The Cape of Good Hope Colony and the British World Turned Upside-down, 1806–1836

ABSTRACT

The Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa was the largest European port on the continent for several hundred years. Despite its centuries-long importance, the Cape and its role in the rise of nineteenth-century globalisation remains largely unexamined and our dominant analytical frameworks have been constructed from a Northern Hemisphere perspective focused on Europe, Asia and North America. This article, based on an analysis of port data for Table Bay (Cape Town) from 1806 to 1836, examines what happened to global trade from the perspective of the Cape Colony. Through this Southern Hemisphere lens, a new aperture opens onto the British world, making it possible to observe how the Empire reintegrated and reconfigured itself in the decades after losing its American colonies, how new economies developed in the Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and Southern oceans and how they were linked.

KEYWORDS:

• Nineteenth-century trade globalisation
• Cape of Good Hope
• Southern Hemisphere World
• Orientalism
• Imperial Meridian
• World-Systems Theory
• Era of Free Trade
• North–south Framework

Acknowledgements

This project started in 2016 when I began a Master's at the University of Cape Town, and Nigel Worden suggested examining trading relations through the Arabian Gulf. When he retired, Nigel Penn became my supervisor. Over the years, Richard Drayton, Saul Dubow, Andrew Thompson, Philip Howell and David Nally have nudged, encouraged and at times pushed me to publish this study. Elizabeth Mancke offered many years of professional training and editorial advice, much of it around this project. I am grateful to each of them for their support.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 McAleer, Britain’s Maritime Empire, 71; Mik̕aberije, Napoleonic Wars, 62.

2 “Register of Arrivals and Departures of Ships,” (hereafter WCA, PCS) PC 3/1-3. For earlier use of these data, see: Worden, Van Heyningen, and Bickford-Smith, Cape Town: Making of City, 12, 98, 163–65; Fichter, So Great a Proffit, 35–39, 153–57, 305–36; and Reidy, Admission of Slaves.

3 Fichter, American and International Whaling, 31, 33–34.

4 Harlow, Founding of Second British Empire.

5 Hofmeyr, “African History and Global Studies,” 31–49; Witz, “Surveying Africa,” 669–85; Samuelson, and Musila, “Locations and Locutions,” 424–26; Samuelson and Layery, “The Oceanic South,” 37–50; Dubow, “How British,” 1–27; Laidlaw, Colonial Connections.

6 Harlow, Founding; Bayly, Imperial Meridian; Said, Orientalism; Pomeranz, Great Divergence.

7 Wallerstein, Modern World-System; Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism. Braudel’s analysis includes Africa but mostly North Africa and the Atlantic slave-trade.

8 For analyses of ‘network’ theory, see: Bell, “When Historians Overuse Network”; Curless et al., “Networks in Imperial History,” 705–32; Lester, “Spatial Concepts and the Historical Geographies.” Lester wrote (116), ‘David Fieldhouse posited that only a superhuman scholar could attain the vantage point necessary to achieve an overview of the developments in both the spatial categories of core and periphery relevant to the imperial historian.’

9 Isabel Hofmeyr challenges the image of the Cape as an East-West (cultural) divide and turns attention to South-South voyages in ‘Southern by degrees.’ She writes extensively about Africa’s place in world history, particularly the Indian Ocean but more recently, the Antarctic and broader Global South: Hofmeyr, “The Black Atlantic,” “South Africa’s Indian Ocean,” 508–12; and Hofmeyr, Dhupelia-Mesthrie, and Kaarsholm, “Durban and Cape Town as Port Cities,” 375–87.

10 For exceptions, see supra 1 and 5. See also: Mbembe and Nuttall, “African Metropolis”; Lester, “Trans-imperial Networks,” 125–38; Groenwald, “Southern Africa and Atlantic World,” 100–17; Darwin, Empire Project; Reynolds and Gilbert, Africa in World History; Falova and Brownwell, eds., Africa, Empire and Globalization.

