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An investigation into the circumstances relating to the cattle-killing delusion in Kaffraria, 1856-1857

- Dowsley, Eileen D'Altera

  • Authors: Dowsley, Eileen D'Altera
  • Date: 1932
  • Subjects: Cattle Killing, 1856-1857 , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- History -- 1853-1871 , Xhosa (African people) -- History , Grey, George, Sir, 1812-1898 , Nongqawuse, 1841-1898 , Mhlakaza -- Xhosa seer -- 1800?-1857 , Sarhili -- Xhosa paramount chief -- ca.1814-1892
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2538 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002390
  • Description: Introductory: If the relations existing between the Native chiefs and the Colony which Sir George Grey found on his arrival are to be fully understood, a brief consideration of Cathcart’s policy and Frontier settlement is necessary. When Cathcart came out as Governor in 1852, he found the rebel chief Sandile, with associate chieftans’ and large bands of followers, still occupying their locations in the Amatola ranges. From this haunt no force had as yet been able to drive them. During the series of skirmishes known as the Eighth Kaffir War, their first crop of Indian corn was destroyed so early in the season as to allow of a second crop springing up. This unusual phenomenon inspired prophet Umlangeni to claim that he had worked a miracle. Fortunately later reverses and the expulsion of Sanailli from his mountain fastness discredited this thoughtful opportunist. Sandilli, as paramount chief of the Gaikas, might have held and influential position in the councils of the Kaffrarian chiefs, that he did not hold such a position, was due, in Charles Brownlee’s opinion, to his timid and suspicious nature and to the fact that his mental capacity was ‘hardly above mediocrity’. He was unable to fight owing to lameness, and he lacked ‘sufficient’ resciution and strength of mind to resist the evil influence of the bad advisers, nevertheless he could be obstinate and he never, to the end of his life, gave up on the idea of getting back to this old locations in the Amatolas. Macomo with some three thousand followers had likewise evaded all attempts to turn him out of this haunts in the mountain range. He, together with his associate the Tambookie chief Quesha, and diverse rebel Hotttentots, indulged in the frequent marauding forays into the surrounding country. Macomo was the eldest of Gaika’s sons and was “allowed by all to be the greatest politician and best warrior in Kaffraria’. During the minority of Sandilli Macomo had acted as his regent and had attained great influence over the tribe; this he afterwards lost for he moved to the neighbourhood of Fort Beaufort, where in a state of intoxication most of this time was passed. He had in Brownlee’s opinion, done more mischief in the war than any other chief. Great jealously was felt between Macomo and Sandilli, especially on the part of the former; this was shown through the cattle killing period in his efforts to involve Sandilli, while attempting to keep on the right side of the Government himself. Further south, indeed within the Colony itself, such petty chiefs as Seyolo and Botman, lurking in the Fish River bush, and the Keiskamma kloofs, rendered the main road dangerous, and even succeeded, for a time, in completely cutting the ling of communication between Kingwilliamstown and Grahamstown.
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  • Date Issued: 1932

East London: its foundation and early development as a port

- Gordon, B C

  • Authors: Gordon, B C
  • Date: 1932
  • Subjects: Smith, Harry George Wakelyn, Sir, 1788-1860 D'Urban, Benjamin, Sir, 1777-1849 Harbors -- South Africa -- East London East London (South Africa) -- History -- 1836-1866
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2606 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012046
  • Description: The flourishing city of East London has received but scant attention from historians. Its importance has been overshadowed by that of Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth, each with a foundation bordering on the romantic. The introduction to this thesis indicates traces of the existence of primitive man in these parts. The historical survey will commence with notices taken of the region by nautical and land expeditions in search of either shipwrecked sailors, or news of native races. The first serious notice of East London taken by the white people came in the time of Sir Benjamin D'Urban who sought a seaport for his new province of Queen Adelaide. Our port was opened in 1836 under the appellation of Port Rex, but faded into temporary insignificance, almost oblivion, with the reversal of Sir. B. D'Urban's frontier policy by Lord Glenelg and the abandonment of the new province in 1837. It was not destined to remain forgotten, for Sir Harry Smith at the end of 1847, saw in the mouth of the Buffalo River the same possibilities as had struck the advisers of Sir B. D'Urban. To him it was the future London of the East, and the connecting link between British Kaffraria and the world outside. From that time East London has grown steadily, and of recent years very rapidly. It is not proposed to carry this survey much beyond 1866 in which year British Kaffraria was annexed to the Cape Colony.
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  • Date Issued: 1932

