SOUTH AFRICA

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 139, 9 December 1929, Page 18

SOUTH AFRICA

100 YEARS AGO

AN HISTORICAL REVIEW

A comprehensive review of political and economic situations of 100 years ago was given at the University recently by Professor E. Walker in a lecture in connection with the University centenary celebrations, says the '' Cape Times.''

'.The pearly files of the South African "Commercial Advertiser," the only newspaper in the Cape Colony at the time, contained an interesting record of events that were taking place in Europa'and the world in general, said Professor Walker. Asia was then to a large extent unexplored, Australasia had scarcely been touched by European settlers, and of South Africa only the Cape Colony and_ settlements at Port Elizabeth and Durban were known.

The evolution of the United States was still in process, and Canada was. largely under the control of the Hudson Bay Trading Company. The seas were harassed by Columbian pirates, one of which, flying the Stars and Stripes, patrolled between the Cape and St. Helena. * , ,

RUSSIA'S POWER.

In Europe many of the fireat figures of the Napoleonic era had gone, but Tallerand and the Duke of Wellington remained. The most imposing Power was Russia, but the foundations of the German Empire had been laid in the combination of 39 States with a loose permanent alliance. The independence of Greece also dated from the year 1829.

In literature and art the Romantic movement was in full swing, and France was the.New Jerusalem of Liberalism. She ,had almost finished making history, and was beginning to write it. The University of Berlin was spreading culture and attracting all the great minds of Europe. In England Sir Walter Scott, Bulwer Lytton, Tennyson, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt predominated.

The most important development in England at that time was the industrial" revolution, still in its early stages but slowly spreading to the Continent and America.

The first steamboat had arrived at the Capo in 1825, and by 1829 there was a regular steam service between England'and America. Trains were also in use, and. Stephenson was building the Liverpool-Manchester railway, having defeated the suggestions to install stationary engines drawing carriages by means of a rope. At a recent test the Rocket engine had reached a speed of 30 miles an hour.

.■;. Duelling was still iv fashion, and a short while before a duel had been arranged in. Cape. Town, but was stopped by the police. Prize-fighting was conducted with'fists, and football was a bloodthirsty "contest ' between village and village.

FIRST OMNIBUS.

The first omnibus had appeared; and Sir Eobert Peel's Police Force were becoming familiar in England. The Marble-Arch and London Bridge, in course of construction, marked the beginning of modern London.

The freedom of the Press had just been achieved, and: an article appeared in the!."Commercial Bulletin" condemning "the parsimonious habit of borrowing instead of buying" this newspaper. Attention was also drawn to the "secrecy of trade" in Cape Town, and the unwillingness of merchants to advertise their wares in its pages. A subscription library had recently been formed by the editor of the "Advertiser," in view of complaints against the public library; it was said that, for three days access to the latter had been impossible on account of a broken door-handle.

"It was in such conditions, and with such current events occupying their minds, that our .grandfathers took part in the widespread movement towards educational reform by laying the foundations of the Cape Town University," concluded Professor Walker.