THEWHITEINVADERS
, and the colonial government, which was not seen to be offering sufficient
support. Early in 1795, prominent trekboers from the southern part of the
district of Graaff-Reinet drove out the landdrost and assumed control. The
government soon brought them to heel, however, by cutting off their am-
munition supply, demonstrating that they were dependent on their links
with the Cape Town regime and the European economy.P
When the British captured the Cape from the Dutch later in 1795, they
took over responsibility for a thinly populated, loose-knit territory. Cape
Town was still the only portof entry into the region. With fifteen thousand
inhabitants (including ten thousand slaves),1,145 private houses, and such
public buildings as the castle, the slave lodge, and the principal Dutch
Reformed church, it was also the only real town in the colony. Stellenbosch
had a mere 70 houses, Swellendam 30, and Graaff-Reinet "about a dozen
mud-houses covered with thatch."34 In the European perspective, the colo-
ny's function was still little more than the stepping-stone to Asia that it had
been in the time of van Riebeeck; it yielded nothing else of significance to
the metropolitan economy.
The crucial facet of the social structure of the colony was the utter