Ward 2 Development Forum

Sir John Cradock

Properties3
descriptionBritish governor of the Cape from 1811 to 1814 (1759 to 1839), in the years when Dutch rule gave way to British rule for good. His quitrent reform of 1813 made colonial farms into property. His apprenticeship law of 1812 bound Khoekhoe children to farms.
tagstheme/heritage, theme/trancraa, lang/en
aliasesJohn Francis Cradock, Governor Cradock, Lord Howden, Baron Howden

11 min read

Sir John Cradock was the British governor of the Cape Colony from 1811 to 1814 [IC]. He governed in the years when the Cape passed from Dutch to British rule for good: the Netherlands formally gave up the colony by treaty in August 1814 [IC]. He never lived in the valley, and no record has yet been found of him visiting it. He matters to its story because of two laws. His quitrent proclamation of 1813 turned the loan farms around Genadendal and Greyton into surveyed property that could be sold and inherited [IC]. His apprenticeship proclamation of 1812 let farmers bind Khoekhoe children who had grown up on their farms to work for them without pay from the age of eight to eighteen [IC]. This page tells his story, and reads the change from Dutch to British rule through the TIME model.

What the letters in square brackets mean

Facts on this page are followed by a tag that shows where they come from.

  • [IC] Independently Corroborated. Confirmed by at least two sources that do not depend on each other, or by an official record such as a law.
  • [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from Moravian mission records, or from one party’s own documents or statements.
  • [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.

Reading this page

The section Reading the change through TIME is the Forum’s interpretation, and its readings carry no tag. See The Valley Through TIME.

At a glance

Born11 August 1759 [TBV]
Died26 July 1839 [TBV]
Known forGoverning the Cape from 1811 to 1814, and his laws on land tenure and on Khoekhoe labour [IC]
Link to the valleyHis quitrent reform decided how the colonial farms around the valley were held, and his apprenticeship law bound many Khoekhoe children to farms in the district [IC]

His life before the Cape

John Francis Cradock was an officer in the British army, and sat in the Irish Parliament from 1785 to 1801 [TBV]. He served in the West Indies, in Ireland during the rising of 1798, in Egypt in 1801, as commander of the army at Madras in India from 1804 to 1807, and in Portugal in 1808 and 1809 [TBV]. He was briefly governor of Gibraltar in 1809 [TBV].

From Dutch rule to British rule

Cradock arrived in the middle of a long change of rulers:

WhenWhat happened
1652 to 1795The Dutch East India Company (VOC) rules the Cape [IC]
1795Britain takes the Cape after the fighting at Muizenberg. Abraham Josias Sluysken surrenders it [IC]
1799The VOC is dissolved [IC]
1803 to 1806The Cape is handed back to the Dutch state, the Batavian Republic [IC]
January 1806Britain takes the Cape a second time [IC]
1807 to 1811The Earl of Caledon governs. The Caledon Code of 1809 requires Khoekhoe people to have a fixed home and carry a pass [IC]. Circuit courts are set up in May 1811 to hear cases in the country districts [TBV].
6 September 1811Cradock takes office [TBV]
13 August 1814By treaty, the Netherlands cedes the Cape to Britain for good [IC]
1814Lord Charles Somerset succeeds Cradock [IC]

Governor of the Cape (1811 to 1814)

War on the eastern frontier

Cradock came with orders for a harder policy on the eastern frontier [TBV]. In December 1811 the Fourth Frontier War began [TBV]. British troops and settler militia drove the Xhosa out of the Zuurveld, between the Bushmans and Fish rivers, by March 1812 [IC]. One account puts the number driven out at about 20,000, and describes the burning of their crops and homes [TBV]. The garrison towns of Grahamstown and Cradock, named after him, were founded in 1812 [IC].

The circuit courts

Cradock supported the circuit courts his predecessor had set up, which took judges from Cape Town into the country districts [IC]. On 20 April 1812 he wrote that he meant to end “the uncontrolled severity of the Powerful over the Weak” and “the nameless Tyranny of the strong over the defenceless” [IC]. The court’s second tour, in 1812, came to be called the Black Circuit, because it heard charges brought by missionaries and Khoekhoe against colonists for violence and murder [TBV]. One historian writes that seventeen colonists faced murder charges, touching nearly a hundred leading families [TBV].

The apprenticeship law (1812)

In 1812 Cradock issued a proclamation on the apprenticeship of servants [IC]. It let a colonist apprentice a Khoekhoe child who had been raised on his farm, or who was an orphan or destitute, and keep the child in his service without pay from the age of eight to eighteen [IC]. Parents who wanted to leave a farm now had to leave their children behind, or stay [TBV]. One historian counts about 2,295 children apprenticed between 1812 and 1823, out of 3,933 born in that time [TBV]. The law stood until Ordinance 50 of 1828 gave free people of colour legal equality [IC].

