VOC settlement An expedition of the VOC led by
Jan van Riebeeck established a trading post and naval victualing station at the
Cape of Good Hope in 1652. Van Riebeeck's objective was to secure a harbour of refuge for VOC ships during the long voyages between Europe and Asia. Within about three decades, the Cape had become home to a large community of , also known as ('free citizens'), former VOC employees who settled in the colonies overseas after completing their service contracts. were mostly married citizens who undertook to spend at least twenty years farming the land within the fledgling colony's borders; in exchange they received tax exempt status and were loaned
tools and
seeds. Reflecting the multi-national nature of the early trading companies, the VOC granted status to Dutch, Swiss, Scandinavian and German employees, among others. In 1688 they also sponsored the immigration of nearly two hundred French
Huguenot refugees who had fled to the Netherlands upon the
Edict of Fontainebleau. This so-called "Huguenot experiment" was deemed a failure by the colonial authorities a decade later, as many of the Huguenot arrivals had little experience with agriculture and had become a net burden on the colonial government. There was a degree of cultural assimilation due to Dutch cultural hegemony that included the almost universal adoption of the Dutch language. Many of the colonists who settled directly on the frontier became increasingly independent and localised in their loyalties. Known as
Boers, they migrated beyond the Cape Colony's initial borders and had soon penetrated almost a thousand kilometres inland. Some Boers even adopted a nomadic lifestyle permanently and were denoted as . The VOC colonial period had a number of bitter, genocidal conflicts between the colonists and the
Khoe-speaking indigenes, followed by the
Xhosa, both of which they perceived as unwanted competitors for prime farmland. VOC traders imported thousands of
slaves to the Cape of Good Hope from the
Dutch East Indies and other parts of Africa. By the end of the eighteenth century the Cape's population swelled to about 26,000 people of European descent and 30,000 slaves.
British conquest In 1795,
France occupied the
Seven Provinces of the
Dutch Republic, the mother country of the
Dutch United East India Company. This prompted
Great Britain to occupy the
Cape Colony in 1795 as a way to better control the seas in order to stop any potential
French attempt to reach
India. The British sent a fleet of nine warships which anchored at
Simon's Town and, following the defeat of the VOC militia at the
Battle of Muizenberg, took control of the territory. The United East India Company transferred its territories and claims to the
Batavian Republic (the Revolutionary period Dutch state) in 1798, and went bankrupt in 1799. Improving relations between
Britain and
Napoleonic France, and its vassal state the
Batavian Republic, led the British to hand the Cape of Good Hope over to the Batavian Republic in 1803, under the terms of the
Treaty of Amiens. In 1806, the
Cape, now nominally controlled by the
Batavian Republic, was occupied again by the
British after their victory in the
Battle of Blaauwberg. The temporary peace between the UK and
Napoleonic France had crumbled into open hostilities, whilst Napoleon had been strengthening his influence on the
Batavian Republic (which
Napoleon would subsequently abolish and directly administer later the same year). The
British, who set up a colony on 8 January 1806, hoped to keep
Napoleon out of the Cape, and to control the Far East trade routes. The Cape Colony at the time of
British occupation was three months' sailing distance from
London. The
White colonial population was small, no more than 25,000 in all, scattered across a territory of 100,000 square miles. Most lived in Cape Town and the surrounding farming districts of the
Boland, an area favoured with rich soils, a
Mediterranean Climate and reliable rainfall.
Cape Town had a population of 16,000 people. In 1814 the Dutch government formally ceded sovereignty over the
Cape to the
British, under the terms of the
Convention of London.
British colonisation The
British started to settle the eastern border of the Cape Colony, with the arrival in
Port Elizabeth of the
1820 Settlers. They also began to introduce the first rudimentary rights for the Cape's
Black African population and, in 1834,
abolished slavery; however, the government proved unable to rein in settler violence against the
San, which continued largely unabated as it had during the Dutch period. The resentment that the Boers felt against this social change, as well as the imposition of
English language and
culture, caused them to trek inland en masse. This was known as the
Great Trek, and the migrating Boers settled inland, eventually forming the
Boer Republics. British Immigration continued in the Cape, even as many of the Boers continued to trek inland, and the ending of the
British East India Company's monopoly on trade led to economic growth. At the same time, the long series of
Xhosa Wars fought between the Xhosa people in the east and the government of the Cape Colony as well as Boer settlers finally died down when the Xhosa took part in a
mass destruction of their own crops and cattle, in the belief that this would cause their ancestors to wake from the dead. The resulting famine crippled Xhosa country and ushered in a long period of stability on the border. Peace and prosperity, in addition to the
Convict crisis of 1849, led to a desire for political independence. In 1853, the Cape Colony became a British Crown colony with representative government. In 1854, the Cape of Good Hope
elected its first parliament, on the basis of the multi-racial
Cape Qualified Franchise. Cape residents qualified as voters based on a universal minimum level of property ownership, regardless of race. on the Indian Ocean, 1818 Executive power remaining completely in the authority of the British governor did not relieve tensions in the colony between its
eastern and
western sections.
Responsible government In 1872, after a long political battle, the Cape of Good Hope achieved
responsible government under its first Prime Minister,
John Molteno. Henceforth, an elected Prime Minister and his cabinet had total responsibility for the affairs of the country. A period of strong economic growth and social development ensued, and the
eastern-western division was largely laid to rest. The system of multi-racial franchise also began a slow and fragile growth in political inclusiveness, and ethnic tensions subsided. In 1877, the state expanded by annexing
Griqualand West and
Griqualand East – that is, the Mount Currie district (
Kokstad). The emergence of two Boer mini-republics along the Missionary Road resulted in 1885 in the Warren Expedition, sent to annex the republics of
Stellaland and
Goshen (lands annexed to
British Bechuanaland). Major-General
Charles Warren annexed the land south of the Molopo River as the colony of British Bechuanaland and proclaimed a protectorate over the land lying to the North of the river.
Vryburg, the capital of Stellaland, became capital of British Bechuanaland, while
Mafeking (now
Mahikeng), although situated south of the protectorate border, became the protectorate's administrative centre. The border between the protectorate and the colony ran along the Molopo and Nossob rivers. In 1895, British Bechuanaland became part of the Cape Colony. However, the discovery of diamonds around
Kimberley and gold in the
Transvaal led to a return to instability, particularly because they fuelled the rise to power of the ambitious imperialist
Cecil Rhodes. On becoming the Cape's Prime Minister in 1890, he instigated a rapid expansion of British influence into the hinterland. In particular, he sought to engineer the conquest of the Transvaal, and although his ill-fated
Jameson Raid failed and brought down his government, it led to the
Second Boer War and British conquest at the turn of the century. The politics of the colony consequently came to be increasingly dominated by tensions between the British colonists and the Boers. Rhodes also brought in the first formal restrictions on the political rights of the Cape of Good Hope's black African citizens. The Cape of Good Hope remained nominally under British rule until the formation of the
Union of South Africa in 1910, when it became the province of the Cape of Good Hope, better known as the
Cape Province. ==Governors==