Cape of Good Hope Nederlandse Kaapkolonie
1652–1806
Flag Coat of arms
VOC Cape at its largest extent in 1795
Status	Supply station underCompany rule (1652–1795) British occupation (1795–1803) Colony of theBatavian Republic (1803–1806)
Capital	Castle of Good Hope (1st) Kaapstad (2nd)
Official languages	Dutch Afrikaans
Common languages	EarlyAfrikaans Khoikhoi isiXhosa Malay
Religion	Dutch Reformed native beliefs
Governor
• 1652–1662	Jan van Riebeeck
• 1662–1666	Zacharias Wagenaer
• 1771–1785	Joachim van Plettenberg
• 1803–1806	Jan Willem Janssens
Historical era	Colonialism
• Establishment of Cape Town	6 April 1652
• Elevated to Governorate	1691
• First British occupation	7 August 1795
• Cape Colony to Dutch rule	1 March 1803
• Battle of Blaauwberg	8 January 1806
Area
• Total	145,000 km2 (56,000 sq mi)
Population
• 1797[1]	61,947
Currency	Dutch rijksdaalder
Preceded by Succeeded by Khoekhoe people British Cape Colony Republic of Graaff-Reinet Republic of Swellendam
Today part of	South Africa

Historicalstates in present-day South Africa
before 1600 Kingdom of Mapungubwe (1050–1270) Kingdom of Mutapa (1430–1760)
1600–1700 Dutch Cape Colony (1652–1795)
1700–1800 Mthethwa Paramountcy (c.1780–1817) Ndwandwe (c.1780–1817) Republic of Swellendam (1795) Republic of Graaff-Reinet (1795–1796) Cape Colony (1795–1802)
1800–1850 Dutch Cape Colony (1802–1806) Cape Colony (1806–1910) Waterboer's Land (1813–1871) Zulu Kingdom (1818–1897) Adam Kok's Land (1825–1861) Winburg (1836–1844) Potchefstroom (1837–1848) Natalia Republic (1839–1843)
1850–1875 South African Republic (1852–1902) Orange Free State (1854–1902) Republic of Utrecht (1854–1858) Lydenburg Republic (1856–1860) Griqualand East (1861–1879) Griqualand West (1870–1880) Diggers' Republic (1870–1871)
1875–1900 Stellaland (1882–1885) Goshen (1882–1883) Nieuw Republiek (1884–1888) Klein Vrystaat (1886–1891)
1900–present Cape Colony (1806–1910) Union of South Africa (1910–1961) Transkei (1976–1994) Bophuthatswana (1977–1994) Venda (1979–1994) Ciskei (1981–1994) Republic of South Africa (1961–present)
South Africa portal
v t e

TheDutch Cape Colony (Dutch:Nederlandse Kaapkolonie), officially known as theCape of Good Hope Waystation (Dutch:Tussenstation Kaap de Goede Hoop), was acolony of theDutch East India Company (VOC) andBatavian Republic inSouthern Africa. Centered on theCape of Good Hope, from where it derived its name, it was founded in 1652 by a VOC expedition underJan van Riebeeck to serve as a re-supply andlayover port for VOC vessels trading with Asia.^[2] The Cape was under VOC rule from 1652 to 1795 and Batavian rule from 1803 to 1806.^[3] Much to the dismay of the VOC's shareholders, who focused primarily on making profits from the Asian trade, the Cape Colony rapidly expanded into asettler colony in the years after its founding.

As the only permanent settlement of the VOC which served as a trading post, it proved an ideal retirement place for employees of the company. After several years of service in the company, an employee could lease a piece of land in the Cape Colony as aFree Burgher, on which he had to cultivate crops that he had to sell to the VOC for a fixed price. As these farms were labour-intensive, Free Burghers imported slaves fromMadagascar,Mozambique and Asia (mostly theDutch East Indies andDutch Ceylon), which rapidly increased the number of inhabitants.^[2] After KingLouis XIV of France issued theEdict of Fontainebleau in October 1685 (revoking theEdict of Nantes of 1598), thereby ending protection of the right ofHuguenots in France to practise Protestant worship without persecution from the state, the Cape Colony attracted someHuguenot settlers, who eventually mixed with the general Dutch population.

