THEWHITEINVADERS
assisted by colonial commandos and Khoikhoi units, ruthlessly expelled
the Xhosa inhabitants from the land through to the Fish River, burning
crops and villages and making off with- thousands of head of cattle. Con-
cluding his report on these achievements to his superiors in London, Gover-
nor Cradock said, "I am happy to add that in the course of this service there
has not been shed more Kaffir blood than would seem to be necessary to
impress on the minds of these savages a proper degree of terror and re-
specf."46 The government then forbade further contacts between colonists
and Xhosa across the Fish River. In 1819,
the Xhosa made a desperate
attempt to regain their land, but British forces and their colonial allies
drove them back beyond the Keiskamma in another brutal campaign.f?
In 1820,
British politics changed the destiny of the Cape Colony. The
chancellor of the Exchequer had persuaded Parliament to vote £50,000
to
transport settlers from the British Isles to the region and set them up as
agricultural farmers on lots of about one hundred acres. This unusual grant
was a political decision in response to unemployment and social unrest in
Britain. Historian Jeffrey Peires calls it a "political manoeuvre by a Tory