11 Cooper, “What is the Concept of Globalization Good for?,” 189–213; Austin, “Reciprocal Comparison,” 1–28; Witz, “Review: Africa [Not] in World History,” 103–20; Manning, “Locating Africans on the World Stage,” 605–37; Zeleza, Rethinking Africa’s “Globalization”; Drayton, “Where Does the World Historian Write from?,” 671–85.

12 Worden quantified navigation into Table Bay for select years in Cape Town: Making of a City, 98, 163–65. Using qualitative data, Hofmeyr and McAleer also wrote about the Cape’s maritime significance. See supra 5, 9 for Hofmeyr; McAleer, “Atlantic Periphery, Asian Gateway”; Worden, “Writing the Global Indian Ocean,” 145–54.

13 Clark. “Spirit of Private Adventure,” 112.

14 Nigel Penn wrote that British ambitions to map the colony were a ‘prelude to occupying it’: Penn, “Mapping the Cape Colony,” 9. See also: Clark, “Spirit of Private Adventure,” 111; McAleer, Britain’s Maritime Empire, 41.

15 Hughs, British Invasion of River Plate, 21. For further reading: Davey, “Atlantic Empire, European War,” 147–72; Grainger, Royal Navy in River Plate, 70.

16 Gallo, Great Britain and Argentina, 33.

17 Grainger, British Campaigns, 125; Grainger, Lieutenant Auchmuty, ch. 6.

18 Luiz Felipe de Alencastro notes the South Atlantic as a distinct oceanic system which early modern cartographers and mariners called ‘the Aethiopian Sea.’ Alencastro, “African Slave Trade,” 4. See also: Candido, An African Slaving Port. Candido frequently refers to ‘bilateral connections’ (South-South) and their important role in the rise of Brazilian ports, 5, 25–6, 85, 140; McAleer, Britain’s Maritime Empire, 130.

19 Fausto et al., Concise History of Brazil, 64; Bergad, Slavery and Demographic, 26–27.

20 Newitt, Portugal in European and World History, especially “Portugal and the Discoveries,” 49–66 and “The First European Maritime Empire,” 67–81. Newitt too describes the South-South linkages despite situating them in an Atlantic world framework. See also: Bethencourt and Curto, Portuguese Oceanic Expansion.

21 Bethell, Brazil, 18–19. Bethell notes, ‘in practice, at least until the end of the war, direct trade with friendly nations meant trade with England.’

22 Letter from Bertie to Pole, 28 December 1808, in Theal, ed. Records of the Cape Colony: from February 1793 to April 1831, VI, 407. (Hereafter RCC).

23 Gorelik, 'Russian Visitors to Cape, 16; and Bertie to Pole, 30 September 1808, RCC, VI, 385.

24 McAleer, Britain’s Maritime Empire, 116.

25 Bertie to Pole, 5 May 1809, RCC, VI, 494.

26 Wine and coffee were common cargoes to or from St. Helena at this time, with some manufactures for the EIC.

27 For Bird’s trading activities see: Clark, “Spirit of Private Adventure,” 116. For his charges and slave ownership see: Gonzalez, “Prize Negroes,” Introduction; Reidy, Admission of Slaves, 82, 103. See also: “Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry to Earl Bathurst Upon the Complaints of Mr. Lancelot Cooke,” 22 July 1825, XXII, 296–328. It is reported that Bird retained 23 prize slaves for himself, and Blair retained 54 (304).

28 Many Scots fought in the First and Second Capture. See: MacKenzie and Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 35–37.

29 al-Qāsimī, Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf, 231. See particularly ch. 5, “The Destruction of the Qawasim 1819.” This book, written by the Ruler of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), was originally published in Arabic (1986).

30 Heard-Bey, Trucial States to United Arab Emirates, 283–86; Suzuki, Abolitions As a Global Experience, 117; Bradshaw, End of Empire in the Gulf, 4, 14–5.

