Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/163

HI8T0BIC RETBOSPBCT. 121 oeaaed to form part of the British Empire, slowly but steadily increasing from year to year in populfttion and prt)8perity. When the country passed under the sway of England, it contained about tw'enty>five thousand Europeans, who held absolute control over nearly twenty thousand Hottentot serfs and thirty thousand Negro slaves. All the colonists, whether of Dutch or French descent, regarded themselves as collectively forming a single nationality, thanks to the universal adoption of the Dutch language as the common medium of intercourse. Immigrants of English speech were very few at first, and for some years almost the only British residents in the country were the officials and military. Nevertheless the English governors were already contem- plating the deniitionalisation of the Boers, and so early as 1809 an official procla- mation recommended ihe study of the English language although Dutch was still mainly used in the courts of justice. The descendants of the old colonists still continued to regard themselves as the real masters of the land, and consequently paid little or no attention to the decrees issued from time to time by the colonial governors. In 1815 they even broke into open revolt, which, however, was quelled with remorseless severity. No serious attempts were made to promote British immigration till the year 1820, when subventions began to be voted for this purpose by the Imperial Parliament. Nearly ninety thousand persons had already agreed to accept allotments of the lands successively annexed during the frontier wars with the Kafirs. Out of this large number of applicants the emigration agents made choice of over four thousand colonists, and these were transjwrted by the Government, at the public expense, to Port Elizabeth, in Algoa Buy, with the intention of settling them in the interior, round about Graham's Town. Notwithstanding the inexperience of most of the new arrivals in agricultural matters, and the blunders of all kinds inseparable from such a large undertaking, the project succeeded, thanks csjK^cially to the excellency of the climate and the fertility of the soil. The English settle- ment increased rapidly, and spread far beyond the limits to which it had been originally restricted. By the side of a Dutch Africa in the west there was thus developed an English in the east, which, thanks to the supjwrt of the Home Government, soon became almost as powerful as its rival, and which it was often proposed to constitute a special and privileged division. Henceforth the two languages divided the terri- tory between them, und the colonial adn]inistrutors naturally strove to secure the preponderance for their own kindred. The Dutch rulers had inteixlicted the official use of French ; the English in their turn prohibited, or at least discounte- nanced, the use of Dutch. In 1825 English became the official language of the administration, and in 1827 that of the courts of justice. But later, after the constitution of the ('olonial Parliament, the inhabitants of Dutch sj)eech recovered the legal rights and status of their tongue, and since that time their deputies make use of this idiom in the discussion of public affairs in the Assembly. Nor is this all. The military successes of the Transvaal Boers have given a certain political ascendency to those of Cape Colony itself. Hence the Afrikan-