Due to the authoritarian rule of the company (telling farmers what to grow for what price,controlling immigration, andmonopolising trade), some farmers tried to escape the rule of the company by moving further inland. The company, in an effort to control these migrants, established amagistracy atSwellendam in 1745 and another atGraaff Reinet in 1786, and declared theGamtoos River as the eastern frontier of the Cape, only to see theTrekboers cross it soon afterwards. In order to keep out Cape native pastoralists, organised increasingly under the risingXhosa people, the VOC agreed in 1780 to make theGreat Fish River the boundary of the Cape.

In 1795, after they launched aninvasion of the Cape Colony in present-dayCape Town, theBritish occupied the Cape. Under the terms of thePeace of Amiens of 1802, Britain ceded the Cape back to the Batavian Republic on 1 March 1803, but as the Batavians had nationalized the VOC in 1796, the Cape Colony now became a colony under the direct rule ofThe Hague. Batavian control did not last long, however, as the outbreak of theNapoleonic Wars on 18 May 1803 invalidated the Peace of Amiens. In January 1806, the British occupied the colony for a second time after their victory at theBattle of Blaauwberg at present-dayBloubergstrand. TheAnglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 confirmed the transfer of sovereignty to Britain.

Traders of theUnited East India Company (VOC), under the command ofJan van Riebeeck, were the first people to establish a European colony in South Africa. The Cape settlement was built by them in 1652 as a re-supply point and way-station for United East India Company vessels on their way back and forth between the Netherlands andBatavia (Jakarta) in theDutch East Indies. The support station gradually became a settler community, the forebears of theBoers, and theCape Dutch who becameAfrikaners.

At the time of first European settlement in the Cape, the southwest of Africa was inhabited byKhoikhoi pastoralists and hunters. Disgruntled by the disruption of their seasonal visit to the area for which purpose they grazed their cattle at the foot ofTable Mountain only to find European settlers occupying and farming the land, leading to the first Khoi-Dutch War as part of a series ofKhoikhoi–Dutch Wars. After the war, the natives ceded the land to the settlers in 1660. During a visit in 1672, the high-ranking Commissioner Arnout van Overbeke made a formal purchase of the Cape territory, although already ceded in 1660, his reason was to "prevent future disputes".^[4]

The ability of the European settlers to produce food at the Cape initiated the decline of the nomadic lifestyle of theKhoi andTuu speaking peoples since food was produced at a fixed location. Thus by 1672, the permanent indigenous residents living at the Cape had grown substantially. The first school to be built in South Africa by the settlers were for the sake of the slaves who had been rescued from a Portuguese slave ship and arrived at the Cape with theAmersfoort in 1658. Later on, the school was also attended by the children of the indigenes and the Free Burghers. The Dutch language was taught at schools as the main medium for commercial purposes, with the result that the indigenous people and even the French settlers found themselves speaking Dutch more than their native languages. The principles of Christianity were also introduced at the school resulting in the baptisms of many slaves and indigenous residents.^[4]

Conflicts with the settlers and the effects ofsmallpox decimated their numbers in 1713 and 1755, until gradually the breakdown of their society led them to be scattered and ethnically cleansed beyond the colonial frontiers: both beyond the Eastward-expanding frontier (to form eventually the future resisting population of thefrontier wars), as well as beyond the Northern open frontier war above the Great Escarpment.^[5]

Some worked for the colonists, mostly as shepherds and herdsmen.^[6]

The VOC favoured the idea of freemen at the Cape and many settlers requested to be discharged in order to become free burghers; as a result, Jan van Riebeeck approved the notion on favorable conditions and earmarked two areas near theLiesbeek River for farming purposes in 1657. The two areas which were allocated to the freemen, for agricultural purposes, were named Groeneveld and Dutch Garden. These areas were separated by the Amstel River (Liesbeek River). Nine of the best applicants were selected to use the land for agricultural purposes. The freemen or free burghers as they were afterwards termed, thus became subjects, and were no longer servants, of the company.^[7]

After the first settlers spread out around the Company station, nomadic European livestock farmers, or Trekboeren, moved more widely afield, leaving the richer, but limited, farming lands of the coast for the drier interior tableland. There they contested still wider groups of Khoe-speaking cattle herders for the best grazing lands.