31 MacKenzie and Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 36.

32 Keegan, Colonial South Africa, 206.

33 Harms et al., Indian Ocean Slavery; Reidy, Admission of Slaves.

34 The Cape Colony’s port data support existing studies about overseas slave-trading after the abolition. On Portuguese, Brazilian and Mascarene networks connected to the Cape Colony, see: Allen, “‘A Traffic of Several Nations,” 157–77; Campbell, ed., Structure of Slavery, and “Satisfying the “Want for Labouring People”,” 45–73; Bauss, “Portuguese Slave Trade,” 21–27; Miller, Way of Death, 509–11; Carter et al., Liberated Africans in 19th Century Mauritius; Machado, “Forgotten Corner of Indian Ocean,” 17–32; Larson, “Route of the Slave,” 119–80; Stanziani, Sailors, Slaves and Immigrants; Clarence-Smith, ed., Economics of Indian Ocean Slave Trade.

35 Thiébaut, “French Slave Trade on Madagascar,” 34–65; Allen, “Mascarene Slave Trade,” 43–72.

36 Scholarship on slave-trading in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean world is rich. Key studies relevant to the Cape Colony have been written by: Christopher Saunders, Edward Alpers, Gwyn Campbell, Patrick Harries, Pier Larson, Nigel Worden, Robert Ross, Robert Shell, William Gervase Clarence-Smith. Examples include: Clarence-Smith, ed., Economics Indian Ocean Slave Trade, 209–19; Campbell, eds., Abolition and Aftermath; Saunders, “Liberated Africans in Cape Colony,” 223–39; Worden, “Indian Ocean Slavery and Its Demise in the Cape Colony” and “Indian Ocean Slaves in Cape Town,” 389–408; Harries, “Middle Passages of Southwest Indian Ocean,” 173–90 and “Mozambique Island, Cape Town and Organisation,” 409–27; Ross, “Last Years of Slave Trade to Cape Colony;” Shell, “Sale and Transfer of Human Beings at Cape,” 285–336.

37 “Instructions for the Collector of His Majesty’s Customs in the Settlement,” 16 April 1806, RCC, V, 402.

38 Caledon to Castlereagh, 15 December 1807, RCC, VI, 233.

39 Chewins and Delius, “Northeastern Factor,” 89–110; Domingues da Silva and Eltis, “Slave Trade to Pernambuco, 1561–1851”; Harries, “Mozambique Island, Cape Town and Organisation,” Saunders, “ ‘Free, yet Slaves’,” 99–115.

40 On the admission of slaves to the early Cape Colony: Allen, “Ending History of Silence,” 294–313; Reidy, Admission of Slaves; Saunders, “Between Slavery and Freedom” and “Free, Yet Slaves”; Snell, Children of Bondage, Young, “Liberated Slaves?”

41 The Spanish carried almost 1,300 slaves as cargo between 1819 and 1820. As per Clarence-Smith, ‘Spain rapidly became the world’s second slaving nation behind the Portuguese’ after the 1807 abolition. See: Clarence-Smith, “Economic Dynamics of Spanish Colonialism,” 71–90.

42 “Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry,” 22 July 1825, RCC, XXII, 296–328; McKenzie, South African Commercial, 6–7. Thomas Pringle, one of its joint editors, was an 1820s settler and later Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society (London). John Fairbanks (other editor) and George Greig (publisher) were too abolitionists.

43 For an article tracing and quantifying what happened to a large number of liberated Africans, see: Domingues da Silva et al., “The Diaspora of Africans.” See also Eltis’s voluminous and multi-faceted Trans-Atlantic Slave-Trade Database: http://www.slavevoyages.org.

44 Patrick Harries showed that ‘slaves’ on captured vessels enroute to South America were made indentured servants at the Cape Colony and not liberated: Harries, “Slavery, Indenture and Migrant Labour,” 323–40. See also Saunders, “Free yet Slaves” and “Liberated Africans.”

