Description

Anon.

Manuscript, Cape Colony, 1851.

 

Manuscript, pen and ink and watercolour on wove paper (Good, lovely colours, light old stains throughout but curiously contributing to an attractive patina, old folds, some insignificant marginal tears and chips), 19 x 13 cm (7.5 x 5 inches).

 

The European-Xhosa Wars (1779-1879) were a century-long series of conflicts between European colonial forces (initially the Dutch, and later the British) and the formidable and cleverly led Xhosa nation for control of the Eastern Cape Frontier, being South Africa’s ‘Wild, Wild East’. The conflicts were renowned for their brutality by both sides, typified by guerilla warfare, ambuscades in rough country and the massacres of civilians. While the Europeans enjoyed massive technological advantages that should have secured easy victory, the Xhosa were ingenious and utterly indefatigable guerilla fighters, whose speed and stealth was renowned throughout southern Africa. Whole through the first half of the 19th century, the British were able to make incremental progress, shifting the Anglo-Xhosa line of control ever further east, they also suffered stunning setbacks, as the Xhosa caught them off guard.

In many respects the Eighth European-Xhosa War (1850-3) was particularly brutal and unpredictable, whereupon after having suffered major setbacks in the previous Anglo-Xhosa conflict, the Xhosa mounted a grand reprise, surging into British-held territory, pinning down, besieging and overwhelming colonial forces. The Xhosa juggernaut terrified the powers in Cape Town and London, and the Xhosa were only subdued by a massive surge of British forces into the Eastern Cape, that nevertheless came at a staggering cost in blood and treasure.

Fighting in the Anglo-Xhosa conflicts, and perhaps in the Eighth European-Xhosa War in particular, was described by even the most seasoned British veterans of colonial conflicts to be an utterly terrifying experience. The Xhosa could strike you anywhere, anytime, day or night. Even where the British were overall making a victorious push, for isolated detachments of British troops operating in the countryside, nowhere was safe, causing one’s adrenalin to run high 24/7. The present work brilliantly captures this unsettling environment.

 

The Caricature in Focus

Here is an amazing artefact from the Eighth European-Xhosa War (1850-3), being an original manuscript caricature that employs very clever ‘gallows humour’ to capture the perilous predicament of the common British troops fighting the Xhosa along the Eastern Cape Frontier. It is an incredible survivor, as very few original ‘field’ artworks of any kind remain from the European-Xhosa conflicts, let along one of such wonderful content.

Caricatures, which are the ancestors of modern cartoons, had their rise during the late 18th century and were a clever and entertaining form of humour, social commentary and political satire. They we especially popular in the British Empire and their heyday continued well into the 19th century.

The present caricature depicts a pair of British soldiers at camp in a remote location, trying to relax, but seemingly haunted by the threat of a Xhosa ambush. The work features imagery and dialogue that, at first, is seemingly crude, featuring simple phrases and employing both British and local slang; however, in aggregate, it forms a clever and sophisticated commentary that perfectly captures the state of play along the Eastern Cape Frontier as it was in 1851, at the height of the Eighth European-Xhosa War.

The caricature is anonymous, although it seems to be indistinctly initialled below the title. It was clearly drafted somewhere in South Africa during the Eighth European-Xhosa War, and has the feel as having been made by a British colonial soldier with some amateur artistic ability, while he was fighting along the Eastern Cape Frontier, and was perhaps part of a diary or scrapbook (thus making the caricature autobiographical!). However, it could also have been made by someone in the safety of Cape Town who possessed a familiarly with the conflict along the frontier.

To explain the meaning of the title, “The Outspan. in Kaffarland”, firstly, “Kaffarland” is the traditional name for the frontier regions of the Eastern Cape that were long contested by Europeans and the Xhosa nation. It derives from a pejorative (and deeply offensive) term for Black South Africans.

“Outspan”, usually rendered as Out Span is a historical term popular in South African English during the 19th century (but seldom used today) that refers to a place in the countryside where travellers could rest, akin to a makeshift campsite. It is derived from the Afrikaans term uitspan, which originally referred to place where one unharnessed draft animals, but subsequently also came to refer to a traveller’s place of rest. Today the term is best known from Outspan Citrus, the name of one of South Africa’s oldest and most popular brands of oranges.

