The Batavian Republic 527
After Daendels’ coup d’état, matters quieted down. There was very little punish-
ment or retribution, and an increasing willingness of men of various parties to
work together. The next test came with the Anglo- Russian invasion a year later, of
which more will be said.
A Word on the Dutch of South Africa
When the British occupied Cape Town in June 1795 they believed themselves to
be surrounded by “Jacobins.”^43 There had in fact been a rebellion against the Dutch
East India Company, to which the colony had belonged as a way- station on the
route to Ceylon and Java. This rebellion had occurred in February, at the time of
the Batavian Revolution in the home country. The European population in the
Cape Colony, some 20,000 in number, and not yet extending very far from Cape
Town, was almost exclusively made up of Dutch people some three or four genera-
tions removed from the homeland. Politically it was divided; some favored the
Company and the Orange regime in the Netherlands, some had favored the Patri-
ots and now sympathized with the Batavians, and a great many, living widely dis-
persed on huge tracts of land on which they raised cattle, were unconcerned with
events in Europe or even at Cape Town, wishing mainly and somewhat obstinately
to be let alone. Nevertheless, when the British arrived, certain symbols of the Eu-
ropean revolution were current. There were people who wore tricolor cockades (in
protest against the Orange cockades of Company officials), or who called them-
selves “citizens,” or spoke of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
The handful of English who occupied the Cape were naturally of the classes,
back in England, which produced naval and army officers, as well as colonial ad-
ministrators and empire- builders, the very kinds of Englishmen who were most
nervous about “Jacobins” in England, and not very congenial to such plain people
as the South African Dutch. The British occupation introduced a kind of modern-
ization, and it is from 1795 that the modern history of South Africa has been
generally dated. Some of the stuffiness and narrowness of the Dutch Company,
against which the South Africans had protested, was done away with. A freer in-
ternal and external trade replaced the old monopoly of the Company. But the Brit-
ish were not welcomed, and probably the South Africans, as between the two,
would have preferred occupation by the French.
It seems likely that the British authorities may have created as many Jacobins”
as they discovered. Burghers and officials were required, against their will, to take
an oath to King George III. They were disappointed when a Dutch fleet, sent by
the Batavian Republic to relieve them, was defeated by the British off Walvis Bay.
43 Dundas to Grenville, November 16, 1794, in Papers of J. B. Fortescue Preserved at Dropmore, II,
645; G. E. Cory, Rise of South Africa, 5 vols. (London, 1910), I, 35–86; G. M. Theal, History of South
Africa Since 1795, 5 vols. (London, 4th ed., 1915), I, 1–70; C. de Kiewiet, History of South Africa (Ox-
ford, 1941), 30–31; John Barrow, An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa in the Years
1797 and 1798 (New York, 1802); Lady Anne Barnard, South Africa a Century Ago, 1797–1801 (Cape
Town and Oxford, 1926); J. S. Marais, Maynier and the First Boer Republic (Cape Town, 1944); J. P.
van der Merwe, Die Kaap onder die Bataafse Republiek 1803–1806 (Amsterdam, 1926).