Dutch Colonization of Africa

[TimV]

On another note, the Battle at Blood River, please remember, was not only a victory, it was a shut-out; 400+ against almost 13,000 (or more) and not one dead. I know people argue about the superiority of the Afrikaner's weaponry, but you'd think that a lucky spear throw would have gotten someone at some point during the battle. Add to that the covenant made before the battle by the Afrikaners, and you have some really compelling reasons that they saw it as God's hand on the field of battle. $.02

The Afrikaner's weapon was a smooth bore musket loaded from the front. And a generation later, 4 times that many British regulars, armed with rocket launchers and breach loading weapons that fire many times faster and more accurately than the Boer weapons faced the same Zulu army, and were killed to the last man. The Zulus were GOOD.

My third son's middle name is Sarel, after the Pastor who administered the oath. Even today many Afrikaners still hold December 16 as a Sabbath because of that vow.

 

[kvanlaan]

The Afrikaner's weapon was a smooth bore musket loaded from the front. And a generation later, 4 times that many British regulars, armed with rocket launchers and breach loading weapons that fire many times faster and more accurately than the Boer weapons faced the same Zulu army, and were killed to the last man. The Zulus were GOOD.

I still think there is no match, man for man, in terms of resilience, toughness, and unwavering faith, than a true Boer. Drop a Boere family in the desolate wilderness, and within 12 months, you will have a flourishing farm and a church.

 

[Hamalas]

I've never studied this before, fascinating!

 

[Croghanite]

And that will do for now! Some day I'll plan on writing an essay for the PB about South African history through the eyes of an American Calvinist who lived there for a decade, and was involved in the modern "trek" to form a new homeland for them.

You should make it a book. It sounds very interesting.

 

[Puritan Sailor]

Much good was done for many of those societies, and it should be admitted that not all cultures are worth saving as to many of the practices that make them a distinct culture (think elements of Islamic society that prepare their young women for their wedding night with needle and thread, if you know what I'm talking about...) Many of the colonized peoples were wrapped in gross idolotry and paganism, which distinctly shaped those cultures, and because of which we should be glad that they were often subdued and changed, even if not always in an ideal manner.

The ends do not justify the means.

Obviously, but neither should the good that has come about through God's hand of providence working in history be downplayed.

I think that this reaction to all things "Western" tends to overlook the gritty reality of historical fact that those cultures were not of the "noble savage" as imagined by Paul Gauguin (who, by the way, also despised his European heritige).

I do not want to forget or overlook the good that has been done. But too often that is used to justify or white-wash the atrocities that were comitted by professing Christians. I agree there are not any noble savages, but there are not many noble Westerners either. Christianity and the "West" are not synonymous.

 

[brianeschen]

I've never studied this before, fascinating!

This has been wonderful.

 

[Pergamum]

Great thread...makes me want to go buy a book on Afrikaner hisotry. Any suggestions?

 

[brianeschen]

Great thread...makes me want to go buy a book on Afrikaner hisotry. Any suggestions?

Yup. Pester Tim until he relents.

 

[kvanlaan]

Pakenham's book on the Boer War is fascinating and incredibly detailed but tragic - I have read it several times but always lose momentum after the Brits start in with the concentration camps and literally walling off the country with barbed wire and blockhouses to defeat the Boers. It's only the war, and does not include much in the way of general Boer history, but I still think it's great.

Just remember this one statistic and you'll get a feel for what the Boere are: it took almost half a million British regulars to defeat 85,000 Dutch farmers. And they simply couldn't do it on the battlefield; they had to resort to scorched earth and concentration camps to win.

-----Added 2/10/2009 at 07:18:06 EST-----

One small addition: Bok van Blerk's song on the war - you can see that the way the Boere talk about the war bears much resemblance (and then some) to many Southerners today. Many are still yearning for Koos de la Rey (or the like) to lead them back to Boere sovereignty.

[video=youtube;fAhHWpqPz9A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAhHWpqPz9A[/video]

 

[Kevin]

Kvan, I love that song!

 

[kvanlaan]

We've listened to it so much, our kids can almost sing it.

 

[RamistThomist]

Aren't you implying that some cultures are superior to others?

