Preface: Sir Benjamin D'Urban only spent four years as Governor of the Cape Colony, yet to many people he is one of the most easily identifiable of all British Governors. The principal reason for this, it seems, is the continuing emphasis placed upon his short-lived settlement of the Colony's troublesome eastern frontier in 1835. The main objectives of this thesis have been to examine some of the most notable analyses of that settlement together with an attempt to remove D'Urban's governorship from the narrow and controversial confines imposed by his frontier policy. I have tried to place his governorship in the wider context of his day, examining the various controls upon him, and his overall role as Governor together with some of his administration's less well known but ultimately equally important aspects. In effect, I have tried to view D'Urban in 'the round '. The thesis makes no pretence at being a complete survey. Several important and possibly contributory aspects to a fuller understanding of D'Urban's Cape interlude - notably his ten years in various executive positions in the West Indies and British Guiana, and his period as commander-in-chief of the British army in Canada - were beyond the reach of anything more than a cursory review. Presumably there are documents relative to this period of D'Urban's life in the Archives in Montreal, Georgetown and London. D'Urban's reputation in South Africa continues to rest upon the short-lived system he established in 1835 and the great promise for future relations between black and white that many authors then and since saw in it, or alternately failed to see in it. With this in mind, and the realisation that 145 years and a succession of Governors, High Commissioners and Prime Ministers have passed since 1835, the following extract from the front page of The Daily Dispatch of 10 May, 1980, is revealing. It was reported that the Ciskei government demanded "all the land between the Kei and Fish Rivers, the Indian Ocean and the Stormberg Mountains to form the territory of an independent Ciskei ." The fundamental questions of to whom the land belongs and of how to establish a just modus vivendi with the Xhosa, which plagued both D'Urban's short administration and the Colonial Office for much of the Nineteenth Century are still with us today. Any analysis of his four year period as Governor of the Cape must necessarily be tempered by this realisation.

The flourishing city of East London has received but scant attention from historians. Its importance has been overshadowed by that of Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth, each with a foundation bordering on the romantic. The introduction to this thesis indicates traces of the existence of primitive man in these parts. The historical survey will commence with notices taken of the region by nautical and land expeditions in search of either shipwrecked sailors, or news of native races. The first serious notice of East London taken by the white people came in the time of Sir Benjamin D'Urban who sought a seaport for his new province of Queen Adelaide. Our port was opened in 1836 under the appellation of Port Rex, but faded into temporary insignificance, almost oblivion, with the reversal of Sir. B. D'Urban's frontier policy by Lord Glenelg and the abandonment of the new province in 1837. It was not destined to remain forgotten, for Sir Harry Smith at the end of 1847, saw in the mouth of the Buffalo River the same possibilities as had struck the advisers of Sir B. D'Urban. To him it was the future London of the East, and the connecting link between British Kaffraria and the world outside. From that time East London has grown steadily, and of recent years very rapidly. It is not proposed to carry this survey much beyond 1866 in which year British Kaffraria was annexed to the Cape Colony.

The interpretations of the war of 1835 and the identity of the Fingo that were presented by the English settlers, have remained the mainstays of all subsequent histories. They asserted that the war of 1835 was the fault purely of 'Kaffir' aggression, that it was controlled by Hintza, the paramount chief, and that the ensuing hostilities were justifiable colonial defence and punishment of the Africans. The arrival of the Fingo in the Colony, it was claimed, was unconnected with the war. It was alleged that the seventeen thousand Fingo brought into the Colony in May 1835 were all Natal refugees who had fled south from the devastations of Shaka and the 'mfecane', and who had then become oppressed by their Gca1eka hosts. Both of these 'histories' need to be inverted. The 'irruption' of December 1834 was not unprovoked Rharhabe aggression, but the final response to years of the advance of the Cape Colony. Large areas of Rharhabe land had been expropriated, and their cattle regularly raided. Their women and children had been seized and taken into the Colony as labourers. The attacks were carried out by only a section of the Rharhabe on specific areas in Albany. The damage caused, and stock taken, was vastly exaggerated by the colonists. The Cape Governor, D'Urban, and British troop reinforcements arrived in Albany in January, and the Rharhabe were invaded two months later. D'Urban later invaded the innocent Gcaleka, took cattle, wreaked havoc and killed Hintza after he refused to ally with the Colony. The Fingo made their appearance at this moment. They were not a homogenous group. There were four categories within the term: mission and refugee collaborators (who were given land at Peddie and had chiefs appointed), military auxiliaries, labourers, and later, destitute Rharhabe seeking employment in the Colony. Only a small minority of the total Fingo were from Natal. The majority of the Fingo appear to have been Rharhabe and Gcaleka women and children, captured by the troops during the war and distributed on farms in the eastern districts to ameliorate the chronic labour shortage. Thus, instead of the year 1835 being one of great loss for the eastern Cape, as claimed by the settler apologists, it was a catalyst to the economic development of the area. All Rharhabe land was seized, to be granted as settler farms. Well over sixty thousand Rharhabe and Gcaleka cattle were captured and distributed amongst the colonists. The security threat of the adjacent Rharhabe and the independent Gcaleka was removed. And a large colonial labour supply was ensured.