The Cape forms one of the great landmarks of the globe, separating the Atlantic from the Indian Ocean, and dividing the voyage to Hindoostan into two nearly equal portions; the ships of England and Portugal called there, and the Dutch, in the infancy of their Indian trade, fixed upon it as a station for their vessels to take in water and fuel. The English had a custom, in their outward-bound voyages, of burying letters in an iron box, in a place pointed out by a large blue stone, to be taken to England by the first ship calling at the Cape in its way home.
1620
For more than a century the English, Dutch, and Portuguese continued to refresh at the Cape without appropriating the soil; but in the year 1620, in the reign of King James I., the commanders of two fleets of English ships, bound for Surat and Bantam, took a formal possession of the soil, for, and in the name of their sovereign; this was, however, not followed by the formation of a colony there by the English.
1651
Van Riebeck, surgeon of a Dutch ship that made a short stay at the Cape of Good Hope, represented the richness of the soil, the mildness of the climate, the advantages which a colony at this place would give his country over other nations whose ships would be obliged to call there; and, above all, the barrier it would afford to the Indian possessions of the United Provinces; these representations induced the Dutch East India Company to form a regular establishment at the Cape. Van Riebeck was furnished with power to establish a colony, of which he was appointed governor, and three ships, provided with all that was necessary, were placed under his orders. On his arrival at the Cape of Good Hope, the natives surrendered the Cape Peninsula by treaty, with the two bays that are divided by the isthmus, and he erected a square fort, also warehouses, and raised outworks and batteries. Encouragement being given, numbers of settlers arrived from time to time, and, by presents and promises, a larger tract of land was procured; but when the natives saw the colonists building houses and fortifications, cultivating land, and breeding cattle, a feeling of jealousy was awakened, and the Hottentots commenced hostilities for the purpose of expelling their visitors, which ended in the extension of the settlements, the arrival of more troops and colonists from Holland, and the reduction of the natives to a state of dependence little better than slavery.
The Dutch East India Company endeavoured to limit the Cape to the original design of a port for refreshing their ships, and they threw obstacles in the way of its becoming a flourishing settlement; they allowed no trade but what passed through the hands of their own servants, and made it dependent on the governor-general of Batavia, concluding that the settlers would thus be made equally submissive to their orders from Europe, and from the seat of their wealth and influence in the East. This illiberal policy afforded little stimulation to industry; the settlers became conspicuous for habits of indolence, and education being neglected, the manners of the colonists degenerated towards barbarism, united with a cruel propensity to tyrannise over the Hottentots, whose lands they had seized, and from whom they exacted labour without due compensation. A number of French Protestants found an asylum at the Cape, where they introduced the cultivation of the vine; but the colony did not flourish under the Dutch. The natives, however, proved a patient and submissive race; they were the best labourers and herdsmen in the colony, and many of them proved valuable soldiers in the service of Holland.
1794
1795
The declining commerce of the Dutch, towards the close of the eighteenth century, made the Cape a burden to them; little doubt was entertained of their willingness to part with it for a small compensation, and overtures would, probably, have been made from England, but at that period the French Revolution, and its destructive consequences, unsettled the affairs of Europe. The favourable reception, which the doctrine of equality met with in Holland, having disposed the Dutch to separate from the Allies, with the result of the campaign of 1794 in Flanders, and other causes, occasioned the United Provinces to be brought under the dominion of France. The Prince of Orange fled to England, and he furnished letters authorizing the British to take possession of, and to hold, the colony of the Cape of Good Hope in his name. Many of the colonists had, in the meantime, imbibed French principles; they had become clamorous to declare themselves a free and independent republic; and lists of worthy and influential persons to be consigned to the guillotine, or banished from the colony, for holding different views, were prepared; at the same time the slaves, who were much more numerous than the whites, were holding meetings to decide upon the fate of the free and independent burghers when the period of their own emancipation should arrive. At this important crisis the revolutionists were suddenly disconcerted by the arrival of a British armament under Admiral Sir G. K. Elphinstone, and Major-General James Craig, to take possession of the colony. The governor refused to consign the place to the protection of the British, and ordered the inhabitants to leave Simon’s Town. The English were careful not to commit any act of hostility against the Dutch; but it being believed that the governor intended to set fire to Simon’s Town, Major-General Craig landed on the 14th of July, 1795, with part of the Seventy-eighth regiment and the Marines of the fleet, and took possession of the place, to preserve it from destruction. Soon afterwards the burgher militia and Hottentot soldiers, who occupied the hills, fired on the British patroles, and hostilities were thus commenced. The Dutch occupied a fortified position on the rocks of Muisenberg, from whence they were driven, on the 7th of August, by the fire of the English ships and the advance of the troops, and two battalions of seamen; on this occasion the advance-guard of the Seventy-eighth regiment drove the enemy from a rocky ridge with great gallantry. The Dutch fell back to Wynberg, a tongue of land projecting from the east side of Table mountain, and about eight miles from Cape Town. On the 4th of September General Alured Clarke arrived with reinforcements, and on the 14th of that month the British advanced and drove the Dutch from their elevated post. Two days afterwards the Dutch governor surrendered the colony to the British arms.
1796
1797