Cape Colony, Batavian Republic's

All the enslaved people imported into the Cape from 1659 until the British stop the trade in 1807 are from East Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, and South and Southeast Asia.

Large numbers are brought from India, Ceylon, and the Indonesian archipelago.

Prisoners from other countries in the VOC's empire are also enslaved.

The enslaved population, which exceeds that of the European settlers until the first quarter of the nineteenth century, is overwhelmingly male and is thus dependent on constant imports of new slaves to maintain and to augment its size.

...Swellendam, which depend almost totally on slave labor.

Politically, the VOC governor continues to be in firm control, although a number of wealthy burghers exercise considerable informal influence.

Socially, the community is marked by considerable stratification and diversity.

Most wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few company officials and a minority of burghers.

The majority of Europeans earn a living as artisans, traders, and innkeepers, although almost all whites own at least one or two slaves.

A small community of mixed-race people has also emerged, the offspring of relationships among whites, Khoikhoi, Asians, and enslaved Africans.

The Boer-organized commandos have virtually exterminated the San in South Africa by the end of the eighteenth century.

British forces capture Cape Town in the Dutch Cape Colony, to use its strategic facilities against the French Navy, on September 15, 1795.

The 1803 treaty of Amiens restores Dutch control over the Cape.

The Treaty of Amiens, which had ended a decade of upheaval in Europe in 1802, had called for the return of the Cape Colony to Dutch control.

This had been accomplished in 1803, but the Dutch Batavian Republic in Europe does little to implement this claim when the treaty begins to break down in 1805.

Britain again seizes control of the Cape in 1806 and defies Dutch claims by occupying and expanding its presence in the Cape region.

The former Batavian Republic—the Kingdom of Holland—finally agrees in 1814 to abandon its claim to the Cape in return for a grant of roughly two million British pounds.

 

British Army General David Baird departs from Cork on August 31, 1805, leading an expedition to capture the Cape of Good Hope.

Their ship will arrive on January 4.

The temporary peace between Britain and Napoleonic France had crumbled into open hostilities, while Napoleon had been strengthening his influence on the Batavian Republic (which he will subsequently abolish later this year).

The British, who hope to keep Napoleon out of the Cape, and to control the Far East trade routes, had dispatched a fleet to the Cape in July 1805, to forestall French troopships that Napoleon had sent to reinforce the Cape garrison.

The colony is governed by Lieutenant General Jan Willem Janssens, who is also commander-in-chief of its military forces.

The forces are small and of poor quality, and include foreign units hired by the Batavian government.

They are backed up by local militia units.

The first British warship had reached the Cape on Christmas Eve 1805, and attacked two supply ships off the Cape Peninsula.

Janssens had placed his garrison on alert.

When the main fleet sailed into Table Bay on January 4, 1806, he mobilizes the garrison, declares martial law, and calls up the militia.

The Cape is occupied again by the British after their victory in the Battle of Blaauwberg.

The terms of the capitulation had been reasonably favorable to the Batavian soldiers and citizens of the Cape.

Janssens and the Batavian officials and troops are sent back to the Netherlands in March.

The British forces will occupy the Cape until August 13, 1814, when the Netherlands cede the colony to Britain as a permanent possession.

It will remain a British colony until it is incorporated into the Union of South Africa on May 31, 1910.