Portuguese coast of East Africa, which at first began for slaves (numbers of Makua were brought from Moçambique to Cape Town), was continued for tropical products, and, with many interruptions, resulted in the establishment at the present day of important Dutch commercial firms along the Mozambique coast. In 1720, after the evacuation of Mauritius, an expedition was sent from Cape Colony to Delagoa Bay, which, though claimed by the Portuguese, had been abandoned by them at the beginning of the 18th century, so far as actual occupation was concerned (see p. 110). A fort was built by the Dutch which was named Lydzaamheid; and tentative explorations were made in the direction of the Zambezi, from which gold dust was procured. During ten years of occupation, however, the deaths from fever were so numerous that the settlement was given up in 1730.

In 1770 the total European population in Cape Colony was nearly 10,000, of whom more than 8000 were free colonists, and the remainder “servants” and employés of the Company. All this time, although the prosperity of the Cape increased and its export of wheat, wine, and live-stock progressed satisfactorily, the revenue invariably failed to meet the expenditure; and, if other events had not occurred, the Dutch Company must soon have been compelled by bankruptcy to transfer the administration of the Cape to other hands. But towards the close of the 18th century, the Dutch, too weak to resist the influence of France and Russia, were showing veiled hostility towards England, with the result that England—which on the other hand was secretly longing to possess the Cape, owing to the development of the British Empire in India—declared war against the Netherlands at the end of 1780. In 1781 a British fleet under Commodore Johnstone left England for the Cape of Good Hope with 3000 troops on board. Johnstone, however, from storms and other reasons not so apparent, but possibly due to a certain indecision of mind, delayed his fleet at Porto Praya, in the Cape Verde Islands; and news of the expedition having been treacherously imparted to France by persons in England who were in her pay, Admiral Suffren—one of the greatest of sea-fighters—surprised the British fleet at the Cape Verde Islands with a squadron of inferior strength, and gave it such a sound drubbing that Johnstone was delayed for several months in reaching Cape Town, where the French had preceded him, and had landed sufficient men to make a British attack on Cape Town of doubtful success. Johnstone therefore contented himself in a not very creditable way with destroying the unarmed Dutch shipping in the port, and then left Cape Town without effecting a landing. The result was the garrisoning of Cape Town by a French regiment for two more years, during which time however another attempt was made by the British to seize the Cape, which was nearly successful. In the course of this war, however, England apparently made up her mind that the possession of the Cape of Good Hope and of Trinkomali in Ceylon was necessary to the welfare of her Indian possessions, and did not lose sight of this policy when the next legitimate opportunity presented itself to make war upon Holland. On the other hand, the French, though they withdrew their troops in 1783, were equally alive to the importance of the Cape; and in the great duel which was to take place between the two nations it is tolerably certain that South Africa would never have remained in the hands of the Dutch; if it had not become English it would have been taken and kept by the French.

About this time the Dutch came into conflict with the Kafirs. This vanguard of the great Bantu race had been invading southern Africa almost concurrently with the white people. Coming from the north-east and north they had—we may guess—crossed the Zambezi about the 6th century of the Christian Era; and their invasion had brought about the partial destruction and abandonment of the Sabaean and Arab settlements in the gold-mining districts of south-east Africa. The Semitic inhabitants of Zimbabwe and other mining centres had been driven back to the coast at Sofala. The progress of the black Bantu against the now more concentrated Hottentots and Bushmen was then somewhat slower, delayed no doubt by natural obstacles, by the desperate defence of the Hottentots, the tracts of waterless country on the west, and internecine warfare amongst themselves. Overlying the first three divisions of Bantu invaders there came down across the Zambezi from the districts of Tanganyika the great Zulu race, akin to the Bechuana-Basuto people who had preceded them, but less mixed with Hottentot blood, and speaking a peculiar Bantu language[92]. By the beginning of the 18th century this seventh wave—as one may call it—of Bantu invasion had swept as far south as the Great Kei River, and some years later had pushed the Hottentots back to the Great Fish River. In 1778 they came into direct contact with the Dutch; and the Governor of the Cape entered into an agreement with the Kafir chiefs that the Great Fish River should be the boundary between Dutch rule and Kafir settlement. Nevertheless, this agreement was soon transgressed by the Kafirs, who commenced raiding the Dutch settlers. In 1781 the first Kafir war ended disastrously for the Bantu invaders, who were driven back for a time to the Kei River. Eight years later they again invaded Cape Colony. A policy of conciliation was adopted, which ended by the Kafirs being allowed to settle on the Dutch side of the Great Fish River in 1789.

