![]() The launch of Assegais, Drums & Dragoons: A Military and Social History of the Cape by Willem Steenkamp went off, quite literally, with a bang when a nine-pounder muzzle-loaded cannon was fired by Mogomat Hartley, dressed in a unique straw hat, the uniform of the loyal Javanese Artillery Corps who fought at the Battle of Blaauwberg. Steenkamp reflected briefly on the nature of the history of the Cape. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s totally different from what we generally think,” he said. This book, which is part military history and part social history, aims to answer the questions that were raised for him in his capacity as the organiser of the bicentenary celebrations of the Battle of Blaauwberg. Steenkamp recalled this watershed battle on 8 January 1806, which ushered in the Second British Occupation of the Cape: “Something very strange happened there. The best trained Batavian soldiers cut and ran, almost at the first shot.” He noted that the last ones on the battlefield were a small group of Dutch gunners, a small contingent of French, and three Cape regiments, the Hottentot Light Infantry, the Light Dragoons of Swellendam and the Javanese Artillery Corp. “Why did these three units fight so hard against the British? What did they have in common? They all spoke what was not yet called Afrikaans!” He said that writing this book had been a journey of discovery, beyond the writing of his thesis. “I discovered many new things about the Cape, including details of my ancestors!” Generous sponsorship for the book’s launch, received from Uwe Koetter, Cynergy Liqueur and Longridge Wines, was gratefully acknowledged by Jonathan Ball’s Ingeborg Pelser. Guests mingled afterwards in the remarkable Chavonnes Battery Museum, getting their books signed by the author, who had a personal note for each one. In defence of the Cape The Cape Contingent at Blaauwberg was a small one, only 563 men out of a total of just under 2 000 in the Batavian forces, and consisted of the following units:
54 gunners of the 'Javanese Artillery Corps', assisted by l04 auxiliaries such as wagon-drivers. These Malay artillerymen were volunteer citizen-soldiers like the Swellendammers, members of a 'corps of free Javanese' from the 'Mardykers', the substantial community of freed slaves of Asian origin, which by that time was playing an increasingly important role in the social and economic life of the Cape. The corps was raised in 1804 to help in manning the Castle's guns, but served as foot artillery at Blaauwberg, firing traditional Indonesian light cannon known as 'lantakan', the only time these weapons are ever known to have been used in Africa. Less is known about their 104 auxiliaries, but it is known that they represented a cross-section of Cape Town's very cosmopolitan proletariat; some of them were almost certainly blacks who had come to the Cape from Mozambique and elsewhere. Read about the battle in Assegais, Drums & Dragoons: A Military and Social History of the Cape by Willem Steenkamp. Sourced from http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol134ws.html and http://jonathanball.bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/04/24/willem-steenkamps-assegais-drums-dragoons-launched-with-a-bang-at-the-chavonnes-battery-museum/
2 Comments
moegamat
4/27/2012 07:30:40 pm
The Panglima/Malay warrior involvement in this great historic battle is only partially covered Tuan Guru RA account is not written is not covered because according our Malay history is always mentioned in passing
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rabeah rasdien
4/30/2012 04:30:57 pm
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