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Containing all the official notices issued in 1805 by the last Dutch governor-general of the South-African colony

JANSSENS, Jan Willem.
Collected proclamations, advertisements and notices in Dutch, addressed to the colonists of Cape of Good Hope.

All pieces with the autograph signature of the governor-general, Janssens, and/or his Secretary J.A. Truter.

Cape Town, the Press at the Castle, 1805. 38 pieces in 1 vol. Folio. Contemporary half roan. All pieces with the autograph signature of the governor-general, Janssens, and/or his Secretary J.A. Truter. 28 lvs., interleaved with blanks

Rare and interesting collection of Cape of Good Hope-imprints containing all the official notices issued in 1805 by the last Dutch governor-general of the South-African colony, Jan Willem Janssens (1762-1838). He made a military career from which he was honourably discharged in 1796 on account of his wounds received in the war against France. During the "Batavian Republic" Janssens held high offices in the Ministry of War, and under King Lodewijk Napoleon he was appointed governor-general of the Cape of Good Hope in 1802. In January 1806 he lost the Battle of Blaauwenberg and had to surrender the colony to the English. After his return to the Netherlands the Emperor Napoleon sent him to replace Daendels as governor-general to the Dutch East-Indies, which however Janssens also had to surrender to the English. After Napoleon's defeat in 1814 the Dutch East Indies were returned to the Dutch Kingdom, but the Cape of Good Hope was ceded definitive to Great-Britain. So the present is a rare collection of early Dutch Cape printing. Printing at the Cape of Good Hope started in 1796 after a printing press was set up at the Castle in Cape Town, but the earliest official notices intended for the general public were only printed in 1800, and then only very sparingly as most VOC regulations and laws for the Cape were in manuscript until 1806.
The present collection runs from January 3 to December 27, 1805, and starts with a call for a census not only of the population but also of the property of the entire colony, because the government wanted, as is expressly stated, to consider the Cape no longer as useful only for all passing vessels, but wanted espacially to promote the welfare of the colony itself. Janssens seems to have been very active in 1805, making a tour through the out-districts of the Cape of Good Hope, for which he designed new regulations and administrative laws, published in an extensive ordonnance also in 1805. This activity was probably instigated by the disruption of relations with the VOC top in the Dutch East Indies, as a result of which Janssens planned and developed a colonial policy of his own.
Our collection contains more "ad hoc" decisions and solutions of the Cape Government just before the advance of the English troops, often relating to the growing and price of wheat, the fourageering of the Colony's troops, the harvest and transportation of wine, notices about appointment of governmental personel, bills of exchange, public debts, insolvency and bankruptcy, etc., but also including a new regulation about the selling of goods by slaves, regulations for justly arrived Protestant missionaries, about the forgery of paper money, etc. Part of the notices and advertisements were probably published in the Cape newspaper, and are here often printed with two to one leaf, while others obviously were printed as broadsides, with text in two columns at both sides. All pieces present were probably collected together for the record of the government, and all are also personally signed for authorization. A very interesting collection of great importance for the Cape's economy, and a unique collection of official Cape printing. Detailed list of contents is available on request.

Fine copy.- (Binding sl. rubbed, name-labels from front cover removed).

Unrecorded; cf. Mendelssohn I, p. 286 (Janssens's Ordonnance for the "Buiten-Districten" of 1805).

Related Subjects: Africa Cartography Commerce Economy VOC

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