Episode 36 – The French and British fight over the Cape as bounty hunter Willem Prinsloo crosses the Fish River

This is episode 36 and its time to return to Xhosaland. Before we do that, let’s step back a little and consider the effect of action beyond Africa that was having an influence on the continent, particularly the southern reaches.

Adam Smith may have been somewhat bemused, as American historian Noel Mostert writes in his book frontiers, to find that the very year in which his masterwork was published saw the start of a struggle on the seas that rested on his own declared twin pillars of global destiny – America and the Cape of Good Hope.

The American colonies were in the process of being lost to Britain as Smith published his work – and a wider war was buffeting the seas. The Cape had been drawn into the American War of Independence which changed the destiny of Southern Africa. It’s not well remembered these days, but as America’s early history is interwoven with South Africa’s.
As all of this was taking place on the high seas, the colonists in the Cape found themselves at war on two fronts with two different groups of people. The Xhosa and the San.

As the Dutch East India company feebly tried to stop trekboers from advancing beyond the Gamtoos river near Algoa Bay, a true frontier had developed from 1770 onwards. It was a loose, ill-defined area along the south east coast and the Dutch colonists had now hit a human barrier that stopped their freedom of movement.
That barrier was the Xhosa people.