Our latest “Document of the Week” was chosen by our Senior Editor, Dr Tommy Dolan.
Settled by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, the Cape of Good Hope came under British control in 1806. Britain granted the colony the right to elect a legislature in 1853. In 1872, full internal self-government was established. The discovery of diamonds and gold in the 1860s rendered it the probably the most important and prosperous British colony in Africa.
Reports from the colony’s Immigration Board are intriguing—they evidence the Cape’s shifting demography and reveal how it was a component of vast immigration networks. These reports likewise illuminate the colonial mindset that prevailed during the period, one which tended to be tinged with racism and sectarianism.
For example, in a report concering Port Elizabeth, published in 1862, the Board highlighted how, in October 1860, it “felt constrained to request that no more Irish be sent out to the colony except under permit”. To obtain one, people had to demonstrate that they were familiar with those who wished to emigrate from Ireland to the Cape.
Yet it would seem that, when pressed, “several of the Irish . . . confessed that they knew nothing whatever” of those that they were vouching for, “but had been instructed by the [Roman Catholic] priest to send for them”. Evidently, the largely (if not wholly) Protestant members of the Immigration Board were suspicious of the agendas pursued by the Cape’s Catholic clergy (and perhaps rightly so). Their opinion of the colony’s Irish inhabitants was rather more derogatory, belying the strain of deep-rooted, anti-Irish prejudice that was conspicuous throughout Britain and its empire during the later nineteenth century, despite both countries having been joined by the Act of Union (1801). “Much of this might be overlooked”, the report ran,
"if the persons thus brought out [from Ireland] were of an eligible and useful class—but the men are chiefly labourers, not agricultural, but ordinary day labourers; and the single women are, as a rule, utterly ignorant of the most simple duties of domestic servants."
Where to find this document
It is lifted from our primary source collection British Colonial Rule in the Cape of Good Hope and Basutoland, 1854–1910. This tracks the administration of the Cape in remarkable detail. The sources evidence key historical trends, such as the development of infrastructure in the region, as well as the growth of key industries, such as mining. Although the Cape colony was controlled by a minority class of white settlers, the collection nevertheless provides valuable glimpses into African cultures and societies, including examples of resistance to colonialism. Visit the collection page to learn more.