Yes, what's wrong with that?

On another note, the Battle at Blood River, please remember, was not only a victory, it was a shut-out; 400+ against almost 13,000 (or more) and not one dead. I know people argue about the superiority of the Afrikaner's weaponry, but you'd think that a lucky spear throw would have gotten someone at some point during the battle. Add to that the covenant made before the battle by the Afrikaners, and you have some really compelling reasons that they saw it as God's hand on the field of battle. $.02

Nothing. I was agreeing with you.

 

[TimV]

I confess to singing it myself at work occasionally Deeeeh laaa Reey.....

They have the coolest folk songs, and one of them is about the Confederate Raider the Alabama, which once docked at Cape Town.

Yes, at the end of the war there were about 20,000 men still fighting against 450,000 Brit and colonial regulars, plus the support structure. It was costing them one million pounds per day to run the war, and when news of the death camps came out the public turned against the war.

But probably more importantly, the Germans who ruled Namibia at the time where watching, and saying to themselves "these guys really aren't that good" and it led to the UK losing their empire and much of their national wealth and world standing.

 

[Jan Ziska]

it took almost half a million British regulars to defeat 85,000 Dutch farmers. And they simply couldn't do it on the battlefield; they had to resort to scorched earth and concentration camps to win.

Look, as much as I admire the Afrikaner nation, this is just tosh.

The Afrikaner Commando refused to face the British regiments in a pitched battle. Of course, why would they? They would have been slaughtered. They harassed, they raided, they used their skills and knowledge of the land to their best advantage.

Of course, raiding tactics are nothing new, and the British responded the way nations always have to raiders. Hit them where they live.

In days gone past, they would have burned the farms with the women & children in them. Instead they threw them in concentration camps. Not a great deal better, but to suggest that the Afrikaners were God-blessed supermen who only lost because the evil English cheated is ahistorical.

Further, to suggest that the concentration camps were unnecessarily cruel is incorrect. The British did what was required to win. Once the Afrikaners surrendered, repercussions were moderate.

The same Afrikaners who were so devout were also the same ones who taught that people were destined to be property because of the colour of their skin, and some even taught that the gospel should not be preached to the Bantu because blacks did not have souls.

It serves no-one well to inaccurately glorify or demonise historical actors. They did what they did. I am not going to say the British actions in SA were perfect, they obviously were not. But they were not demons, and I believe they were broadly in the right in the Boer War. Once the Afrikaners regained control of SA in 1948, look how things went.

 

[Hawaiian Puritan]

Can you name a historical occurrence of colonists occupying an uninhabited land?

When the Pilgrims landed, the area was uninhabited. The Indian tribe that had lived there had been wiped out in an epidemic, and other Indians did not occupy the area because they feared they also would become sick and die.

 

[Abd_Yesua_alMasih]

it took almost half a million British regulars to defeat 85,000 Dutch farmers. And they simply couldn't do it on the battlefield; they had to resort to scorched earth and concentration camps to win.

Look, as much as I admire the Afrikaner nation, this is just tosh.

The Afrikaner Commando refused to face the British regiments in a pitched battle. Of course, why would they? They would have been slaughtered. They harassed, they raided, they used their skills and knowledge of the land to their best advantage.

Of course, raiding tactics are nothing new, and the British responded the way nations always have to raiders. Hit them where they live.

In days gone past, they would have burned the farms with the women & children in them. Instead they threw them in concentration camps. Not a great deal better, but to suggest that the Afrikaners were God-blessed supermen who only lost because the evil English cheated is ahistorical.

Further, to suggest that the concentration camps were unnecessarily cruel is incorrect. The British did what was required to win. Once the Afrikaners surrendered, repercussions were moderate.

The same Afrikaners who were so devout were also the same ones who taught that people were destined to be property because of the colour of their skin, and some even taught that the gospel should not be preached to the Bantu because blacks did not have souls.

It serves no-one well to inaccurately glorify or demonise historical actors. They did what they did. I am not going to say the British actions in SA were perfect, they obviously were not. But they were not demons, and I believe they were broadly in the right in the Boer War. Once the Afrikaners regained control of SA in 1948, look how things went.

