Morning all and welcome to the Cape Town mailing list. To start off I will be sending snippets of interesting information of historical interest. If anyone would like to comment or add to it please feel free. The Occupations of the Cape, 1795-1854 For the inhabitants of the Cape Colony, the coming of British rule in 1795 at first brought few striking changes in the ways of living to which they had long been accustomed. Geography and climate continued to set bounds to the freedom of choice and action of all the people and communities of the region. The vast distances which separated the colony from the centres of world population, the inhospitable coastline, the absence of navigable rivers to penetrate the interior, the irregularity of the rainfall - these, together with the exceptionally sparse population and the absence of cheap labour and advanced agricultural techniques, ensured that the colony's productivity would be limited. Its domestic market was underdeveloped, and until at least one export staple could be produced, ties with the wider world would continue to be all too heavily dependent upon passing ships. To these environmental constraints upon change was added the profound weight of deep- seated social forces. Contrary to what is traditionally thought, the Cape was one of the most closed and rigid slave societies in the era of European colonization. In 1795 the largest sector of the colonial population was the slaves, of whom there were some 25 000. Next in number came the 20 000 white colonists, followed by 15 000 Khoikhoi and some 1 000 free blacks. During the eighteenth century Cape society had come to be dominated by a privileged white caste, determined to preserve and strengthen the solid legal and customary barriers between free and unfree and between white and black. The habit of differentiation on the basis of race did not originate on the colonial frontier, as has been believed since the classic work of I D MacCrone (Race Attitudes in South Africa) in 1937; it was deeply embedded in the society of the original, settled western districts of the colony long before a recognizable frontier existed, and continued to evolve there after the frontier had disappeared. Nor did the Enlightenment thinking of the late eighteenth century have any marked early impact upon the colony. Whatever slogans the activists of Graaff-Reinet and Swellendam might mouth in the 1790s, they were motivated by individual and group self-interest rather than by ideological principles; only in the western districts did Enlightenment ideals reveal any strength among the colonists. The limited objectives of the British in occupying the Cape in 1795 served to reinforce the maintenance of the status quo. Their primarily strategic aim of preventing the Cape from falling into the hands of the arch imperial rival, France, and their assumption that the occupation would be temporary, resulted in the new British rulers setting their minds to the task of preserving law and order and taking pains to conciliate and to win the loyalty of their new subjects. When the need to make the colony pay for itself was subsequently impressed upon the governors, this merely heightened their aware ness of the need to avoid disturbing the delicate social and political equilibrium. Between 1795 and 1814, while the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars raged in Europe, the Cape changed hands three times. This transitional period did not end until the Dutch permanently ceded the Cape to Great Britain at the London Convention of 13 August 1814. The first British occupation, 1795-1803 The British military government which took over the Cape in 1795 was all too conscious of the widespread local opposition to the occupation. While standing firm on matters of fundamental importance to their hold upon the colony, they guaranteed the maintenance of the existing laws and customs of the settlement, including the Roman-Dutch legal system. They promised that no new taxes would be levied, and they guaranteed the property rights as well as the money circulated by the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or Dutch East India Company). The Council of Policy was replaced by a Governor, in whose hands all civil and military power was concentrated. On the departure for India of the British fleet under Clarke and Elphinstone, General Craig took over the government, which he administered in a sympathetic and efficient manner. Arrears of land rents were remitted and the commission of the High Court was replaced by a nominated Burgher Senate whose members were appointed by the Governor from lists submitted by the Senate itself, and whose responsibilities were extended. The new authorities also took full advantage of a social process which had set in from the l780s, i.e. the emergence of a colonial gentry and its interpenetration with the class of leading officials. In the latter part of the eighteenth century the heemraden, through their control over local resources such as land and labour, were able to assert their pre-eminence in the colonial countryside and to extend this power in part to the central organs of government. Contrary to Afrikaner nationalist tradition, Afrikaner society was not egalitarian, but increasingly stratified. regards Heather