45 Bertie to Pole, 19 January 1809, RCC, VI, 453.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Ewald, “Crossers of Sea,” 69–91. Ewald qualifies these mariners as East African (70), but her study includes Africans from other regions of the continent and Asians. See: 76–78.

49 Bertie to Pole, 21 January 1809, RCC, VI, 459.

50 Bertie to Pole, 16 February 1809, RCC, VI, 463.

51 Victor Jacqueont to M. Achielle Chaper, 10 December 1828, Letters from India, 28.

52 Lovejoy, “Chronology of Measures Against Slavery,” 285–292. Appendices; Domingues da Silva et al., “Diaspora of Africans,” 351.

53 Chewins and Delius, “Northeastern Factor,” 94. See also: Reidy, Admission of Slaves, 93, where he describes the slave-trading linkages among Mozambique, the Mascarenes and Madagascar.

54 This racist language referred to Khoikhoi peoples. For reference to convicts: Evidence Given by Mr. W. J. Klerck to the Commissioners of Enquiry [regarding reductions in the establishment of the colony], 15 March 1826, RCC, XXVI, 195.

55 Enclosure “Detailed Explanation of Reasons for Incurring the Undermentioned Items of Expenditure (1819)” in letter from Lord Somerset to Bathurst, 5 June 1825, RCC, XXI, 475.

56 Evidence Given by Mr. W. J. Klerck, 15 arch 1826, RCC, XXVI, 195.

57 Killingray, “A Good West Indian, a Good African,” 363–81. On British identity formation in settler colonies which include the early Cape Colony: Lester, “Reformulating Identities,” 515–31 and Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain; Thompson and Maghee, Empire and Globalisation; McKenzie, South African Commercial; Worden et al., Cape Town: Making of a City, ch.4; Morgan and Hawkins, “Blacks and the British Empire”; Ross, “Khoesan and Immigrants”; Bickford-Smith, “Revisiting Anglicisation,” 82–95.

58 MacKenzie and Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 37.

59 Clark, “Spirit of Private Adventure,” 117. For Mascarene Islands, see also: Keegan, Colonial, 48.

60 Ibid; Keegan, Colonial, 163–64.

61 Caledon to Castlereagh, 28 December 1808, RCC, VI, 403–04.

62 Grainger, Royal Navy in River Plate, 99.

63 Ibid., 116.

64 See: Penn, “Soldiers and Cape Town Society,” 176–93, and Murderers, Miscreants and Mutineers.

65 Swemmer, “Lieut. Hamilton Ross.”

66 Pama, Wagon Road to Wynberg, 56; McCracken, Irish in Southern Africa, 165.

67 McCracken, Irish in Southern Africa, 165.

68 MacKenzie and Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 92, footnote 55; Legacies of British Slavery Database, accessed January 22, 2022. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search/.

69 Fison, transc.,“Retired Soldiers Who Settled at the Cape.”

70 For an excellent study on colonial governance and personal connections, see: Laidlaw, Colonial Connections, particularly Chapter 2, subsections “Peninsular Network,” 21–26 and “Humanitarian Network,” 27–31.

71 Peires, “British and Cape,” 477.

72 Ibid.

73 Navy Board to Admiral Bertie, 29 April 1808, RCC, VI, 321. On the global timber trade, see: Martin Crevier, “Making of a Timber Colony,” 466–88.

74 Stirling to Rowley, 9 January 1808, RCC, VI, 261; and Rowley to Pole, 23 May 1808, RCC, VI, 339.

75 Caledon to Castlereagh, 21 May 1809, RCC, 507.

76 Katerina Galanē, British Shipping, 163, 171; Sutcliffe, British Expeditionary Warfare, 52–55.

77 Peires, “Britain and Cape,” 475.

78 MacKenzie and Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 42. Ross backed out after the first cohort arrived.

79 Norval, “Benjamin Moodie Settlers”; Darian-Smith. Britishness Abroad, 116; MacKenzie and Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 39–48.

