We have something new now: our first guest piece, kindly done by Nicksplace27. Aside from a few small editorial alterations (to remove spoilers!) it's all his work. So join me in a chorus of "In your face, Jared, there's a new timeline on the block!"
Ahem.
~~
Interlude #8: Goede Hoop (by Nicksplace27)
From – “The History of Southern Africa: Volume II; 1600-1845” (Henry Watson; 1965)
The
Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the United Dutch East India Company, had controlled the Cape since Jan van Riebeeck landed there in 1652. They settled in the Cape, fought and bartered with the Khoikhoi and early on it proved to be a profitable trading base. But by 1715, the Company stopped the colony's policy of open immigration, monopolised trade, and combined the administrative, legislative and judicial powers into one body. The leaders told the farmers what crops to grow, demanded a large percentage of every farmer's harvest, and frequently harassed the colonists. This tended to discourage further development of industry and enterprise. From these roots sprung a dislike of orderly government, and a libertarian view-point that has characterised the "Boers" or Dutch farmers for many generations.[1]
Despite these restrictions, the population in the lands under the rule of the Dutch East India Company expanded exponentially. The population grew from a paltry 3,000 Europeans in 1715 to over 35,000 Europeans in 1805 and was growing significantly. This encouraged the Governors to further restrict the Boers’ expansion.
Seeking largely to escape the oppression of the Company, the farmers trekked farther and farther from the seat of government. The Company, in order to control these emigrants, established a magistracy at Swellendam in 1745. However, this did not halt further emigration or hostility among those already in the countryside. By 1805, the heavily taxed Boers of the frontier districts, who furthermore received no protection against raids by their African neighbours, expelled the officials of the Dutch East India Company. The Boers established an independent government at Swellendam.
These revolutionaries founded what they called the Afrikaan Germanic Republic, influenced by the UPSA and Revolutionary France in their motives. However, they took an even harsher stance against the natives than the Company did, as most Boers held slaves at the time. They advocated expelling, murdering or enslaving all Khoikhoi from their Republic because of the damage they had done to their cattle farms. This policy was justified by the Boers as they were heavily influenced by the racialist philosophies of Sijbren Vorderman, founder of the Dutch school of Linnaean Racialism. The Boer government also established Afrikaans as their official language; the first time it was legitimately recognised as separate from Dutch. They attracted popular support among much of the Boer population and encouraged an independent spirit to protect their homeland by invading and driving out the Dutch East India Company. They began to form an army to besiege Kaapstad.
The leader of this Boer militia was a farmer named Hermanus Potgieter and by the time he had collected his army of over five thousand men, he had become the de facto leader of the AGR. In 1807, he led this army to take Kaapstad and remove the Company from power. After two weeks of marching and pillaging, the Boers reached the city of Kaapstad and surrounded the city, not allowing any shipments of food or water to go in or out. Potgieter wanted to starve the city into submission and force the Company to allow them independence. In fact, the leader of the militia did not know how fortunate his timing was. The Governor of the Cape Colony, Cornelisz Jacob van de Graaff, had just seen off the last Dutch ship in their normally heavy garrison because of the naval build up of that year.[2] Relief and a possible counterattack by DEIC troops would not come for over two months.
Graaff, in those trying weeks of siege, instituted an extremely draconian policy to ration food supplies and kill any living thing worth eating in order to survive. Of course, in keeping with his policy of cronyism and corruption, most of the food was reserved for himself, his friends and his troops. This only fueled the flames of discontent. By the end of the first month, food was running dangerously low for the citizens of Kaapstad and dissent was growing. The Governor was forced to imprison and torture anyone who advocated surrender, stating that most people here were likely to be massacred by the army outside if they did give in. Outside, the Boers themselves were subject to disease and low supplies as well. Near the end of the two months, Potgieter ordered a final full assault to take the city.
The weakened armies fought street to street inside Kaapstad and it seemed as though the Boers were inching their way toward capturing Graaff when the DEIC fleet arrived with massive reinforcements. They decisively routed the Boer armies within Kaapstad and regained control over the entire Colony. They captured Potgieter and hanged him, as well as convicted many other Boer leaders. They also established a permanent military presence at Swellendam, preventing any further Boer unrest. The dream of a free Boer state was dead for the moment, but it is interesting to wonder how an Afrikaan Germanic Republic in southern Africa would have developed independently. Boers even today regard Potgeiter as a hero and a martyr for Boer nationalism.
Surprisingly, Cape Colony experienced little loss in population and actually enjoyed a rapid growth in prosperity after the Boer Rebellion of 1807. This was mostly due to the massive reforms put into place following the Dutch East India Company’s investigation. The Dutch governor was removed from his post due to his draconian policies leading up to the rebellion and he was replaced by a more amicable governor who would remove many of the extraneous, arbitrary rules set in place by the previous administration. This caused many of the grievances that the Boers had with the government to dissipate for a time. The Cape also enjoyed a steady stream of immigrants from the Netherlands, but also increasingly from Flanders. The early 1810s also marked the first large Xhosa raids on Boer soil and the discovery of the Kingdom of the Sotho; further solidifying the ever-expanding Boers’ sense of nationalism and racial superiority. Nevertheless, the Cape colonists emerged from their time of troubles just as strong as they had entered it…
…While the Cape was experiencing much unrest and rebellion, the British became another force to be reckoned with in Southern Africa. This was the brainchild of the British East India Company, who after the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1805 securing Dutch control of Cape Colony, needed a port in between the Company’s possessions in Bengal and the British hegemony in the Atlantic. After several surveying missions, they decided to send a mission to set up a trading base in the Natal. This region was originally discovered by the famous Portuguese explorer Vasco De Gama in 1497, but the Portuguese decided to put their bases further north, in Delgola Bay and the Zambezi River. Therefore the gap in between Cape Colony and Portuguese Mozambique became a prime location for a potential British settlement. With the Director of the BEIC’s approval, funding went out to settle Natal.