The development of native policy in the Transkei and in Glen Gray between 1870 and 1900

- Griffiths, M S

  • Authors: Griffiths, M S
  • Date: 1939
  • Subjects: Transkei (South Africa) -- History , Black people -- South Africa -- Legal status, Laws, etc. -- South Africa -- History
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2607 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012098 , Transkei (South Africa) -- History , Black people -- South Africa -- Legal status, Laws, etc. -- South Africa -- History
  • Description: The Transkeian Territories extend over a stretch of 17000 square miles between the north eastern border of the Cape Colony and the southern border of Natal. In 1870 this was an exclusively Native area ; inhabited by some half million natives tribally organised under independent chiefs and grouped into racial entities according to origln; customs, and language dialects.
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  • Date Issued: 1939

The governorship of Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole

- Scheepers, Unus

  • Authors: Scheepers, Unus
  • Date: 1940
  • Subjects: Cole, Galbraith Lowry, Sir, 1772-1842 , Colonial administrators -- South Africa -- Cape of Good Hope , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) History -- 1814-1835 , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Race relations , Slaves -- Emancipation -- South Africa -- Cape of Good Hope , Xhosa (African people) -- History -- 19th century , Xhosa (African people) -- Colonization -- South Africa -- Cape of Good Hope , Khoikhoi (African people) -- History -- 19th century
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2600 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007899 , Cole, Galbraith Lowry, Sir, 1772-1842 , Colonial administrators -- South Africa -- Cape of Good Hope , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) History -- 1814-1835 , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Race relations , Slaves -- Emancipation -- South Africa -- Cape of Good Hope , Xhosa (African people) -- History -- 19th century , Xhosa (African people) -- Colonization -- South Africa -- Cape of Good Hope , Khoikhoi (African people) -- History -- 19th century
  • Description: From Conclusion: There were no great upheavals during Cole's governership, but his rule has been a very interesting study. The old order of things was coming to a close. The way was prepared under Cole for freeing of the slaves; and the old despotic rule became a thing of the past. The British Settlers agitated for and obtained a free press; thus the foundation was laid for democratic institutions. He was the first governor to lay emphasis on the necessity of municipal councils not only as a way of decreasing expenditure, but also as a school for representative government. The Boers were becoming race conscious and the present orientation of the political parties had their origin in this period, though subsequent events have made the political struggle embittered. Above all the stage was being set for the Great Trek and the opening up of the whole of the present Union of South Africa and Rhodesia ... Last but not least the native question was entering upon its modern phase. Chiefs were losing their power, they admitted that they could not control their subjects, and natives were entering the service of Europeans; not only to steal with greater impunity but also to be able to enjoy the security offered by a well organised and disciplined society.
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  • Date Issued: 1940

The missionary work of the first Anglican Bishop of Natal, the Rt. Reverend John William Colenso, between the years 1852-1873

- Burnett, B B

  • Authors: Burnett, B B
  • Date: 1947
  • Subjects: Colenso, John William, 1814-1883
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2621 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014679
  • Description: At the outset it had been my intention to make only the slightest of references to the Church Controversy in which Bishop Colenso was involved and to have touched only lightly on his theological position. Apart from anything else I hesitated to enter the arena in which so many had already collided violently and where my own prejudices might be enlisted on one side or the other. It became evident however that Colenso the Controversialist, the Theologian could not be dissociated from Colenso the missionary, without giving an inadequate, and even misleading history of his missionary activities. The Controversy had a serious and deleterious effect on his missionary work, and no estimate of the value of a missionary's labours would be valid without some consideration of his teaching, more especially when his orthodoxy is suspect. I have therefore dealt as briefly as I could with these questions in Chapter V because of their relevance, and because to produce a work on an ecclesiastic without some reference to his tenets would be like writing a biography of Louis Botha without any allusion to his political 'faith', or of Wellington, without any mention of Waterloo. it would represent a distortion of history to write about a Missionary Bishop as though he were an amateur politician, or of a missionary as though he were interested only in finance and administration.
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  • Date Issued: 1947

