Colonists are a long way from home, but that does not mean they want the home country telling them what to do. This is especially true if the instructions will complicate their life. So slip on your smoking jacket fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The stamp today features Hope, the Latin female embodiment of the English colony. Such visualizations were much more common in the 19th century. It is worth noting that the first British monarch did not appear on a Cape of Good Hope stamp till 1902. This is reflective of the poor relations between Britain and the colony.
The stamp today is issue A6, a half penny stamp issued by the Cape of Good Hope Colony in 1875. It is part of a 12 stamp issue in various denominations issued over many years. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $16 used.
The Cape of Good Hope is on the coast of Southern Africa about 90 miles west of the division between the Indian and Atlantic oceans. There is a legend that an Indian junk landed around 1000 AD but the Portuguese arrived in the 1490s. Local African Hottentots in the area were nomadic hunter/gatherers with no fixed settlements. The first settlements were Dutch under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company, as a natural stop on the India trade. The Dutch settlers, called Boers, many of whom were German or French Huguenots, often trekked far inland in search of prime farmland. The Colony fell to the British during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1834, the British banned slavery and this sent many of the remaining Boers to Transvaal and the Orange Free State. There had been trouble with the native Xhosa tribe. This trouble dropped away when the Xhosa chief was convinced that if the tribe killed it’s own cattle and burned its crops and clothes that their ancestors who rise up from the dead and kill all the white settlers. The British settlers seeing what was happening, left food out for them, but the tribe decimated itself. This tragedy had the silver lining that the Cape colony became unusually peaceful and prosperous with it’s place on the India trade route.
Into this success came the colony masters from London. They had the idea to federate the multiple colonies of southern Africa into a federation modeled on what had recently been done with Canada. This did not take into account the different ethnicities of the white settlers and the still African ruled homelands in the area. The Cape Governor John Molteno fought the British intrusion as best he could, understanding that other areas of South Africa were much less stable and plagued with wars. He was British, but of half Italian decent and his first wife and child were mixed race. He was a trader and farmer and a rougher character than the British were used to. The British deposed Molteno and sent a new governor from Britain to try to pull off the home country’s federation idea. This did not go well with the outside governor leading a disastrous war with the Zulus and he was eventually sent back to London under charges. South Africa did not unite for another 30 years.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to the toast the white settlers of the Cape that left out food for the suiciding Xhosa tribe. The Xhosa’s hatred must have been very strong to do what they did. It was a touching act of Christian grace to reach out and try to save them from themselves. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collected.