In 1790 the Netherlands East India Company was practically bankrupt; and in the following year (when it was computed that the European population of the Cape numbered 14,600 persons, owning 17,000 slaves) the Dutch Governor was recalled to Europe, and the country was for a year left in a state of administrative chaos, until two Commissioners, sent out by the States General, arrived and took over the government. But the next year these Commissioners went on to Batavia; and the Burghers of the interior districts became so dissatisfied with the mismanagement of affairs that they expelled their magistrates and took the administration of their district into their own hands, calling themselves “Nationals,” and becoming to some degree infected with the spirit of the French Revolution. Meantime, in the same year, 1793, the Dutch Government had joined England and Prussia in making war upon France. Two years afterwards, in 1795, the French troops occupied Holland, and turned it into the Batavian Republic, a state in alliance with France. The Prince of Orange, hereditary Stadhouder of the Netherlands, fled to England; and in the spring of 1795 he authorized the British Government to occupy Cape Colony on behalf of the States General in order to obviate its seizure by the French. In June 1795 a British fleet carrying troops commanded by General Craig arrived at False Bay. The Dutch were not very willing to surrender Cape Town at the first demand, even though the interior of the country was in revolt against the Company. Both the officer administering the Company’s Government and the dissatisfied Burghers sank their differences in opposition to the landing of the British. The latter were anxious to avoid hostilities, and therefore spent a month in negotiations; but on the 14th of July the British forcibly occupied Simons Town, and three weeks later drove the Dutch from a position they had taken up near Cape Town. In September 3000 more troops arrived under General Clarke, and in the middle of that month marched on Cape Town from the south-east. A capitulation was finally arranged after an attack and a defence which had been half-hearted. Thenceforth for eight years the English occupied Cape Town and administered the adjoining colony. At first their rule was military, just, and satisfactory; afterwards, when a civilian governor was sent out, a system of corruption and favouritism was introduced which caused much dissatisfaction. The British also had made it known that they only held the colony in trust for the Stadhouder; and this made the Dutch settlers uncertain as to their allegiance. Meantime, however, the British administration gave some satisfaction to the settlers by its policy of free trade and open markets, and by certain reliefs in taxation; also by the institution of a Burgher Senate of six members. But the Boers of the interior remained for some time recalcitrant. The Dutch, moreover, made an attempt to regain possession of the Cape by dispatching a fleet of nine ships with 2000 men on board, which, however, was made to surrender at Saldanha Bay by Admiral Elphinstone and General Craig without firing a shot. Kafir raids recommenced; and the British having organized a Hottentot corps of police, the other Hottentots who were serfs to the Dutch rose in insurrection against their former masters. When in 1803 the British evacuated Cape Town, they did not leave the colony in a sufficiently satisfactory condition to encourage the Dutch settlers to opt for British rule. From 1803 to 1806 the Dutch Government ruled Cape Colony as a colony, and not as the appendage of a Chartered company, which had now disappeared. The Cape ceased to be subordinate to Batavia, and possessed a Governor and Council of its own. A check was placed on the importation of slaves, and European immigration was encouraged. Postal communication and the administration of justice were organized or improved. In fact, the Commissioner-General De Mist and Governor Janssens, in the two years and nine months of their rule, laid the foundations of an excellent system of colonial government. But the march of events was too strong for them. The great minister Pitt, in the summer of 1805, secretly organized an expedition which should carry nearly 7000 troops to seize the Cape. In spite of delays and storms, this fleet reached Table Bay at the beginning of January, 1806. Six British regiments were landed 18 miles north of Cape Town. Governor Janssens went out to meet them with such poor forces as he could gather together—2000 in all against 4000 British. The result of course was disastrous to the Dutch, whose soldiers mainly consisted of half-hearted German mercenaries. On the 16th of January, Cape Town surrendered; and after some futile resistance by Janssens in the interior, a capitulation was signed on January 18, and Janssens and the Dutch soldiers were sent back to the Netherlands by the British Government.

By a Convention dated August 13, 1814, the Dutch Government with the Prince of Orange at its head ceded Cape Colony and the American possession of Demerara to Great Britain against the payment of £6,000,000, which was made either by the actual tendering of money to the Dutch Government, or the wiping off of Dutch debts.