German immigration to the Cape, with special reference to (a) the German military settlers of 1857; and (b) the German immigrants of 1858

- Schnell, E L G

A critical study of the evidence of Andries Stockenstrom before the Aborigines Committee in 1835, viewed in the light of his statements and policies before 1935

- Urie, J M

  • Authors: Urie, J M
  • Date: 1953
  • Subjects: Stockenstrom, Andries, 1792-1864 , Eastern Cape (South Africa) -- History -- 19th century
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2617 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013416
  • Description: In recent years, increasing interest has been taken in the career of Andries Stockenstrom. Detailed study of his policy as Landdrost of Graaff-Reinet , as Commissioner-General of the Eastern Districts, and as Lieutenant-Governor, has brought about a realization of the soundness and value of much of his work. This appreciation of the sterling qualities of Stockenstrom's character- despite his undoubtedly difficult temperament - has led to the tacit assumption that the accusations which were levelled against him, and the odium in which he was held in Albany, after his evidence before the Aborigines Committee 1835 -1836, were largely the result of unfortunate newspaper propaganda. That evidence, it is implied - coming as it did at a time when public opinion was peculiarly sensitive to criticism - was in fact, not as black as it had been painted. Yet the events of the period between the Commissioner-Generalship and the Lieutenant- Governorship have not only coloured the judgment upon Stockenstrom of almost every writer on South African history, but so influenced contemporary public opinion as to materially impair the efficiency of his Lieutenant-Governorship. In writing this thesis, it has heen my purpose to make a detailed study of such material as is available for the period 1833-1836, and to endeavour, by an analysis of the evidence more particularly in the light of the years before 1833, to set this significant period in Stockenstrom' s career in its right perspective.
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  • Date Issued: 1953

Defoe and Scottish politics after union

- Gathorne, R

  • Authors: Gathorne, R
  • Date: 1954
  • Subjects: Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731 -- Political and social views , Scotland -- History -- 1689-1745
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2605 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011941
  • Description: It would indeed have been a difficult matter for anybody possessing a taste for self-expression, a facility with words and an insatiable imagination to avoid becoming involved in political controversy in England during the early part of the Eighteenth Century. For one who, in addition, was confident in his ability to solve problems of state of whatever complexity it was clearly an impossibility. Daniel Defoe's close connection with politics during the first years of the Eighteenth Century involved him in numerous hardships. In later years it brought him much less fame than his excursions into fiction; but it was the means of providing him, albeit sparsely at times, with sufficient money to keep his creditors at bay. On more than one occasion the protection he gained helped to rescue him from imprisonment. Intro., p. 1.
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  • Date Issued: 1954

Robert Godlonton as architect of frontier opinion, with special reference to the politics of separatism, 1850-57

- Le Cordeur, Basil Alexander

The development of the secretaryship to the government at the Cape of Good Hope under John Montagu, 1843-1852

- Breitenbach, J J

  • Authors: Breitenbach, J J
  • Date: 1958
  • Subjects: Montagu, John, 1797-1853 , Montagu family , Cape of Good Hope (Colony) -- Parliament -- Legislative Council , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- History , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Politics and government
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2620 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014603
  • Description: The development of the Cape Colony during the 'forties and early 'fifties last century is, indeed, a fascinating study. And as one aspect of it, a critical study analysis of the public career of John Montagu, while he was Colonial Secretary at the Cape, is of particular interest. For, by tracing the influence of his office in relation to the changing political, social and economic structures of the colony, it is hoped some contribution will be made to the knowledge of the period. Thus, the present thesis is, in part, an examination of the duties and responsibilities of the Colonial Office; but more particularly, it is an examination of how Montagu, who virtually dominated the Cape scene for almost a decade interpreted these duties and responsibilities. By concentrating, then, on his role in the civil administration and political management of colonial affairs, other aspects are revealed. The authority of the Colonial Office, which had through the years become a sort of government 'archives', was developed to such an extent, that every memorandum issued by it seems to set the tone for government policy. More. The very fact that Montagu was, time and again, left in charge of civil affairs at the Cape, while it reveals the dominant native problem and the vital question of defence, accounts also for the patenalism in government. The most important primary sources for this study have been the British Parliamentary Papers on Cape Affairs, the Cape of Good Hope Blue Books, Government House Records and the relevant minutes of the Executive and Legislative Councils. The Annual Almanacs of the Cape proved to be invaluable; they contain a wealth of information on the institutions of government, central and local, as well as the most indispensable returns for all the many services at the Cape.
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  • Date Issued: 1958

