![Eastern frontier(s) of the Cape of Good Hope colony, ca 1820 – 1850(i.e. period between 5th and 8th Xhosa Wars)
1820 British settler farms in the Albany district, or eastern Zuurveld
Settled colonial area (est. 1795), showing Grahamstown (est. 1812), and districts (est. 1820) in shades of pale green
Neutral zone (est. 1820), as agreed between Lord Charles Somerset and the Gaika (Ngqika) faction of the amaXhosa.
British Kaffraria (est. 1835), incl. East London (est. 1847): Gaika faction of amaXhosa and amaTembu under British protection.
Kaffraria, incl. Butterworth Wesleyan mission (est. 1827): amaTembu living inland and amaXhosa nearer the coast.
Mountains and necks, incl. Gaika's Hill 32°32′46″S 26°57′07″E / 32.54611°S 26.95194°E / -32.54611; 26.95194 (Gaika's Hill) in the easternmost Winterberg.
Military forts, district boundaries and eastern frontier.
Notes
Frontiers: Following the Fifth Xhosa War (ended 1819), the Keiskamma River up to Gaika's Hill, and thence westwards along the Winterberg (on red line), marked the eastern frontier of the Colony. Sir Harry Smith (in 1847) annexed the northern section of Victoria, and extended the frontier from Gaika's Hill northwards along the Klip Plaat River and Stormberg. The Great Kei River became the eastern frontier when the British Kaffraria Protectorate was annexed (before 1865).
Forts: Most forts remain today as ruins in various degrees of restoration. The most northerly, Post Retief (est. 1836) 32°30′16″S 26°31′44″E / 32.50444°S 26.52889°E / -32.50444; 26.52889 (Post Retief), was designed by major Charles Selwyn of the Royal Engineers, and remains almost intact. This fort was located near the last homestead of field cornet Piet Retief, a leader of the emigrant farmers in 1837. It consists of officers quarters, large stables, stores and additional quarters for soldiers, built around a parade ground of one acre.[1] Sixty farmers sought refuge here for two months during the Eighth Xhosa War (1850-1853). Lieutenant-colonel John Fordyce and other casualties of this war were interred in a small military cemetery nearby. Fort Armstrong (est. 1836) 32°33′42″S 26°41′31″E / 32.56167°S 26.69194°E / -32.56167; 26.69194 (Fort Armstrong) was taken by Maqoma and Kona during the Eighth Xhosa War, who held it for about a month before they were repelled. It was subsequently taken by Willem Uithaalder, a colonial rebel, who held it until most of the fort was destroyed by colonial forces, leaving only the tower which remains today. Fort Peddie 33°11′39″S 27°07′27″E / 33.19417°S 27.12417°E / -33.19417; 27.12417 (Fort Peddie) is a blockhouse, built after the 1820 agreement that formed the neutral zone. Fort Brown (est. 1835) 33°07′48″S 26°37′03″E / 33.13°S 26.6175°E / -33.13; 26.6175 (Fort Brown) was at first a post for patrols (est. ca 1812) at Hermanuskraal, named for Khoikhoi chieftain Hermanus Xogomesh, before a fort replaced it during the Sixth Xhosa War. It became a police post in 1873, and a police station is still located beside it. The fort was declared a national monument in 1938. Fort Cox (est. 1835, abandoned 1836-1846, but rebuilt) 32°43′48″S 27°1′32″E / 32.73°S 27.02556°E / -32.73; 27.02556 (Fort Cox), was named after major William Cox, and was a base for patrols into the valleys and ravines of the Amatole and Keiskamma ranges. The earthen redoubt reinforced with stone protected a quadrangle of strong stone cottages and walls, of which only ruins remain. Sir Harry Smith was for a time trapped in this fort during the Eighth Xhosa War.