On the other hand, the surrender of the Cape to Great Britain induced the latter power to give back to Holland most of the Dutch possessions in the East Indies, which we had seized and administered during the Napoleonic wars. If Holland lost South Africa—which she had only directly ruled for three years—she was enabled by the British attitude of self-denial to build up an empire in the East only second in wealth and population to the Asiatic dominions of Great Britain.

Yet, in an indirect fashion, Dutch Africa exists still, though the flag of Holland no longer waves over any portion of African soil as a ruling power. The old rivalry between the English and the Dutch, which had begun almost as soon as the Dutch were a free people, and competitors with us for the trade of the East and West Indies, had created a feeling of enmity between the two races, which ought never to have existed, seeing how nearly they are of the same stock, and how closely allied in language, religion, and to some extent in history—also how nearly matched they are in physical and mental worth. Curiously enough, there is far greater affinity in thought and character between the Scotch and the Dutch than between the Dutch and the English. The same thriftiness, bordering at times on parsimony, oddly combined with the largest-hearted hospitality, the same tendency to strike a hard bargain, even to overreach in matters of business, and the same dogged perseverance, characterize both Dutch and Scotch; while in matters of religion, almost precisely the same form of Protestant Christianity appeals to both; so much so, that there is practically a fusion between the Dutch Reformed Church and the Presbyterians. Had Scotchmen been sent out to administer Cape Colony in its early days, it is probable that something like a fusion of races might have taken place, and there would have been no Dutch question to cause dissension in South African politics in the 19th century. The Scotch would have understood the Boer settlers and their idiosyncracies, and would not have made fun of them or been so deliberately unsympathetic as were some of the earlier English governors. Slavery would have been abolished all the same, but it would have been abolished more cautiously, in a way that would not have left behind the sting of a grievance. But after Cape Colony had been definitely ceded to Great Britain, its governors in the early days were mostly Englishmen, who, though often able and just men, were at little pains to understand the peculiarities of the Boer character, and to conciliate these suspicious, uneducated farmers. Another source of trouble was the influx of British missionaries, who found much to condemn in the Dutch treatment of the natives, which resembled that in vogue amongst Britons of the previous century, before the spirit of philanthropy was abroad. Some of these missionaries, it is true, were Scotchmen, though belonging to Protestant sects of more distinctly English character. At any rate, the missionaries no doubt had so much right on their side in condemning the Boers for their conduct towards the natives, that their feelings in this respect overcame their national affinity for the Dutch. The Boer settler at no time showed that fiendish cruelty to the natives he was dispossessing which was, and is, so terribly characteristic of the Spanish colonization of Mexico or northern South America, or of some of the English, French, and Portuguese adventurers on the West coast of Africa in the 17th century; but he was determined to make of the native a serf, and denied him the rights of a man like unto himself. If the native revolted against this attitude he was exterminated in a businesslike fashion; but if he submitted, as did most of the Hottentots, he was treated with patriarchal kindness and leniency. The Dutch settlers appear from the first to have dissociated their dealings with the Hottentots from their ordinary code of morals. It was not thought dishonest to cheat them, not thought illegal to rob them, not thought immoral to use their women as concubines. So entirely without scruples were the Dutch on this last point, that whole races arose, and have since become nations likely to survive and prosper, whose origin was the illicit union of Dutch men and Hottentot women. These “bastards,” as they were frankly called, were well treated by the Dutch; they were not disowned, were usually converted to Christianity, and were taught to lead a more or less civilized life and to talk the Dutch language, which they speak in a corrupt form at the present day. In short, the morals of the South African Dutch were the morals of the Old Testament, as were those of Cromwell’s soldiers; and in this and many other modes of thought the Dutch Afrikanders lived still in the 17th century, whereas the British missionaries were of the early 19th, in the red-hot glow of its as yet disillusioned and somewhat frothy philanthropy. The Dutch settlers were denounced at Exeter Hall and on every missionary platform; and the fact that many of the accusations were true in great measure did not make them more palatable to the accused.