They weren't just British either. They were soldiers from across the Empire. When the government in New Zealand called for volunteers to fight the Afrikaners they got so many volunteers they didn't know what to do. They progressively raised the level until they got only the most determined. From memory every man had to buy a horse and pay for this weapon etc... and still they got a good deal more than they really needed. I believe it was probably similar in your country, Australia.

As said above those young men from across the empire went to fight in a foreign land far from home and were treated to guerrilla/raiding tactics by Afrikaners who refused to stand and fight. They did what they could to finish the job.

 

[Jan Ziska]

They weren't just British either. They were soldiers from across the Empire. When the government in New Zealand called for volunteers to fight the Afrikaners they got so many volunteers they didn't know what to do. They progressively raised the level until they got only the most determined. From memory every man had to buy a horse and pay for this weapon etc... and still they got a good deal more than they really needed. I believe it was probably similar in your country, Australia.

As said above those young men from across the empire went to fight in a foreign land far from home and were treated to guerrilla/raiding tactics by Afrikaners who refused to stand and fight. They did what they could to finish the job.

Yeah, the first war Australian troops fought in was the Boer War, although soldiers from the colonies fought in NZ in the Maori Wars.

 

[kvanlaan]

Further, to suggest that the concentration camps were unnecessarily cruel is incorrect. The British did what was required to win. Once the Afrikaners surrendered, repercussions were moderate.

Brother, I would respectfullly say you are in grave error here. That logic leads down a bad path - why not skin the wives and children of the Boers, hang their bodies on poles at prominent watering holes, and label them to identify them? That would have been more effective in getting the Boere to stop fighting and meant less loss of life than the gulag that was the British concentration camps.

Never fought a pitched battle? What was Modder River? Spion Kop? Did Rommel never fight a pitched battle in Africa because he would fight, feint, delay and escape? He was seen as a genius of modern warfare - but not the Boere. No, they would hit and run and nothing else so their women and children (and over one hundred thousand blacks) were put in these "refugee" camps and died by the thousands. I don't see the logical progression there.

It's like justifying Sherman's march to the sea as 'doing what had to be done'. No, it was gratuitous murder and destruction, that's all.

 

[calgal]

Further, to suggest that the concentration camps were unnecessarily cruel is incorrect. The British did what was required to win. Once the Afrikaners surrendered, repercussions were moderate.

Brother, I would respectfullly say you are in grave error here. That logic leads down a bad path - why not skin the wives and children of the Boers, hang their bodies on poles at prominent watering holes, and label them to identify them? That would have been more effective in getting the Boere to stop fighting and meant less loss of life than the gulag that was the British concentration camps.

Never fought a pitched battle? What was Modder River? Spion Kop? Did Rommel never fight a pitched battle in Africa because he would fight, feint, delay and escape? He was seen as a genius of modern warfare - but not the Boere. Their women and children (and over one hundred thousand blacks) were put in these "refugee" camps and died by the thousands.

The concentration camps were so modern, the the soviets and a certain nasty little austrian corporal took notes and modeled their "internment camps" after these. Anyone think this treatment of noncombatants might have pushed the children and grandchildren of these Boere past their breaking point?

 

[TimV]

The Afrikaner Commando refused to face the British regiments in a pitched battle. Of course, why would they? They would have been slaughtered. They harassed, they raided, they used their skills and knowledge of the land to their best advantage.

Well, we don't have to guess, do we as there were conventional battles. At Dundee Meyer with 3,500 men fought Symons and British losses were 500 and Boer losses 120.

At Elandslaagte 850 Boers were beat by British with 350 Boer losses and 70 British losses. This battle made an impact on the Boers as the British lancers engaged in "pig-sticking" Boers who tried to surrender.

At Magersfontien 15,000 British fought 8,500 Boers. This battle is famous because Delarey was the first modern general to use the kind of trench warfare used in WW1. British losses were 1,100 and Boer losses were 200.

At Colenso General Botha with 8,500 men fought a British force of 15,000. British losses were 1,200 and Boer losses were 38.

And there were several others.