A fleet of five ships first landed in Natal Bay on November 16th, 1805, founding a port there. Another three ships landed St. Lucia Bay just three months later and founded another port. These centres of trade and shipping would prove to be very important, becoming some of the biggest BEIC bases on the Indian Ocean. By 1811 they were commanding over £1.2 million in trade in a single year (though of course the economic chaos of the 1810s makes it difficult to put a precise value on the pound of that time). The BEIC bases in Port Natal and Port St. Lucia were proving to be worth the investment and providing excellent competition to the Cape. But the largest problem the British faced was not a group of cattle herders or hunter-gatherers like the Dutch faced in the nomadic herdsman of the Khoikhoi, but a very large civilisation with remarkable organisation, the Mtetwa Empire.
The Mtetwa Empire was a confederation of many Nguni tribes, eventually numbering over 300,000 people, encompassing territory from the Limpopo River to the Maloti Mountains.[3] When the British began to open up diplomatic discourse, the king of the Mtetwa received them on remarkably good terms. The king, named Dingiswayo, was in the process of reforming his Empire after his short exile in Mozambique taught him about European ways of organising their societies. The food the Portuguese were now trading with him allowed for an explosion in population. Because of these ideas and changes, he began to reform his army into a centralised command which would be headed up by his most trusted aide, Shaka.[4]
A newcomer to the Mtetwa Empire, Shaka quickly advanced up the ranks and befriended the king. His reforms to the army only augmented Dingiswayo’s changes. Shaka introduced new weapon techniques, like the very long spears and large shields that are so iconic for the Mtetwa culture today. These new battle tactics, organisation and weapons would be tested when Shaka ordered an invasion of the Swazi Kingdom and the Gaza Kingdom. After several battles using the hitherto unseen tactics of encirclement, Shaka captured and forcibly admitted the tribes into the Mtetwa Empire. Dingiswayo used this war to his advantage and further consolidated the different tribes into a more homogenous structure. Ultimately, by 1810 the Mtetwa Empire was the strongest native force in all of southern Africa.
Some of the most important information on the Mtetwa was documented by the BEIC pioneer Thomas Grenville, who decided to lead an expedition up the Tugela River in central Natal in 1811. They wished to set up the first trading post in the hinterlands to trade with the Africans there and transfer the profits to the coast. They moved through the rock-filled river toward the Maloti Mountains in their now famous trek (depicted in the famous painting by Sir Winston Roberts in 1871), they were discovered by a Mtetwa patrol. They escorted them to the royal Boma, where King Dingiswayo resided. Grenville managed to record everything from their voyage into the Mtetwa Empire in a journal which was later published as a bestseller in both America and Britain.
The King received the men with great hospitality and treated them to a royal feast of what the King called
Inkuku yasekya nama qeselengwane, roasted chicken with an African herb topping. The King also gave them
Bjala bja setso, a tribally brewed corn beer which tasted quite dark and rich. The men also enjoyed watching a game of the now famous Mtetwa Stick-fighting (
Donga) competition, long before the art became so fashionable in Europe. Dingiswayo viewed the European displays of guns and other technology with respect rather than awe. Shaka, who was present at the Boma, remarked that while the firepower was quite impressive, his fastest regiment of men could rush up and kill them while they would be slowly reloading. Grenville’s men were similarly impressed by the organisation and civility of the Mtetwa as well as the incredible power that King Dingiswayo commanded. But, as enlightened as the expedition was, they were reluctant to describe them as equals. Ultimately a treaty was signed allowing the British to claim the entire coastline of Natal up to the Maloti Mountains to border the Mtetwa Empire.
Natal grew immensely during this time period as British East India Company authorities wanted to reinforce their holding and take advantage of the rich farmland secured for them. Between the first landings in 1805 and the expedition by Grenville in 1811, over five thousand British and American settlers came to the costal areas near Port Natal and Port St. Lucia. By that same year, the first feasible sugar plantations were being considered and because the British colonies in Africa (unlike the Dutch) had a strong Abolitionist streak, labourers would have to drawn elsewhere. The relative prosperity of the Mtetwa Empire discouraged native labourers from coming to work on the plantations. The colonies in West Africa were under the control of the Royal Africa Company, which saw the BEIC as a rival and would not co-operate in any venture that might undermine its economic supremacy on the Dark Continent. This left the BEIC with only one option.
A new age dawned in Natal’s history as the first Bengali laborers stepped foot onto the white beaches of Africa…
[1] All of which happened in OTL, but when the British took over the Cape in 1801, they removed most of those policies, quieting most Boer discontent. ITTL, there is even more resentment with a permanent presence of the DEIC.
[2] More on this later…
[3] This is roughly half of Transvaal and Zululand without the coast in OTL. The Maloti Mountains are the OTL Drakensberg Mountains.
[4] Shaka is a much different person than OTL, albeit with some similarities. He does not have a close relationship with his former tribe of the Zulu. Shaka is still the military genius of OTL, but without the political ambition and paranoia that he exhibited in OTL. The Mtetwa Empire was the OTL predecessor, but eventually dissolved into the Zulu Empire because of Shaka’s excessive purges. The resulting violence, called the mfecane today in OTL South Africa casued a lot of instability, restricting white settlement in Natal in OTL. In TTL, there is a consolidation of the Mtetwa Empire, but with a relatively peaceful transition. Because of this, there could be far more British settlement in Natal this early on.