The Cape society in this period was thus a diverse one. The emergence ofAfrikaans reflects this diversity, from its roots as a Dutchpidgin, to its subsequentcreolisation and use as "Kitchen Dutch" by slaves and serfs of the colonials, and its later use inCape Islam by them when it first became a written language that used theArabic letters. By the time of British rule after 1795, the sociopolitical foundations were firmly laid.

In 1795, France occupied theDutch Republic. This promptedGreat Britain, at war with France, to occupy the territory that same year as a way to better control the seas on the way toIndia. The British sent a fleet of nine warships which anchored atSimon's Town and, following the defeat of the Dutch militia at theBattle of Muizenberg, took control of the territory. TheUnited East India Company transferred its territories and claims to theBatavian Republic (the Dutchsister republic established by France) in 1798, then ceased to exist in 1799. Improving relations between Britain andNapoleonic France, and its vassal state the Batavian Republic, led the British to hand the Cape Colony over to the Batavian Republic in 1803, under the terms of theTreaty of Amiens.

In 1806, the Cape, now nominally controlled by the Batavian Republic, was occupied again by the British after their victory in theBattle of Blaauwberg. The peace between Britain and Napoleonic France had broken after one year, while Napoleon had been strengthening his influence on the Batavian Republic (which he would replace with a monarchy later that year). The British established their colony to control the Far East trade routes. In 1814 the Dutch government formally ceded sovereignty over the Cape to the British, under the terms of theConvention of London.

The Dutch Cape Colony was divided into four districts. In 1797 their "recorded" populations were:^[8]

During this period a significant proportion of marriages were interracial, this is at least partially attributed to a lack of 'White' or 'Christian' women within the colony. What later became the racial division between 'White' and 'non-White' populations originally began as a division betweenChristian and non-Christian populations.^[9] TheGeslags-registeers estimated that seven percent of the Afrikaner gene pool in 1807 was non-White.^[9]

This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved. Find sources: "Dutch Cape Colony" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(June 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The title of the founder of the Cape Colony, Jan van Riebeeck, was installed as "Commander of the Cape", a position he held from 1652 to 1662. During the tenure ofSimon van der Stel, the colony was elevated to the rank of a governorate, hence he was promoted to the position of "Governor of the Cape".

• Van der Merwe, Petrus Johannes (1995).The Migrant Farmer in the History of the Cape Colony, 1657-1842. Athens:Ohio University Press.ISBN 978-0-8214-1090-5.
• Theal, George McCall (1887).History of the Boers in South Africa; Or, the Wanderings and Wars of the Emigrant Farmers from Their Leaving the Cape Colony to the Acknowledgment of Their Independence by Great Britain. London: S. Sonnenschein, Lowrey.
• Ross, Robert John (1999).Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750–1870: A Tragedy of Manners(PDF). African studies series. Cambridge (GB):Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-0-521-62122-9.

• Simon van der Stel's journal anddaily record of his journey to Namaqualand with the Dutch East India Company, 1685, from theLibrary of Trinity College Dublin

• Dutch Cape Colony
• Former colonies in Africa
• Former Dutch colonies
• Former settlements and colonies of the Dutch East India Company
• Dutch colonisation in Africa
• History of the Dutch East India Company
• 17th century in South Africa
• 18th century in South Africa
• 19th century in South Africa
• States and territories established in 1652
• States and territories disestablished in 1806
• 17th-century establishments in the Cape Colony
• 1652 establishments in Africa
• 1806 disestablishments in Africa
• 1652 establishments in the Dutch Empire
• 1806 disestablishments
• 19th-century disestablishments in the Dutch Empire

• Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from December 2022
• Articles containing Dutch-language text
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from June 2024
• Articles needing additional references from June 2024
• All articles needing additional references