80 Keegan, Colonial South Africa, 61; Harlow, “Cape Colony,” 223.

81 Clark, “Spirit of Private Adventure,” 115.

82 Ibid., 116.

83 For the importance of farming to the Eastern Province in particular: Brunger, “Geographical Context of Settlement in Cape Colony,” 51–72.

84 Lester, “Imperial Networks,” 13; Seemann, “Fortifications,” 12.

85 Ibid., 18.

86 Cameron, “Illustrated History,” 79.

87 Clark, “Port Sites and Perception,” 153.

88 Clark, “Spirit of Private Adventure,” 121.

89 Ibid., 124.

90 Pieres, “British and Cape,” 475. See also: Ross, “Cape and World Economy,” 266.

91 Ibid.

92 Ross, Status and Respectability, 63.

93 For excellent studies on the importance of the Eastern Province, see Lester: “Cultural Construction and Spatial Strategy,” 98–107; “Margins of Order,” 635–54; “‘Otherness’ and Frontiers of Empire,” 2–19; Lester, “Settlers, the State and Colonial Power,” 221–45. See also: Crais, Making of the Colonial Order; Board, Border Region.

94 Peires, House of Phalo, 93.

95 Ibid.

96 Beck, History of South Africa, 65.

97 Peires, House of Phalo, 109.

98 Lester, Imperial Networks, 81.

99 Ibid., 109.

100 Mostert, Frontiers, 725.

101 Ibid., 80. Lester’s quote of 7,000 square miles was converted to kilometres.

102 Ibid., 81.

103 Ibid., 80.

104 Ibid., 81.

105 Ibid.

106 Lemon et al., South African Urban, 105.

107 Pieres, “British and Cape,” 499.

108 Elphick and Giliomee, Shaping, xx.

109 Copy of Letter from Mr. Secretary Ramsay to John Pringle, Esq., 2 March 1812, RCC, VIII, 428–30.

110 See: Arkin, Storm.

111 Keegan, Colonial, 98–99. Keegan describes the SACA as ‘the chief organ of Cape Town mercantile interests until Fairburn’s death in 1859.’ See also: Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 28–29. McKenzie, South African Commercial, 4–5, 59–63; Meltzer, “Growth of Cape Town Commerce.” In the Cape colonists and free trade: Arkin, Storm in Teacup; Legassick and Ross, “Slave Economy to Settler Capitalism,” 253–318; Ross, “Cape and World Economy,” 243–69.

112 Keegan, Colonial, 97–98, 100; Dubow, Commonwealth, 29, 30. See also footnotes with Lester comment (29) and Shaw comment (30). McKenzie, South African Commercial, 139–54.

113 McKenzie, South African Commercial, 48.

114 Ibid, 7.

115 Ibid.

116 Johnson, Imagining Cape Colony, 80–81, 102. See also 68–79 for comparison of Adam Smith’s free trade model and John Bruce’s EIC or mercantilism model, as applied to the Cape Colony. See also: Arkin, Storm in a Teacup.

117 Keegan, Colonial, 48; Order-in-Council. 12 July 1820, RCC, XIII, 181–84.

118 Ibid.

119 Keegan, Colonial, 100.

120 Bowen et al., Worlds of East India Company, Introduction.

121 Johnston, “British Emigration Policy 1815–1830.”

122 Algoa Bay became a free warehousing port in 1836.

123 Zeleza, “Tribulations of Undressing Emperor,” 106–20; Ibhawoh and Whitfield, “Colonial Africanist Historiography,” 582–600; Miller, Blank Darkness; Eze, “Beyond Dichotomies,” 48–68, and “Philosophy and Postcolonial”; Korag, “Reading Edward Said,” 23–52; Lowe, “Situating Orientalism,” 1–29. See also: Bystrom and Slaughter, Global South Atlantic, for South Americanists’ well-articulated critiques of the dominant frameworks. Allen, “Constant Demand,” 42–72, also questions applicability of Atlantic versus Indian ocean framework, as does scholarship of many Africanists writing about Southern Hemisphere slave-trade networks.