In days gone past, they would have burned the farms with the women & children in them. Instead they threw them in concentration camps. Not a great deal better, but to suggest that the Afrikaners were God-blessed supermen who only lost because the evil English cheated is ahistorical.

They certainly weren't supermen, just lots better.

Further, to suggest that the concentration camps were unnecessarily cruel is incorrect. The British did what was required to win. Once the Afrikaners surrendered, repercussions were moderate.

The death rate for people entering those camps was 25%.

The same Afrikaners who were so devout were also the same ones who taught that people were destined to be property because of the colour of their skin, and some even taught that the gospel should not be preached to the Bantu because blacks did not have souls.

Well, Slavery ended in SA a generation before it did here. There were no slaves in Afrikaner ruled territory ever. When they are faced with the type of arguments you are using, which they percieve as typical of Australians, they point out that there are lots and lots of Black people where they live and there are no native Tasmanians because while they came with the Bible, you came with the gun and they are now totally extinct.

 

[Kevin]

BTW my great uncle (grandfathers older brother) faught in SA as part of the New Brunswick Reg.

 

[Rocketeer]

I would like to add a colourful note, Dutch wanted to fight escorbut and diseases caused by long shipping with few fresh food, and thought about wine, they knew little of wine and Holland has no good weather for wine anyway.

It had in the 14th and 15th century, though; that was before the Small Ice Age, which reached it height somewhere in the 17th century, if memory serves.

But the French Huguenots that fled to Holland from Catholic persecution knew a lot about wine, so they were encouraged by several means to go to South Africa and produce wine there, since then Wine is a major asset of South Africa, and exported to all the World

I am myself of that descent; that is to say, my maternal grandfather can trace his lineage back to a 15th-century French Huguenot.

It serves no-one well to inaccurately glorify or demonise historical actors. They did what they did. I am not going to say the British actions in SA were perfect, they obviously were not. But they were not demons, and I believe they were broadly in the right in the Boer War.

I reserve the right to denounce men like Stalin, Hitler and Kitchener as demons. They properly were, period. The 25% death ratio in the concentration camps was mostly by starvation, which is easily helped by shipping a little more food. This is murder by omission, which is quite as bad. Else, you cannot condemn Mao Zedong's Great Step Forward either, nor the Soviet agricultural policies.

Secondly, the British were not in the right, for this reason, that the reaction (of starving women and children in concentration camps and of practicing scorched earth policies) is disproportionate, period. I do not care that the Scipio Africanus did the same to the Carthaginians; Kitchener was supposed to be a Christian, and so was the British nation. These tactics cannot be justified - for if they can, why are the Americans not even allowed Guantanamo Bay? The proper, Christian reaction would have been to unilaterally end the war, by withdrawing from all pre-war Boer territory and guarding the border. It is plain pride that caused the Brits to stay and soldier on; it also isn't as if half a million men can't guard a border, either; half that number or less could have done the job. There was no need for the British to fight on after the cities fell.

As for what happened in 1948 - that was 45 years after the war in question. Does that mean, by analogy, that the NATO invasion of Jugoslavia was a direct result of WWII?

Edit:

what happened in 1948, by the way? Apartheid is a British invention, and the 1948 law 'only' included the Cape Coloureds with the Bantu and the Indians.

 

[Jan Ziska]

Ok, I'm going to try to reply to everything.

But first I will say I don't want this to descend into an argument over whose ancestors are more awesome/devout etc. My physical heritage is British, and my spiritual heritage Calvinist/Reformed. In a lot of ways, I have a foot in both camps. I have a huge amount of respect for the Boers. But I have even more respect for the British empire, for all its sins.

I've found in my studying of history that we tend to lionise what I call 'glorious losers'. The Boers, the American South, the Scots, the Irish etc.

It is easy to side with the underdogs, because they don't have the burden of ruling, of making the civilisational choices that are unpopular.

Anyway, onward:

That logic leads down a bad path

How else would you suggest the British stop the Commando from receiving supplies and support? As gruesome as it sounds, 25% is far better than 100%.

It's like justifying Sherman's march to the sea as 'doing what had to be done'. No, it was gratuitous murder and destruction, that's all.