The caricature depicts two members of a British light infantry regiment (as revealed by the horn insignia on one of the soldier’s caps), at rest, by a campfire, at a makeshift “Out Span”, located somewhere along the Eastern Cape Frontier. One soldier, is relaxing, lying down in the grass, in the foreground. The other soldier is seated upon his canteen, in the centre. To their background right, shielded by some bushes, are their makeshift tents, with one being a mere sheet held up by a rifle. In the upper left background are two Xhosa warriors, holding a monkey on a leash.

The soldiers are remarkably scruffy, a common trait of British troops in the Xhosa Wars, wearing uniforms that are a melange of regular British and local elements, with patched up trousers. This is similar to the observations of the artist Thomas Baines, who remarked that the British troops fighting in the Eighth European-Xhosa War reminded him of “Falstaff’s ragged regiment, but with their rags all resemblance ceased; the tinsel, even to the numbers on the caps of those who could still boast such an article of dress, had all been worn off by hard service, and to all appearance there was not a piece of feather”.

Turning to the humour, or chain of dialogue in the caricature, it runs from the bottom to the top (i.e., for the lower British soldier up the Xhosa warriors). The soldier lying on the grass remarks to his comrade, “these are hard times Dick” [with “Dick” being a name sometimes used to describe a common British soldier, coming for the old phrase “Tom, Dick, and Harry”, meaning “Everyman”, as they were all very common English names].

The seated soldier in the centre replies “Thay are hard times – and no convoy coming”, referring the fact they and their isolated regiment were to be left fighting the wily Xhosa warriors on the own, and could not expect to receive any backup from for Cape Town.

The two Xhosa warriors, in the left background, remark “Scoff Johnny”, seemingly to themselves, and not addressing the British troops. This essentially means “Damn you, British soldier”, and don’t complain about your sorry state while you are invading our land!

The warriors’ use of the term “Johnny” to refer to the British soldiers is intriguing. During the 19th century, the Xhosa and Zulus, who both spoke closely related tongues of the Nguni language group, referred to British troops as amajoni (plural; ijoni, singular), meaning “Johnnny”. How precisely they started using this nickname is not known, although there are several theories. Indeed, during this time, in Britain, ‘Johnny’ was often used as a mildly pejorative term for ‘foreigner’ or ‘the other’, sometimes even denoting the ‘enemy’. In India, white officers sometimes referred to their sepoys as “Johnnies” and given the strong military connections between South Africa and India during this period, this may have been the inspiration for the Xhosa and Zulus to adopt the term to describe the “foreign enemies” that were invading their lands.

Interestingly, one of the Xhosa warriors holds a monkey by a leash, which is seated in his foreground. While the monkey makes an utterance, we have not been able to interpret what he is saying.

It is important to carefully analyse this scene, as one’s first impressions can perhaps be deceiving. Initially, it may seem that the appearance of a monkey in the company of Black Africans is a deeply racist attempt to denigrate the warriors.

However, if one looks carefully, the monkey bears a striking resemblance to the British soldier seated at the centre. His pose and shape are the same, while he is wearing a red collar that mimics that of the soldiers and is even seated upon a canteen. As such, the monkey symbolizes the British troops fighting along the Eastern Cape Frontier, who just as the Xhosa warriors holds (and thus controls) the monkey with the leash, so do the Xhosa hold the fate of the isolated detachments of the British troops in their hands. Moreover, the general scene shows the Xhosa warriors looming over the British soldiers, who are seemingly helpless should the warriors choose to attack. Thus, the caricature self-deprecatingly ridicules the British soldiers, rather than the Xhosa warriors.

The Eastern Cape: South Africa’s ‘Wild, Wild East’

During the latter period of Dutch rule over the Cape Colony, the region that would become the Eastern Cape was known as the ‘Zuurveld’, part of the large territory that was fiercely contested between the Netherlands and the Xhosa nation. The Dutch fought three wars against the Xhosa between 1779 and 1803 (the first part of what would become ‘Africa’s Hundred Year War’ between Europeans and Xhosa, lasting from 1779 to 1879!), and while they managed to push the line of control further east, the Zuurlveld was considered far too dangerous for permanent European settlement. For some years it remained an ill-defined buffer zone, or “no man’s land”.