The executive government of the Cape of Good Hope, 1825-54

- Fryer, Alan Kenneth

  • Authors: Fryer, Alan Kenneth
  • Date: 1959
  • Subjects: Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- History -- 1795-1872
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
  • Identifier: vital:2604 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011896
  • Description: The study of administrative processes is a relaltively new one both in the field of history and sociology. In both disciplines what is required is study of the sructure and growth of adminstrative systems and of the impact of administrative action on the community it seeks to serve and which it often provokes. In the field of history, Professor F. Tout in his chapters on administrative history ... gave new vitality and understanding to medieval studies. In the main, South African history, though probably not more so than other Commonwealth countries, has been less fortunate. Preface, p. 1.
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  • Date Issued: 1959

The diary of C. L. Stretch - a critical edition and appraisal

- Crankshaw, Grahame Bruce

John X. Merriman : the making of a South African statesman (1869-1878)

- Gruber, R F J

  • Authors: Gruber, R F J
  • Date: 1961
  • Subjects: Merriman, John Xavier, 1841-1926 , Statesmen -- South Africa -- Biography , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 1836-1909
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2623 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015002
  • Description: With the possible exception of Hofmeyr and Schreiner, there is no Cape statesman whose career raises more tantalising questions than that of John X. Merr1man. Last Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, doyen of Parliamentarians, brilliant orator, versatile administrator, veteran politician, his public life stretched across fifty-five years of south African History. He entered upon it before the grant of Responsible Government, the discovery of diamonds and gold, and the awakening. of Afrikaner Nationalism; he departed from it on the eve of the Statute of Westminster, the establishment of Iscor and the coming to power of Hertzog and Malan. His contemporaries looked upon him as a man of immense knowledge and olympian ability. In the eyes of many his position as leader of the largest and oldest settled community in South Africa, not to mention his role as heir to the Cape tradition, made him the natural choice as first Prime Minister of the Union he had helped to establish. He was not called to office. Barely seventy, in the full maturity of his years, he withdrew trom active political leadership in the country of his adoption. He is hardly remembered today. This thesis seeks to contribute something to an understanding of the man and an assessment of his qualities by a study of his formative years. It attempts both to reconstruct his personality and analyse the nature of his statesmanship - not only by an examination of the role he played in the years under review, but also by an assessment of the part he failed to play. For this purpose both the structure of Cape politics and the ramifications of the various problems that presented themselves have been explored in greater detail than might otherwise have been the case.
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  • Date Issued: 1961

The reminiscences of Thomas Stubbs, 1820 - 1877

- McGeoch, Robert Thomas

  • Authors: McGeoch, Robert Thomas
  • Date: 1965
  • Subjects: Stubbs family , British settlers of 1820 (South Africa) -- Personal narratives , South Africa -- History -- Frontier Wars, 1811-1878 , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- History
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2609 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012851
  • Description: The "Reminiscences" of Thomas Stubbs are one of several such compositions which have survived from the 1820 Settlers. The manuscript offers one of the fullest and most lively accounts of frontier life, and the experiences of the Settlers as seen through the eyes of Thomas Stubbs. The object of this thesis has been to reconstruct the life of Thomas Stubbs which has proved an arduous yet absorbing task and to comment upon and evaluate some of the views Stubbs expressed when he wrote the "Reminiscences" between 1874 and 1875, as well as to test, where possible, the validity of the opinions and sentiments formed during a half-century's acquaintance with the Eastern frontier of the Cape of Good Hope.
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  • Date Issued: 1965

