New Scotland, Mpumalanga

History

History of South Africa since September 1795 by George McCall Theal

In September 1864 a scheme of colonisation of a portion of the unoccupied lands of fhe country was submitted to the government by a Scotchman named Alexander McCorkindale, who had been some time resident in Natal, and who had recently been endeavouring in vain to induce the Volksraad of the Orange Free State to allot him a number of farms with reduced quitrent, on which to place immigrants. Mr. McCorkindale proposed to form a commercial association in Great Britain, which should send out at least three hundred suitable families and locate them on land then vacant, provided certain privileges were granted to him. The scheme included the establishment of a bank, the loan of a large sum of money to the republic at a moderate rate of interest and the importation of a constant and cheap supply of ammunition.Mr. McCorkindale further proposed to build warehouses at a spot where the Maputo river, which empties into Delagoa Bay, issues from the Lebombo mountains. It was believed that this river could be made navigable for large boats nearly as high as the site proposed for the warehouses, which was also beyond the belt along the coast that is particularly subject to fever of a deadly nature and is infested by the tsetse fly. This proposal found great favour with the people of the republic, who were exceedingly desirous of having a seaport under their own control. From the earliest days of the great emigration from the Gape Colony, efforts had been made to open up communication with the outer world through Delagoa Bay. The Portuguese government had acted in the most friendly manner, and had done all it could to assist these attempts. A small and precarious trade was established; but the deadly fever of the coast belt in the summer season, the destruction of cattle in the jungle by the tsetse, and the want of a waggon road had prevented its growth and its stability. Mr. McCorkindale’s scheme—if it could be carried into effect, which he declared was quite feasible—would overcome all these Difficulties.The Government therefore granted him many concessions, and agreed to sell him a block of two hundred farms, or about one million two hundred and fifty thousand acres of ground, for £8,000, that is, £40 for a farm. The district in which this ground was situated thereafter took the name of New Scotland, It lies along the Drakensberg, in an elevated and healthy region, and is bordered by the Swazi Country, in which Mr. McCorkindale hoped to obtain by purchase a large tract of land as well as a roadway from his proposed colony to his stores at the Lebombo mountains.The projector returned to Great Britain, and endeavoured to form colonisation companies ia both England and Scotland. But he could not find a sufficient number of capitalists willing to embark in his scheme, and was therefore unable to carry it out in its entirety. He managed, however, to form an association, which took the name of the Glasgow and South Africa Company, and purchased forty farms at £40 each, the whole containing two hundred and fifty thousand acres. In 1866 he reached South Africa again with a large quantity of gunpowder and a party of Scotch immigrants. The immigrants, numbering in all about fifty souls, were located in January 1867 close to Lake Chrissie,(so named after the daughter of President Pretorius) in New Scotland, but the ground on which they settled proved not to be so well adapted for either agricultural or pastoral purposes as had been anticipated. Most of them therefore turned to other pursuits, and soon found themselves m prosperous circumstances.After again visiting Great Britain and expending a vast amount of energy and all the resources that he could command, Mr. McCorkindale proceeded to Delagoa Bay (today Maputo) to make a thorough inspection of the harbour and coast, and died of fever at Inyaka Island on the 1st of May 1871. Ho left no one to carry out the great undertaking he had planned, which consequently fell to the ground with his death.

Extract from the book "The Scots in South Africa" Authors John MacKenzie and Nigel Dalzie

