Xhosa Wars - First Wars, Causes and Developments

First Wars, Causes and Developments

The first settlers from Europe in the Cape were the Dutch who established a colony in and around current day Cape Town. This was initially just a small settlement to produce supplies for ships stopping on their way around the Cape to and from India.

Over the years more and more Europeans arrived. They first settled in and around Cape Town and later moved away from Cape Town into the valleys further afield. Over time, settlers began migrating further away from the areas around the Cape to find new farming land, because the Cape Peninsula has a Mediterranean-type climate with a warm dry summer and a cold, wet winter (the early explorers named it the Cape of Storms because of the north-west gales sweeping up from the Antarctic in the winter months) which made cattle and grain farming difficult. Further along the eastern Cape seaboard the climate changes with milder and dry winters, and rainfall during the warm summers, suitable to the cultivation of grain, sorghum and millet, and to cattle-keeping. The expansion was principally to the east along the coast because to the north of Cape Town was the vast, open, semi-desert of the Namaqualand, Karoo and Kalahari.

During the second half of the 18th century, the migrants from the Cape (predominantly Boers) encountered the Xhosa in the region of the Great Fish River. Both cultures were heavily reliant on agriculture and cattle farming in particular. As more Cape migrants (and later settlers imported from Britain under plans to colonise the area in 1820) arrived, the population pressures and competition over land, cattle and good grazing became intense. Cattle raiding became endemic on all sides, with punitive and retaliatory raids launched in response. Furthermore as missionaries arrived with their evangelical messages, there were confrontations with hostile chiefs who saw them as undermining the traditional Xhosa ways of life. Conflicts flared into small wars, the first of which was in 1780 triggered after Willem Prinsloo, a Boer farmer, shot and killed a Xhosa man in the vicinity of Bosberg, near the present day Somerset East.

Although the European settlers initially had an advantage through being equipped with guns and horses, which gave them superior firepower and mobility, the Xhosa had intimate knowledge of the region, long experience of conflicts with other tribes (particularly the Zulus to their north), and many disciplined and highly effective warriors. In addition, the Xhosa soon began to adopt firearms in the frontier wars. Although initially unmounted, the warriors were very mobile in broken country, and became even more formidable opponents when they later also acquired guns. As pressures grew, the settlers organised into local militia but they were limited in their tactics as they could not leave their farms, homes and families undefended for long, and vulnerable to attack, and hence could not follow Xhosa raiding parties far. Both sides were limited in the conduct of wars by the demands of seasonal farming, and the need for labour during harvest.

After the first war (1779–1781), the border was established between the Great Fish River and Sundays Rivers. Eight years later, after a second war (1789–1793), the boundary was moved west to Sundays River. The third war was some 5 years later (1799–1803) and confirmed the Sundays River boundary.

After the British annexed the Cape in 1806, in due course the British authorities turned their attention to the Eastern regions amid complaints and petitions by the settlers about Xhosa raids. British expeditions, in particular under Colonel John Graham in 1811 and later Harry Smith in 1834, were sent not only to secure the frontier against the Xhosa, but also to impose British authority on the settlers, and to establish a permanent British presence.

Professional troops were better trained and equipped than local settler militias and in particular were not burdened by the constraints of families and farms, and the need to attend to harvests. Military forts could be established and manned permanently, and British expeditionary forces could pursue the Xhosa raiding parties across the border in punitive actions for as long as it took. On the other hand, the professional troop columns were much slower and less mobile than the local settler militias, and had considerably less local knowledge. Over time the British came to dominate the area both militarily and through occupation with the introduction of British settlers. The imposition of British authority led to confrontations not only with the Xhosa but also with disaffected Boers and other settlers, and other native groups such as the Khoi, the Griqua and the Mpondo.

The frontier wars ebbed and flowed over a period of about 100 years from first arrival of the Cape settlers, and with the intervention of the British military, ultimately led to the subjugation of the Xhosa people. Fighting ended on the Eastern Cape frontier in June 1878 with the annexation of the western areas of the Transkei and administration under the authority of the Cape.