As the Government policy at the Cape was for the first half of the century greatly influenced by the missionary societies, the Dutch with some justice regarded these attacks and recriminations as directly emanating from the British Government, and hence withdrew from or rebelled against our rule. The dissentient, dissatisfied Boers began to trek away from the settled portion of Cape Colony into the wilderness behind, where they might still lead the pleasant, unfettered, patriarchal life they had grown to love. They travelled beyond the Orange River, which had come to be the northern limit of British influence, and, avoiding the deserts of Bechuanaland, passed north-eastwards into the better-watered territories now known as the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. They also sought a way out towards the sea in what is now the colony of Natal. Here they came into conflict first with the Kafirs and Basuto on the west, and then with the Zulus on the east. The former were to some extent under British protection; therefore the British Government was ready to espouse their cause if they were unjustly dealt with. The Zulus, on the other hand, were strong enough and numerous enough to prevent a Boer settlement on their land. Nevertheless, the Boer invasion of Natal from the north was at that time a transgression into territory recently conquered and depopulated by one of the most abominable shedders of blood that ever arose amongst Negro tyrants—Chaka, the second[93] king of the Zulus. This latter saw the danger, and lured the pioneers of the Boers into a position where he was able to massacre them at his ease. With splendid gallantry—one’s blood tingles with admiration as one reads the record of it—the few remaining Boers mustered their forces and avenged this dastardly murder by a drastic defeat of the Zulus. But this was in the early forties, when British adventurers, more or less discouraged or unencouraged by the Home Government, had founded a coast settlement in Natal, on the site of what is now the town of Durban. The usual shilly-shally on the part of the British Government misled the Boers into thinking that they could maintain themselves in Natal against our wishes. As they had further broken an agreement with us by attacking the Basuto and the Kafirs, a British force was despatched against them in 1842, which, after a brief struggle, induced them to capitulate. Natal was then secured as a British colony, and the Boers with bitter disappointment had to seek their independent state to the north of the Orange River. But here also they were followed up; and, had the Governor of the Cape—Sir George Grey—been supported from Downing Street, the Orange River sovereignty would never have become the Orange Free State, and it is probable that even the territory beyond the Vaal River might in like manner have been subjected to British control.

But Downing Street for eighty years after the cession of the Cape of Good Hope persistently mismanaged South African affairs, now blowing hot with undue heat, now blowing cold, and nipping wise enterprise in the bud. The action of the Governor was repudiated, and the Sand River Convention unratified. In the most formal manner the Boers north of the Orange River were accorded absolute independence, subject to certain provisions about slavery; and the like privilege had been previously accorded to those who had further trekked across the Vaal River at a time when the Orange River State was likely to become a British Colony. So, from 1852 and 1854 respectively[94], the South African Dutch formed two states entirely independent of British rule in their internal affairs, and very slightly in their external relations. The Orange Free State, which contained a considerable British element dating from the period of British sovereignty, had latterly an uneventful career of steady prosperity[95], due in large measure to the wisdom of its chief magistrates. When the diamond fields were discovered on its borders towards the end of the “sixties” it had some cause for complaint against the British Government, since, taking advantage of the undefined rights of a Grikwa (Bastard Hottentot) chief, the British extended their rule over this arid territory north of the Orange River, which was suddenly found to be worth untold millions of pounds. But the amount of territory under dispute was relatively small; and, if the British had transgressed their rightful borderland to some slight degree, they atoned for it by paying the Orange State an indemnity of £90,000. Great Britain also intervened several times to prevent the warlike Basuto (who dwell in that little African Switzerland between the Orange Free State and Natal) either from raiding the Orange Free State, or from being themselves raided and conquered by Boer reprisals. Eventually (1882) Basutoland, whose affairs had been somewhat mismanaged by the Cape Parliament, was taken under direct imperial control; and ever since there has been a complete cessation of trouble in that quarter with the Orange Free State.