The letters of Hannah Dennison, 1820 settler, 1820-1847

- Edgecombe, Dorothy Ruth

The South African Commercial Advertiser and the Eastern Frontier, 1834-1847: an examination of the ways in which and the sources from which it reported frontier conflicts

- Frye, John

  • Authors: Frye, John
  • Date: 1968
  • Subjects: Fairbairn, John, 1794-1864 , South African Commercial Advertiser (Newspaper) , South Africa -- History -- Frontier Wars, 1811-1878
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2622 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014918
  • Description: [From Introduction]. The name of John Fairbairn is remembered with honour in South Africa for the part he played in the achievement of a freer press in the Cape Colony, in the campaign to prevent Britain from establishing a convict station on Cape soil, and in the movement which resulted in the establishment of a form of representative government in the Cape in 1853. More controversial is his share, as the editor of the first modern newspaper in the Colony, in a campaign to secure just treatment for the natives both inside and outside of the Colony. It is with his treatment of the conflicts, both small and great, between the Colony and the AmaXhosa tribes on its Eastern Frontier that this study is concerned.
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  • Date Issued: 1968

The case of James Erith, 1820 settler, and his struggle for compensation

- Woods, Timothy Phillips

  • Authors: Woods, Timothy Phillips
  • Date: 1969
  • Subjects: Erith, James, 1790-1869 , British settlers of 1820 (South Africa) , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Emigration and immigration
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2618 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013451
  • Description: James Erith, a freeholder of the country of Kent, was one of the “1820 Settlers" who emigrated to the Cape and were settled mainly in the Zuurveld in the present district of Albany. This investigation was prompted by the fact that though he was by no means the settler to suffer misfortune and injustice, he was the only proprietor of a small party who eventually secured compensation. The case was the case of James Erith but the initiative and persistence was that of his wife, Jane Erith, who made in all five voyages spread over twelve years, before she secured some at least of the ends she sought and the family settled in Cape Town. The Eriths fought their case with the respective Colonial Offices for twelve years in all, and in the case of the Colonial Office, London, confronted no less than four Secretaries of State in five successive Cabinets. In the course of their struggle the Eriths received (a) the balance of their deposit; (b) cash compensation for cattle stolen by the Xhosa, and in the fina1 arbitration in 1832 the sum of £500 cash. James Erith, master baker, remains a rather shadowy figure, sharp-sighted to his own interest, querulous and not very effective. The triumph of 1832 was in the main the triumph of Jane, his wife, an amateur and robust Portia. Shrewd, tenacious, deft in argument this importunate woman knew how to stand her ground; there can have been few women who secured passage on a naval vessel and then allowed the Admiralty to submit its account to the Colonial Office. How the Eriths subsisted between their eviction from Waaye Plaats in 1823 and the arbitration award of 1832, has not been established. On occasion in London Mrs. Erith stayed with the Rev. R. Stewarts, Rutland House, Black Heath Road in Greenwich: in Cape Town it is believed that Erith plied his old trade. When he died there, in 1869 at the age of seventy nine, he left a house and three cottages to his daughter Ellen: mortgaged property in the district of Caledon, to his son-in-law George Budge : a house and three mortgaged properties in Simon’s Town to his daughter Anne Budge. He left an income of £24 per annum to his daughter Jane Moodie, widow of the late John Powell. The records used in this study, in addition to those printed in Theal, were the series C.O. 48 from the Public Record Office, London, now available on microfilm in the Cory Library at Rhodes University and records of the District of Albany in the Archives, Cape Town. The investigation has, it is thought, thrown new light on the background to the emigration scheme of 1819, on the mishandling of the Settlers in the Zuurveld after their arrival in the Cape, and on the punctilious attention to detail given by the Colonial Office, London. While it is true that the interests of the Eriths were probably smothered in the Tory endeavour to damp down the attack on Somerset in l826-1827, the Secretaries of State are by no means discredited by this analysis. It sasys much for any pattern of administration that in the thick of the Reform Bill crisis, the efforts of a single obscure member of Parliament, Mr. J O Briscoe, could secure a final arbitration award.
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  • Date Issued: 1969