The quitrent reform (1813)

On 6 August 1813 Cradock proclaimed perpetual quitrent [IC]. Holders of loan farms could claim their land, have it surveyed, and receive a title deed, in return for a yearly quitrent set by the land’s quality [IC]. Farms could then be inherited, sold, and borrowed against [IC]. Cradock’s stated aim was to improve farming by giving colonial farmers secure title [IC]. The law ignored the land rights of the Khoekhoe and San under their own customary law [IC]. One writer says the surveys pushed poor and landless people, among them Khoekhoe, onto land no one had yet claimed [TBV]. The government was slow to carry out the reform, and applications waited years for surveys [TBV]. See Loan Farms and Quitrent.

Leaving the Cape

Lord Charles Somerset was appointed to succeed Cradock in November 1813 and took over in 1814 [TBV]. Cradock was made a full general in 1814, and Baron Howden in the Irish peerage in 1819 [TBV]. He died on 26 July 1839 [TBV].

In the valley

No record has been found of Cradock visiting Genadendal or Greyton. His laws reached the valley all the same:

  • The farms. The colonial farms around the valley had been loan farms. Under his quitrent reform they could become surveyed property, and in 1854 Herbert Vigne could sell Weltevreden’s land as freehold plots to found Greyton [IC]. See Marthinus Theunissen and Land as Property.
  • The mission. Genadendal, renamed in 1806, had more than 1,000 Khoekhoe residents by then [MS]. Mission stations were among the few places where Khoekhoe families could live without working for a farmer [TBV]. Under the Caledon Code and Cradock’s apprenticeship law, that made them places where children were not born on a farmer’s land.
  • The courts. In 1796, under the first British occupation, the Khoekhoe of Baviaanskloof had already taken their complaints against a neighbouring farmer to the Landdrost and been heard [MS]. The circuit courts that Cradock supported made hearings of this kind part of the law’s regular work [TBV]. See Gildenhuijs.

Reading the change through TIME

This section is the Forum’s interpretation.

The company’s rule. The VOC was a trading company that governed. In the TIME model it was an Institution built to serve a market: its first aim was profit for its shareholders. In the valley its rule was thin. A post-keeper such as Baas Teunis carried its orders, the Landdrost was two days’ ride away, and much depended on who a person knew. Land was lent, never sold, and the company kept the right to take it back.

The British state. Under Caledon and Cradock the Cape was governed by a state, and the Institutions form grew thicker. Laws were written down and published. Judges travelled to the districts and heard cases in public. Surveyors measured land, and a land office issued title deeds. The rules reached further into daily life than the company’s ever had.

Institutions building markets. Much of this new machinery served the Markets form. Quitrent turned a licence to graze into property with a price. Title deeds made land something to borrow against. The pass laws and the apprenticeship law did the same for labour: they held Khoekhoe workers and their children on the farms, at low cost to the farmer. The early market at the Cape was free for those who held land, and bound for those who worked it. It was made by institutions, and it depended on them.

Tribes pushed out. Both changes pressed on the Tribes form. The frontier war drove the Xhosa, organised in chiefdoms and lineages, off the Zuurveld by force. Quitrent ignored Khoekhoe and San ways of holding land together. The apprenticeship law reached into Khoekhoe families themselves, and decided where their children would grow up.

One man, two directions. Cradock’s own words and laws point two ways. In April 1812 he wrote against “the nameless Tyranny of the strong over the defenceless”. In the same year he gave farmers ten years of unpaid work from the children raised on their land, and his troops cleared the Zuurveld. The TIME model helps to see why: the same institutions that promised equal protection were building a market in land and labour on terms set by the colonists.

The valley’s counter-institution. In this valley, the mission offered a different Institution: land held for a community, a school, and a church where Khoekhoe families could live together. Its land was never turned into quitrent farms. That difference between Genadendal and the farms around it, and later Greyton, is still part of the valley’s life. See TRANCRAA and Farm 39.

  • Lord Caledon. His predecessor, whose code of 1809 his apprenticeship law extended.
  • Abraham Josias Sluysken. The last head of the VOC’s government at the Cape, who surrendered it to the British in 1795.
  • Baas Teunis. The company’s post-keeper near the valley in the 1790s, whose personal authority shows how thinly the company governed.
  • Marthinus Theunissen. Held Weltevreden as a loan farm from 1791, the kind of tenure Cradock’s reform replaced [IC].
  • Herbert Vigne. Sold Weltevreden as freehold plots in 1854, founding Greyton [IC].

His legacy in the valley

  • The surveyed colonial farms around the valley, held by title deed, go back to the land system his reform began [TBV].
  • Quitrent payments on most land ended on 31 December 1934, under the Abolition of Quitrent Act [IC].
  • The apprenticeship law was repealed by Ordinance 50 of 1828 [IC].

What is still open

  • Whether Cradock visited Genadendal, or dealt with its missionaries, and what the mission’s records of 1811 to 1814 say of his laws.
  • How many children in the Caledon and Swellendam districts, including from families linked to the mission, were apprenticed under his law.
  • Which farms around the valley were converted to quitrent under his proclamation, and when.
  • Whether any Khoekhoe complaints from the valley were heard by the circuit courts of 1811 to 1814.

References

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