The career of the Transvaal Republic was much less successful in its early days. The territory was vaster, in many places not so healthy; and the native population, especially in the eastern districts[96], was turbulent, and strongly averse to accepting Boer rule. The existence of gold, though occasionally hinted at by unheeded pioneers, was unknown to the world at large, and absolutely ignored by the Boers; there was little or no trade, and the European population was scanty. By 1877 the condition of this state had become so hopeless, with a bankrupt treasury and the menace of a Zulu invasion, that it was annexed, somewhat abruptly, by the Imperial representative, Sir Theophilus Shepstone. No doubt this step was consonant with the enlightened policy then favoured by the Imperial Government and subsequently by Sir Bartle Frere, who was to become Governor of the Cape during the latter part of the late Earl Carnarvon’s tenancy of the Colonial Office. Lord Carnarvon himself was resolutely intent on carrying out in Africa south of the Zambezi a scheme of federation similar to that which had in 1866 consolidated the Dominion of Canada. But the actual method by which the Transvaal was taken over was not a well considered one; and unhappily it was followed by the appointment of an officer to rule over that country whose demeanour was wholly unsympathetic to the Boer nature. At the end of 1880 the Boers revolted. After a short military campaign, conspicuous for its utter lack of generalship on the part of the English, and for the disastrous defeats inflicted on our forces by the Boers at Lang’s Nek and Majuba Hill, the British Government of the day (which a few months before had absolutely refused the Boers’ appeal for the reversal of the annexation) concluded a hurried armistice, and gave back (1881) its independence to the Transvaal, subject to a vague suzerainty on the part of the British Crown, and later on to a British veto which might be exercised on treaties with foreign powers. The best plea that can be urged on behalf of this surrender, which subsequent British Governments have had such cause to regret, was the belief that a stern prosecution of the war, and the eventual Boer defeat, would lead to the uprising of the Dutch settlers in Cape Colony and the intervention of the Orange Free State. It is doubtful whether there was much foundation for this fear, or whether it would not have been much easier at that time to settle British supremacy once and for all over all Africa south of the Zambezi, even if it led to some degree of internecine fighting; the more so as there would have been no danger of European intervention at that date. But the chance was let slip, and the Boers acquired an independence the more justly won and the less easily disturbed since it was the result of their sturdy valour.

The restraining conditions of the 1881 Convention were still further attenuated by the London Convention of February 27, 1884, in which with further fatuity the Government of the day accorded unnecessarily to the Transvaal state the extravagant title of “The South African Republic.” Perhaps this is the most remarkable act of abnegation which has ever occurred in the history of the British Empire; and it must have seemed to the inhabitants of British South Africa like the admission of a rival ruling power into the British sphere south of the Zambezi. By this 1884 Convention (worthless for that purpose, as are all treaties and conventions when the force to maintain them is not apparent) the geographical limits of the Transvaal state were clearly defined, and the Boers engaged to keep within them.

Encouraged by this diplomatic success, and the feeble manner in which the Imperial Government had permitted them to carve out a fresh state in the heart of Zululand, the Boers of the Transvaal now determined to add Bechuanaland to their dominions; thus possibly to cut off British expansion towards the Zambezi, and to make their western frontier coincident with the natural limits of that Protectorate which Germany had just established, north of the Orange River. But public opinion in Great Britain was becoming intolerant of any further sacrifices of British aspirations in South Africa or of breaches of faith on the part of the Boers, and forced the Government of the day to assert itself. A strong expedition was sent out under Sir Charles Warren at the end of 1884, which finally secured for Great Britain the Protectorate of Bechuanaland, and the restraining of the Transvaal within its proper limits. Nevertheless, in 1894 a fresh concession was made to that state by the withdrawal of British opposition to its absorption of a little enclave of Zulu country known as Swaziland. In excuse for the British Government it must be pointed out that the Swazi chiefs had previously made over to Transvaal subjects so many rights and concessions that any other solution than the further cession of the administration was rendered difficult under the existing conditions. [The detachment of Swaziland as a small native state, administered by Imperial officials, was effected in 1902.]

Soon after the conclusion of the London Convention of 1884, the vast wealth in gold, which for more than ten years back had been asserted by uneducated pioneers, and denied by mining experts, began to be made known. The development of the marvellous Witwatersrand brought about the foundation of Johannesburg, and directed to the Transvaal an enormous influx of outsiders, mainly English, at any rate mainly British subjects, though many of them were Jews from England, or from France and Germany, who had become naturalized British subjects[97]. Mines were also opened in the east and in the north of the Transvaal. On the other hand, to counteract the influence of this British element, the Transvaal Government had almost ever since its establishment in 1881 been strengthening the Dutch element by inviting the settlement of Hollanders from the Netherlands, who were employed in its Government offices, in its schools, its churches, and on the construction of its railways. These natives of Holland showed themselves very hostile to British influence; and through their efforts a great deal of sympathy with the South African Dutch was aroused in Holland and Germany. On the other hand, the Outlanders, who settled round Johannesburg and other mining centres and who soon came to outnumber the Boer element in the Transvaal population to the extent of five to one, became dissatisfied with their position under the Boer Government, who ruled them autocratically, without giving them any voice in the administration or in the spending of the heavy taxes levied on their industries. It should be noted that the Boer Government had attempted to wall itself in from contact with the surrounding British and Portuguese states by an exceedingly high tariff of import duties, which rendered many articles of necessity or luxury extremely expensive, and made civilized life five times dearer than in the adjoining Cape Colony. It was again the contrast between the very end of the 19th century and the manners, customs, language, and puritanical religion of the 17th century.