Settlements: Military villages such as Woburn, Auckland, Ely, Juanasburg, Kempt and Fredericksburg were established in the vicinity of the forts. Alice was a Presbyterian missionary centre (est. 1824), and a village formed around Fort Hare's military encampment (est. 1847) 32°47′13″S 26°50′55″E / 32.78694°S 26.84861°E / -32.78694; 26.84861 (Fort Hare). Adelaide, a Scottish settlement near the current town, became a transit camp for troops during the War of Mlanjeni. King Williams Town started as a military camp and mission station and became the base from which Sir Harry Smith controlled the tribal areas. The small village Sidbury 33°25′15″S 26°10′06″E / 33.42083°S 26.16833°E / -33.42083; 26.16833 (Sidbury) was est. ca 1832 by settler Richard Daniel. The farming districts of ALBANY and eastern UITENHAGE were also collectively known as the 'Zuurveld'. The Kat River Settlement was a homeland for displaced Khoi-khoi where they occupied land tenures for the mission stations. They suffered greatly during the 6th Frontier War. See also: Heritage sites in Albany](/_m/k/d/5/k/british-kaffraria-wp/hero.png)
British Kaffraria
The name itself tells you who wrote the history. "Kaffraria" derives from the Arabic word kafir -- "non-believer" -- a term Arab traders applied to non-Muslim peoples along the East African coast, which European colonizers then adopted as a racial slur for Black southern Africans. When the British carved out a colony between the Keiskamma and Great Kei rivers in the Eastern Cape in 1847, they called it British Kaffraria. The Xhosa people who had lived there for centuries already had names for this land. The British did not ask what they were.
Before the Lines Were Drawn
Long before colonial cartography reached the Eastern Cape, this territory had its own history of habitation and change. The Khoisan -- hunter-gatherers and herders -- were the earliest known inhabitants. Over centuries, Bantu-speaking peoples migrated southward, crossing the Kei River and eventually establishing dominance in the region. By the time European powers took interest, the area was consolidated under a branch of the Xhosa people, specifically the Ngqika (or Gaika) chiefs of the Rharhabe line. Chief Ngqika ka Rarabe led from 1797, succeeded by his son Sandile, who would become paramount chief of all Rharhabe tribes. These were not vacant lands awaiting European settlement. They were governed territories with established leadership, legal traditions, and social structures that the colonial project would spend decades attempting to dismantle.
Nine Wars for the Same Ground
The territory's colonial story is one of compulsive annexation. The British first seized it in the 1830s, naming it Queen Adelaide's Province after the wife of King William IV. When word reached London, the Colonial Office balked -- Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for the Colonies, declared the annexation had "brought dishonour to the British name" and reversed it. But reversal did not mean retreat. After the seventh Xhosa War in 1847, Governor Harry Smith annexed the territory again, this time as British Kaffraria, with King William's Town as its capital. He reoccupied abandoned forts and moved imperial troops in. The eighth Xhosa War erupted in 1850 when Smith attempted to unseat Chief Sandile and lasted three bloody years, even after Smith himself was recalled. The Xhosa chiefs were allowed to keep their titles but stripped of real authority -- their decisions could be reversed by British magistrates whenever they conflicted with colonial objectives.
The Cattle Killing and Its Aftermath
What finally broke Xhosa resistance in British Kaffraria was not another war but a catastrophe from within. In 1856, a young Xhosa prophetess named Nongqawuse told her people that if they killed their cattle and destroyed their crops, their ancestors would rise, the British would be swept into the sea, and new, healthy cattle would fill the kraals. Thousands followed her prophecy. The result was famine on a devastating scale. The Xhosa population in British Kaffraria collapsed, and those who survived were left dependent on the colonial government for food and survival. In the wake of this disaster, on 7 March 1860, the Cape Colony separated British Kaffraria into its own Crown Colony under Lieutenant Governor Colonel John Maclean. But the territory could not sustain itself financially. By 1866, the bankrupt colony was permanently absorbed into the Cape Colony. German settlers had arrived in 1858 and 1859, reshaping the demographics of a region whose Xhosa inhabitants had been devastated by famine and dispossession.
Echoes Into the Twentieth Century
British Kaffraria's boundaries did not disappear when the colony was formally dissolved. They resurfaced, like a palimpsest, under apartheid. The same general territory was reconstituted as the Ciskei, one of South Africa's nominally independent Bantustans -- a supposed homeland for Xhosa people that replicated, in twentieth-century form, the same logic of territorial containment the British had practiced a century earlier. The districts of Qonce (King William's Town) and East London, which formed British Kaffraria's core, remain part of the Eastern Cape today. Fort Hare, the university that educated Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe, and numerous other African leaders, sits within the old borders. The Xhosa legal traditions that British magistrates once overruled have been partially restored under South Africa's constitutional recognition of customary law. History, it turns out, was not as easy to annex as territory.
From the Air
Centered at 32.88S, 27.40E in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The territory lies between the Keiskamma River to the west and the Great Kei River to the east, stretching from the Indian Ocean coast inland. King William's Town (Qonce) is the historic capital at approximately 32.88S, 27.39E. East London Airport (FAEL) at 33.04S, 27.83E is the nearest major airport. The Buffalo River and the Amatola mountain range are visible landmarks from altitude. The coastline and river valleys mark the boundaries of this former colony.