I have no problem with Sherman's actions. He kept his troops focused on inflicting property damage. Loss of civilian life was incidental, and not what he was trying to accomplish. It ended the war quickly, which was in everyone's best interest.

If you have a problem with these methods, then you must also have a problem with the methods that have won pretty much every war ever. It is not the destruction of armies or fighting men that stops a war, it is crippling the enemy's ability to fight. Look at Hiroshima, the bombings of Germany, etc etc etc.

As Sherman himself said: “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.”

And yes, there were conventional battles. But the majority of the conflict could be described as guerrilla warfare, similar to that the French and Spanish fought under Napoleon.

As for why the British had to invade in the first place? This is the hardest part for me. I would say a lot of it had to do with control of the diamond and gold fields. I would also say a lot of it had to to with Pax Britannia.

1948 was when the National Party won power, and held it from then until they surrendered power to Mandela and the ANC. The vast majority of Apartheid policy was formulated by Afrikaners (esp members of the Afrikaner Broederbond) and defended from the pulpit by Reformed clerics. Also note that SA is no more democratic now than it was under the Nationals. They swapped one single-party-rule for another. They did not give the Bantu the ability to govern themselves in a modern democracy in the way that say, Indians were.

A final note. Again, I am not saying that one side are angels, and the other demons. Both sides were nominally Christian, but men of their times. What I mean by that is that it is unfair to judge them by modern standards. If you condemn the British for their internment camps, then you must condemn the Boers for their racism and erroneous (if not heretical) belief that God had given them the land they inhabited and that they were destined to rule over the Bantu people. And you must also condemn them for making extensive use of ununiformed soldiers. They can't have it both ways.

PS: A few things to bear in mind regarding the Tasmanian Aboriginals. 1) There were an estimated 2000 of them pre-settlement. Such a small population is extremely fragile, and it doesn't take much to decimate. Disease & regular border clashes accounted for the vast majority of deaths. 2) The descendants of Tasmanian Aboriginals exist to this day, and are in similar numbers as they were pre-settlement.

 

[TimV]

It is easy to side with the underdogs, because they don't have the burden of ruling, of making the civilisational choices that are unpopular.

Burden of ruling? Over independent peoples who didn't want to be ruled by the British

How else would you suggest the British stop the Commando from receiving supplies and support? As gruesome as it sounds, 25% is far better than 100%

.

You are mixing theologial mistakes with historical mistakes. Those Calvinists that died at a 25% in British camps had a much smaller death rate than Boers who were interned in Portugese camps. And the theological mistake should be obvious. It has to do with Christian ethics, and whether the ends justifies the means.

And yes, there were conventional battles.

Now you're changing the subject. Your remark was

The Afrikaner Commando refused to face the British regiments in a pitched battle. Of course, why would they? They would have been slaughtered.

And what usually happened was that the British regiments were beaten.

As for why the British had to invade in the first place? This is the hardest part for me. I would say a lot of it had to do with control of the diamond and gold fields. I would also say a lot of it had to to with Pax Britannia.

When I'm in the mood sometime I'll include that in my PB essay. It's complicated, especially as the British didn't invade. The two Boer Republics invaded the British Empire.

If you condemn the British for their internment camps, then you must condemn the Boers for their racism and erroneous (if not heretical) belief that God had given them the land they inhabited and that they were destined to rule over the Bantu people.

This should more properly be in the wading pool area, but you can't imprison people, burn down their homes and kill their babies for racist thinking under Biblical law. And the whole purpose of Apartheid was that they would NOT have to rule over anyone else.

 

[Kevin]

Brother, if you honestly believe that Sherman focused on destroying property, and that civilian deaths were incidental, then I have some prime South Florida Waterfront property to sell you!

The murder, rape, and starvation was the point, not the side effect.

 

[Abd_Yesua_alMasih]

Not to belittle anyones arguments here but I notice a very strong difference in family background here which probably has a very big impact on personal opinion in this area. Those of us who were 'children of the empire' are much more likely to have been schooled in British thinking about these things. I know I grew up hearing stories of the Boer war and in school trips we would go to museums and see the guns, reenactments etc... as if this was something to be proud of. I never questioned this as a kid and I guess it has got into my thinking as an adult.