To some extent this recalcitrant attitude of the Boers was condemned and deprecated by their much more enlightened brethren, the Cape Dutch. In time, probably, these latter might have encouraged and supported the intervention of the Imperial Government in securing fair terms to the Outlanders; and as these fair terms must have given the Outlanders a preponderating voice in the Government, the Transvaal might have been brought within the South African Federation under the British ægis. But the Right Hon. Cecil John Rhodes, then Prime Minister of the Cape and Managing Director of the British South Africa Chartered Company, saw in this discontent at Johannesburg the means and excuse for his personal intervention in the Transvaal. He hurried on the movement, and even carried it beyond the limits indicated by the more disinterested Reformers. The administrator of the Chartered Company’s territories, Dr Jameson, invaded the Transvaal (Dec. 29, 1895) with a small force of between 500 and 600 mounted police, and endeavoured to reach Johannesburg, the centre of unrest, with a half-avowed intention of subsequently marching on Pretoria, and upsetting the Boer Government. But the Boer forces intercepted Dr Jameson at Doornkop before he could reach Johannesburg; and after an engagement in which a few of his men were killed, and when further progress would have meant annihilation, he surrendered. The High Commissioner of South Africa hurried to Johannesburg; Dr Jameson and his officers were handed over to the British Government to be dealt with, and afterwards underwent a short term of imprisonment. On the other hand, the reformers of Johannesburg were treated by the Pretoria Courts with inexcusable harshness, seeing that they had not taken an active part in Dr Jameson’s inroad, and had surrendered their city to the Boer Government. Enormous fines, amounting eventually to nearly half a million sterling, were inflicted on them, after a somewhat burlesque trial in which they were condemned to death, only to be subsequently imprisoned or expelled. For the time being this wanton aggression on the part of Mr Rhodes alienated all sympathy with the grievances of the Outlanders, and provoked strong expressions of opinion in certain European states, who, until they were assured that the British Government was dissociated with Mr Rhodes’ scheme, were not unnaturally prone to imagine that their own territories in Africa might some day be exposed to a British raid. The immediate outcome, therefore, of this ill-advised action on the part of the Cape Premier (though that official was admittedly actuated by the same desire which has inspired some British statesmen, to bring about the Britannicizing of all Africa south of the Zambezi) was the strengthening and intensifying of the separatist character of the two Dutch republics still existing in South Africa. The Orange Free State concluded (1896) an offensive and defensive alliance with the South African Republic (Transvaal); and enormous quantities of arms, ammunition, and modern artillery were imported into Dutch South Africa via Lourenço Marquez (Delagoa Bay) and the new railway[98]. It was believed that eventually war must break out with Great Britain, but that probably one or more European powers would intervene and attack Great Britain, thus paralysing her striking force in South Africa; that the Cape Dutch would rise and contribute a quota of 30,000 men to the 80,000 to 90,000 of the Boer States; in short that the future of South Africa lay with the Dutch element. War was declared on Great Britain on October 11, 1899. Amazing victories at first fell to the Boer generals, but Europe did not intervene, nor did more than 8000 Cape Dutch join their Boer brothers. The tide of victory having turned in favour of the British, Bloemfontein, Pretoria and Komatipoort (the frontier station of the Delagoa Bay railway) were occupied between May and September 1900. President Kruger fled to Holland, and the two republics were annexed to British South Africa. Though the war did not end till the peace of Vereeniging in May, 1902, the last year of the nineteenth century saw the extinction of any independent Dutch State in Africa. Yet soon after the conclusion of this peace responsible government was once more granted to the reconstituted states of the Orange River and the Transvaal in 1906-7. The last-named, however, was deprived of Swaziland and of its province of northern Zululand, which last was added to Natal. The Union of South Africa (Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal and Natal) followed in 1910; and the first Prime Minister of Dutch and English-speaking South Africa was General Louis Botha, a leading general of the disbanded Boer army. These brave, sturdy Boers have played a great part in Africa, a part of which, Holland—the country which first colonized South Africa—may well be proud. The South African Dutch are so near to our own blood and tongue, and history, that we may, without any more sting of bitterness than that with which we recall the revolt of the American Colonies, take pride in their achievements and smile grimly at the stout blows they have dealt us in their own defence.