‘The Little Nothings of Our Life’: Furlough, Recovery and Imperial Interlude at the Cape Colony, 1796–1850

Abstract

In 1849, John Colpoys Haughton embarked for a period of rest and recuperation at the Cape of Good Hope. This article uses correspondence between Haughton, an Indian army officer in South Africa, and his family in Britain to explore personal experiences of furlough and to foreground the role of the Cape Colony as a site of recovery and recuperation. Haughton’s example emphasises the importance of health and well-being in facilitating, or curtailing, the mid-nineteenth-century British Empire and those in its service. His experiences illuminate broader issues in Britain’s nineteenth-century world: the logistics and practicalities of embarking on an extended leave of absence; the representation of the Cape as a place of healthfulness; the complex relationship between ideas of home and belonging for those on furlough there; and the enduring significance of familial connections. The correspondence generated during Haughton’s sojourn at the Cape illustrates the wider mechanics of imperial careering and communication in the period, highlighting the familial and personal networks that existed in parallel with professional, economic and military connections, and demonstrating the continued importance of these social ties. Although Haughton arrived at the Cape in search of health, and his letters were ostensibly about ‘the little nothings of our life’, they tell us just as much about the mid-nineteenth-century empire. Ultimately, Haughton’s example takes us across oceans, connecting people and places on three continents, and underlining the dynamic and complex lines of communication that criss-crossed the British Empire in the middle of the nineteenth century.