I don't doubt that similar things have worked their way into the thinking of Dutch or Afrikaner people here on the board. This is just as much now an intellectual debate as it is a face-off between two different family histories. It is one thing to discuss history, it is another to renounce ancestors. As an example on the one hand I can accept the ethical arguments here on this topic, but on the other hand I would find it hard to then condemn people like my great great grandfather who as a servant of the British Empire and Rear-Admiral bombarded built up urban areas in northern Africa to crush Muslim rebellions. Undoubtably he knowingly killed innocent women and children.

Perhaps it is time for this discussion to run its course.

 

[TimV]

I don't doubt that similar things have worked their way into the thinking of Dutch or Afrikaner people here on the board.

I'm Welsh and Scots mostly, and have no Dutch, French or German in me. Living as a foriegn Calvinist 9 years among both Afrikaners and South African English helped me come to the subject with a fairly open mind. Learning Afrikaans helped, since I could read histories not published in English, and I read English histories as well. My kids went to school with the the great grandkids of the Dutchman who when President developed Apartheid.

 

[Hippo]

The Afrikaners are interesting. I wonder if they would have been as angry if Britain had not put them in virtual death camps during the Boer war.

An interesting sidenote when discussing British colonies: much of the mess in Ireland, the Middle East and India/Pakistan can be traced directly back to the British rulers playing a strategy of "divide and conquer." England was pretty paranoid when it came to their colonies after the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Note that India and Pakistan were used against each other (so were the Arabs and Jews) and the hate has just been built up over the years. South Africa got a bit of that as well which explains the Afrikaners getting really really ticked off and supporting Germany in 2 world wars. Sorry Brits but your government was pretty nasty for a while.

The historic British national strategy has always been to establish a balance of power in Europe so that no one power was dominant, in that way Britain was able to preserve its independance. In many ways the empire was a product of this policy where we acquired an empire largely to stop France getting its hands on it all.

For all Britains many faults (and in so many ways colonisation is never nice) it did generally try to build institutions in its territorys that develped the local population so that the a local civil service could be employed, this necessitated a positive interaction with native populations (or as has been pointed out, often with sections of local populations). Local industry was also encouraged and an active economy was developed as a market for British goods.

This compares with the startegies of Portugal, Germany and Holland whereby the colonies were often seen as simply places to strip of raw materials with the natives being treated as no more than troublesome savages. In this way there was a difference in character between British colonialism and much of European colonialism.

South Africa is an interesting example as despite the cold indiffernce to the civililians shown by the concentration camps the Afrikaans did by and large willingly fight for the British in both worls wars. Jan Smuts was a very willing ally and there was no serious threat to this policy.

Despite Britains faults the empires actions cannot really be compared to the barbaric genocide of manifest destiny practiced by the USA over many decades.

 

[TimV]

Mike, there were indeed good people involved in the admin of the British Empire, and I think (from what I know about the subject, and except for SA I don't really know anything) your post is largely accurate. As a note, the Boers were split at the outbreak of the war.

In one of those strange little happenings that change history, Delarey, who was the head of the now mechanized and very powerful South African army was tending towards declaring for Germany, and the army would have followed him. He ran a road block, the men didn't realise who it was, a guard fired a warning shot, and a chip from a rock that the bullet hit struck Delarey in the head killing him.

There were Boer volunteers during the war, but mostly third stringers who wanted adventure.

If Delarey would have lived, it's fun to speculate as to what would have happened with Von Lettow-Vorbeck having all that crazy success in East Africa. A South Africa on Germany's side would have linked the with the Turks quickly, denied SA as a port to Britain's navy, and one could go on and on.

I've always wished I had an imagination. A person could write a great alternative history novel starting with that warning shot.

 

[Abd_Yesua_alMasih]

In many ways the empire was a product of this policy where we acquired an empire largely to stop France getting its hands on it all.

That made me laugh. New Zealand is one of the more useless countries you will find in the world with little in the way of anything and yet as soon as Britain heard that France was sending people to colonize us it rushed into making an agreement with the Maori that would hand the country over to Queen Victoria. France only succeeded in making one fishing village before the land was swiped out from under them.