Upon the British conquest of the Cape, in January 1806, the new regime was determined to push the Xhosa further eastward, and to settle the Zuurlveld, which was home to prime ranch land with easy access to the sea.

The anchor of the British presence along the so-called ‘Eastern Frontier’ was Grahamstown, founded in 1812 as a military outpost by Lieutenant-Colonel John Graham. In 1819, the garrison of only 300 men narrowly survived an assault mounted by a Xhosa army of 10,000 warriors. The British high command in Cape Town knew that they had dodged a bullet, and that going forward a chain of isolated military outposts would be insufficient to contain the Xhosa threat. The Eastern Frontier had to be comprehensibly and quickly settled by loyal British subjects, who could provide sufficient manpower and resources for its defence. If this was not realized, it was accepted that the region would be lost to the Xhosa.

Turning to the big picture, upon the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Britain experienced high unemployment, with no realistic hope of domestically engaging many hundreds of thousands of its people. The crown encouraged British emigration to ‘settler colonies’, overseas domains with climates suitable for European agrarian practices, such as Canada, Australia and South Africa. The Cape’s Eastern Frontier was home to excellent ranch land, supposedly ideal for English emigrants, and its development would simultaneously tackle two imperial problems.

Not long after the Battle of Grahamstown, the British regime sponsored the arrival of the ‘1820 Settlers’ to the Eastern Frontier. A total of 4,000 colonists arrived in 60 separate parties between April and June 1820. They initially attempted agricultural endeavours, as the Crown had intended; however, as many of the settlers had been tradesmen back home, they soon quit their rural homesteads, populating communities such as Grahamstown, Bathurst and Beaufort, developing services and light manufacturing. Agriculture was relegated to a supporting role in the local economy, largely left in the hands of the Afrikaners. The districts of Albany and Beaufort were founded, and the area became an ‘English Island’ in an Afrikaner-Xhosa sea. By the early 1830s, Grahamstown had become one of the largest settlements in the Cape, with over 6,000 residents.

However, all was not well. The British had begun to push into the lands between the Great Fish and Keiskamma Rivers, evicting the Xhosa and causing them great hardship, due to the loss of cattle grazing land. Xhosa parties took to raiding European homesteads, often in an effort to avoid starvation.
In response, on December 11, 1834, a British colonial commando party killed a high-ranking Xhosa chief. In turn, a Xhosa force of 10,000 invaded the ‘Eastern Frontier’, causing much devastation, before besieging Grahamstown, causing the city’s women and children to barricade themselves within the main church, while the town’s men fought to save the city.

While Grahamstown narrowly managed to keep the Xhosa at bay, the response from Cape Town was swift and brutal. An army under Colonel Sir Harry Smith relieved Grahamstown, on January 6, 1835. Meanwhile, a detachment of Boer commandos under Piet Retief was dispatched to defeat a Xhosa force in the Winterberg Mountains.

From Grahamstown, Smith coordinated a series of lightning strikes upon Xhosa positions, forcing them out of the Albany District, and decisively defeating the main enemy army at Trumpetter’s Drift.

Cape Governor Benjamin D’Urban enforced a harsh peace treaty upon the Xhosa (April 29, 1835), which moved the Cape Colony border eastward to the Great Kei River, while requiring the Xhosa to pay astoundingly large reparations in cattle, compliance of which would result in mass starvation. To make matters worse, a top Xhosa chief, who was being held hostage by the British until the cattle ransom was paid, was accidentally killed when he tried to escape.
In the wake of the showdown, Sir Andries Stockenström, who served as the Lieutenant Governor of the Eastern Cape from 1836 to 1838, instituted a moderate policy, limiting European settlement in frontier areas, to preserve the peace with the Xhosa.

Conflict would break out, once again, in the Eastern Cape during the Seventh European-Xhosa War (1846-7), popularly known as the “War of the Axe”. The fighting commenced in March 1846 when the British retaliated against a Xhosa tribe for killing a British escort who was transporting a prisoner accused of stealing an axe. The Xhosa fought bravely, but their main force was defeated on June 7, 1847, near Fort Peddie, by an army under General Henry Somerset, although the conflict continued until the end of the year.