One of the earliest maps of the Transvaal, produced by Friedrich Jeppe and A. Merensky, clearly demarcates New Scotland, with the township or farm of Hamilton prominently shown. The names of Scots continue to flit in and out of the history of the region for some time Jeppe published a very useful almanac in 1877, in which some of the New Scotland officials are listed. McCorkindale himself had been appointed veldcornet of New Scotland. Later there was a magistrate and native commissioner called Robert Bell Wikitree profile, who commanded the Border Corps (its secretary was R. Stewart) and was involved in a commando against the Swazi in 1876. Bell was later murdered. A settler called E. J. Buchanan applied to take over his role. A schools commission was established for the area, initially under the chairmanship of Bell, and later of S. T. Erskine, the government land surveyor. After McCorkindale's death J. S. Aitken came out from Glasgow to administer New Scotland on behalf of the company. A New Scotland Farmers' Association was formed which set up an agricultural co-operative society. But the turbulence of the area was well illustrated when disputes over cattle ownership broke out. Moreover, it was alleged that Boers were crossing the Swazi border in order to cut timber, for this was a well wooded region and sawmills had been established. (Mrs McCorkindale attempted to capitalise on this.) But many of the Scots left. A few Scottish names survive to this day, but it is significant that Roburnia was renamed Amsterdam and Hamilton seems to have disappeared from the map. New Scotland, some of it positioned in what should have been Old Swaziland, became a new slice of Afrikanerdom, just as the Baviaans River settlement of 1820 was also largely taken over by Boers. Today what was New Scotland has been subsumed into the Ermelo District of Mpumalanga province.The Scots named the towns Roburnia, it's Capital (after RobertBurns the Scottish Poet) renamed to Amsterdam and Industria today known as Lake Chrissie.

Mpumalanga natural wonders Scottish connection 2015-07-17 Miningweekly.com

The roots of the Scottish presence in what was then the Eastern Transvaal dates back to 1864, when a Scotsman by the name of Alexander McCorkindale approached the Transvaal Volksraad (government) with a scheme to settle 300 of his countrymen in the republic with the purpose of establishing commercial farming operations. In addition, he offered to establish a bank, lend money to the republic, import urgently needed stores of ammunition and develop a much-desired route to the sea. McCorkindale could not have pitched such a scheme at a more opportune moment, for the Transvaal was in severe financial dire straits, largely owing to its burghers’ aversion to paying tax of any description. Thus, the Volksraad was only too happy to grant the Scotsman 200 farms equal to 1.2-million acres of land on the eastern Transvaal highveld, near Lake Chrissie, for £8 000. While the Transvaal boers were well known for their strong resentment of English-speaking foreigners and abhorred their settlement in the republic, such feelings did no extend to the Scottish. In fact, the Dutch settlers and the Scots had always had a strong affinity, bearing the same religious and moral beliefs and sharing a strong disinclination towards the English imperialists. Having secured approval for the scheme, McCorkindale returned to Britain to float the Glasgow & South Africa Company, through which the money to buy the farms could be raised, and to find countrymen from that bonnie land willing to emigrate to that far-flung boer republic. Unfortunately, to expect people to invest money in, let alone emigrate to, a country of which very little was known was asking too much, and McCorkindale struggled to stimulate any considerable interest in the scheme. However, he managed to raise enough capital to charter a brig and buy a small number of farms. In 1866, together with 105 industrious countrymen, he sailed for the southern tip of Africa. The little colony, which was dubbed New Scotland, started well enough, with the settlers busying themselves with the arduous task of driving sheep and livestock up from Natal and erecting new homesteads on farms, some of which were christened Bonniebrae, Lochiel and Waverley. However, life was difficult in that new land and, owing to the scarcity of food and materials, it became necessary for McCorkindale to make periodical trips to Europe to replenish supplies and to raise capital for his schemes for New Scotland. Unfortunately, on one such trip, while travelling through the malaria-infested lowveld, McCorkindale was struck down with the dreaded fever and died in May 1871 on Inyack Island, in the bay of Lourenco Marques (now Maputo). Following his death, all schemes for New Scotland were crushed and most of the emigrants abandoned the little colony in search of more favourable prospects elsewhere in South Africa.

Failure of the scheme

In the words of David Forbes from the book (My Life in South Africa, 1938, p. 17):

“With the death of McCorkindale, the whole Scottish settlement fell to pieces; we lived a humdrum sort of life on the farms after the live wire of the community had died.”Mrs McCorkindale attempted to keep the scheme alive after her husband's death and continued to employ Robert Bell Wikitree profile as the manager. He was the local Justice of the Peace and was then murdered in 1877 while arresting a Swazi tenant called Mabekana for non payment of farm rental and cattle theft.

Map

The map shows farms known to be part of the New Scotland project from historical references as well as those of Scottish origin. The area forms a rough triangle with Amsterdam, Mpumalanga in the south corner and Chrissiemeer at the Western corner. The Oshoek border post makes up the approximate Eastern corner.