A critical study of Anthony Trollope's South Africa

- Davidson, J H

  • Authors: Davidson, J H
  • Date: 1970
  • Subjects: Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882 -- Criticism and interpretation , Literature and history -- South Africa -- History -- 19th century , South Africa -- In literature
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2602 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1010964 , Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882 -- Criticism and interpretation , Literature and history -- South Africa -- History -- 19th century , South Africa -- In literature
  • Description: In the year 1877, during a lull in the Eastern Question, the English newspapers discovered South Africa. There a Dutch republic, the Transvaal, had all but succumbed to the onslaughts of a native chief - or so it seemed; and now it was annexed to the British Crown. Clearly, this was a corner of the world of which, as its colonists boasted, England would hear much more; and Parliament was shortly to set its seal of approval upon Lord Carnarvon’s essay in imperial architecture, South African Confederation. Intro., p. 1.
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  • Date Issued: 1970

A forgotten frontier zone : settlements and reactions in the Stormberg area between 1820-1860

- Wagenaar, E J C

  • Authors: Wagenaar, E J C
  • Date: 1974
  • Subjects: Eastern Cape (South Africa) -- History , South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909 , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- History
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2592 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007262
  • Description: From Preface: In 1778 Joachim van Plettenberg declared the Fish River as boundary between the Trekboer and the Xhosa. The area between the lower reaches of the Fish and Kei Rivers was to become the main centre of conflict in nine frontier wars. It was here, too, that successive governors carried out experiments to stabilize land and people in the area. But after 1820, while official attention was focused on this trouble spot, a new and related zone of conflict was gradually and almost unnoticed opening up. This was in the north-east where the first encounters between Trekboer and Thembu were beginning to take place. By 1825 the spearhead of the Thembu, harassed by the amaNgwane raids, had migrated across the Kei River to settle south of the Stormberg in what is now the district of Queenstown. By this time the first Trekboers in their perennial search for water and pasturage had crossed the Stormberg Spruit to settle on the waste land north of the Stormberg. The history of the Stormberg area is predominantly an account of the interaction between these two peoples.
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  • Date Issued: 1974

The council of advice at the Cape of Good Hope, 1825-1834: a study in colonial government

- Donaldson, Margaret E

  • Authors: Donaldson, Margaret E
  • Date: 1974
  • Subjects: South Africa -- History -- To 1836 Great Britain -- Colonies -- Administration Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- History -- 1795-1872
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
  • Identifier: vital:2603 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011220
  • Description: The Council of Advice first emerged as a constitutional device for colonial rule in colonies captured by Britain during the wars against France between 1793 and 1814. The search for some new form of government for colonies of conquest had been necessitated by the difficulty generally experienced in assimilating formerly foreign colonies into the traditional British pattern of representation. Experience in Quebec between 1764 and 1791 had led to the gradual recognition of conciliar government as a workable substitute to bridge the gap between military rule and the grant of representative institutions. Between 1794 when a Council of Advice was first introduced in the island of San Domingo, and 1825, when the Cape of Good Hope was granted a council of this type, the composition, function and scope of such councils was gradually defined and elaborated. There was a continual interplay of precedent and example from one colony to another, facilitated by the growth of the Colonial Office in London during the early decades of the 19th Century. Councils of Advice were also introduced into some a-typical colonies of settlement, notably New South Wales, where the particular circumstances of the colony gave rise to the further development of the conciliar pattern of government, influenced by the practical experience in Quebec prior to 1791. Thus the Council of Advice at the Cape of Good Hope from 1825-1834 was but one example of an instrument of government which was being widely used in the British empire, and which was still developing in form and function during the period under consideration. The Council of Advice at the Cape reflects this fluidity. The composition of the council was altered on several occasions during the nine years of its existence; the degree of independence allowed to council members was a question which arose on several occasions, especially in relation to discussion of policy decisions taken in London; moreover, the council met at the discretion of the governor and four different men held this office during the period 1825-34, each with his own individual idea of the function and value of a council of advice. Preface, p. 1-2.
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  • Date Issued: 1974
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