This war was highly consequential, as its result ensured that the Xhosa never again posed an existential threat to the European presence in the Eastern Cape. The British soon set upon a resolutely expansionist agenda, overturning Stockenström’s designs. In December 1847, they extended the Cape Colony’s boundaries north to the Orange River and east to the Keiskamma River, with the easternmost territories being named ‘Kaffraria’, a buffer territory protecting the heartland of the Eastern Cape from the Xhosa.

In the wake of the War of the Axe, Sir Harry Smith, now the Governor of the Cape Colony, expelled thousands of Xhosa beyond the Keiskamma River. There they suffered immensely from dislocation and starvation, a situation severely aggravated by the exceptionally cold winter of 1850. The Xhosa who remained in solidly British-held territory were compelled to move to towns and adopt Western lifestyles, which many found very difficult.

A charismatic preacher Mlanjeni encouraged the displaced Xhosa to revolt against the British, curiously claiming that divine protection would make them immune to European bullets. Many Xhosa warriors started to mobilize, setting the stage for what became known as the Eighth European-Xhosa War (1850-3).
Governor Smith blamed the Xhosa chiefs for allowing Mlanjeni to agitate their people and in late December 1850 summoned them to a conference in the frontier lands. When a senior Xhosa leader, Chief Sandile, refused to attend the meeting, Smith had him overthrown, declaring him an outlaw. This ‘insult’ gave the Xhosa an excuse to commence their uprising.

On December 24, 1850, a band of Xhosa warriors attacked a party of 650 British troops under Colonel George Mackinnon at Boomah Pass, forcing them to retire to Fort Cox, where they were besieged, along with Governor Smith.

On Christmas Day, many of the Xhosa people who lived near white towns took advantage of the festivities to attack the colonists when they had their guard down, resulting in a series of massacres.

While Governor Smith and his men were pinned down at Fort Cox, the Xhosa were strengthened upon gaining the defections of many Khoi warriors, including members of the British “Kaffir Police”, a militia of indigenous fighters which was formed to supress the Xhosa. Meanwhile, the British cause was further weakened by Governor Smith’s poor relations with the Afrikaners, many of whom refused to assist the British, even as they opposed the Xhosa.

The Xhosa and their allies surged forward, riding a wave of momentum, capturing the outposts of Line Drift and Fort Armstrong. While Smith and his party managed to fight their way out of Fort Cox, and escape to safety, the situation for the British looked grim.

However, early in the new year (1851), the British mounted a reprise. They fought off rebel attacks upon Fort White, Fort Hare and Fort Beaufort. Colonel Mackinnon then moved north from King William’s Town to successfully bolster Fort Cox, Fort White and Fort Hare. The British then regained Fort Armstrong, pushing the Xhosa-Khoi forces into the Amatola Mountains. The arrival of thousands of fresh British troops in the region galvanised their comeback, allowing them to dominate the Keiskamma frontier.

Yet, the war was far from over. Later in 1851, the Xhosa chief Maqoma, based at Mount Misery, located between the forested Waterkloof and Harry’s Kloof, conducted a series of devastating raids upon nearby colonial homesteads, greatly unsettling the situation. Notably, he led a fierce assault upon Fort Fordyce, ravaging Smith’s troops. This led Whitehall to dismiss Smith and to replace him as Cape Governor with George Cathcart. Cathcart then pursued a scorched earth campaign that forced the Xhosa chiefs to surrender in February 1853.

The Eighth European-Xhosa War was the most violent and destructive of all conflicts in the region and pretty much broke the back of effective Xhosa resistance in the Eastern Cape. Over the coming decades, the British and the Zulu people would press the Xhosa further, until their once large domains were confined to small areas along the Cape-Natal borderlands. Meanwhile the Eastern Cape’s European communities prospered, with Grahamstown becoming the second largest city in the Cape by 1860. Organized Xhosa resistance to the British regime ceased by 1879, ending Africa’s longest colonial military contest.
References: N/A – manuscript seemingly unrecorded.