The reasons why the Dutch

retreated from South Africa

leaving the colonies to the
British.

Blavatnyy M.O. LM-130

 The Dutch Arrive

• The European foothold in South Africa began with the

arrival of the Dutch in 1652. Under the leadership
of Jan van Riebeeck of the Verenigde Oostindische
Compagnie (VOC), his orders were to build a
replenishment station which included the construction
of a fort. Thus, Cape Town was founded – South
Africa’s oldest city. The reason for its founding is that
it occupied a vital halfway point between Europe and
the East Indies where traders could call in to port and
refresh their supplies.
• In the early days, the settlement’s survival relied on
trade with the local Khoikhoi peoples, but relations
between the Dutch and the native tribes were often
strained. For the settlement to grow, there needed to
be some kind of immigration pull. Industry and labor
Portrait of Jan van Riebeeck (1619-77).
were vital. Many enterprises thus characterized Dutch Commander of the Cape of Good Hope and of
control of the Cape, but of them all, two stand out as Malacca and Secretary of the High Government of
having a huge impact on the future of Cape Town – Batavia
wine and enslaved people.
 • In the immediate years following the founding
of Cape Town, the VOC started sending

Slavery Under enslaved people to their new colony. They

mainly came from the East Indies and included
people from Malaysia, Sri Lanka, India, and
the Dutch Indonesia. Enslaved people also arrived from
Madagascar and Mozambique.
• Enslaved people in the Cape had a huge hand
in shaping the economy and the society.
Enslaved numbers at least equaled those of the
colonizers, and they worked throughout the
colony, with many of them working on the
arable land in the southwest of the continent.
• Some Khoisan and other southern African
peoples were also enslaved when needed and
when demand was high. As such, the enslaved
population group had a huge diversity of ethnic
backgrounds. Adding to this genetic pool were
also the European settlers who interbred with
enslaved people. The result of all this was the
“Coloured” ethnic group – a cultural and ethnic
term to describe the descendants of the
enslaved and mixed-race relationships in South
Africa. The vast majority of Coloured people
live in Cape Town, and they represent
approximately half the city’s population.
 Conflict With
the British &
Transition of
•
Power
In 1794, the Netherlands was invaded by
France during the Revolutionary Wars. Upon the
French victory, a pro-French government was
installed in the Netherlands, which became
known as the Batavian Republic. With this
development, Britain found it necessary to
seize the strategically vital Dutch possession of
Cape Town, and an expedition was sent forth,
which resulted in the Battle of Muizenberg.
• Casualties were light, but with Cape Town
under threat, the Dutch governor, Abraham
Josias Sluysken, surrendered the colony to the
British. The French Revolutionary Wars ended in
1802 with the Peace of Amiens, and the Cape
Colony was returned to Dutch control. This
state of affairs would not, however, last long.
The Napoleonic Wars followed soon after, and
in 1806, the British and Dutch fought for
control of the colony again, this time at the
Battle of Blaauwberg.
• The British won again, and in the following
years in Europe, they put an end to Napoleon’s
conquests which had ravaged the continent.
The Netherlands and the VOC were in financial
An End to Slavery
• The transition in governance at the Cape brought
about changes that transformed the entire nature of
the colony. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 made the
slave trade illegal across the entire British Empire. The
only enslaved people who could be procured now in
the Cape Colony were those born to enslaved people.
A slave revolt in 1808 in the Cape Colony led to the
British progressives pushing for even more reform.
• The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 outlawed slavery
completely across the Empire, and the Cape Colony
was one of the first places where this law was
enforced to its full potential. This caused great
controversy among the farmers who relied on
enslaved people for labor. It was especially harsh on
the descendants of Dutch-era colonization, now known
as the Boers.
• By this time, the British were expanding the Cape The memorial to the Slave Tree, where
Colony far to the north to the border with South West enslaved people were bought and sold, sits on
a traffic island in Cape Town
Africa and would later expand farther across the
 An End to
Slavery
• This territorial expansion was greatly aided by a
massive influx of immigrants known as the 1820
Settlers who settled in what is now the Eastern Cape,
founding the cities of Grahamstown, Port Elizabeth,
and East London. Meanwhile, many Boers, upset with
British rule, felt they were treated as second-class
citizens and resented British laws. They left the
colony in waves and headed northeast, establishing
their own independent republics of the Orange Free
State and the South African Republic (also known as
the Transvaal). This exodus was known as the Great
Trek, and it brought the Boers into conflict with many
Bantu tribes, also relatively new to South Africa, who
had settled in South Africa from the north.
• As the Cape Colony grew, so did the emancipation of
the formerly enslaved people. All men were declared
equal and were allowed the same voting rights. This
was in stark contrast to the Dutch era of colonialism.
Sadly, this state of affairs would not last forever. In A map showing the extent of the Cape Colony in 1882
the 1880s, many rights were taken away from people
on the basis of their ethnicity. These laws were
installed at the behest of Cecil John Rhodes, who
served as Governor of the Cape Colony from 1880 to
1886.
 • British expansion brought with it serious conflicts
that grew over the decades. Skirmishes with the
The British Take Xhosa people in the Eastern Cape became
commonplace, and a series of conflicts known as

Full Control of
the Xhosa Wars continued. They had begun in 1779
with the Dutch and ended in 1879. In total, nine
wars were fought between the Xhosa people and

South Africa the colonizers.

• The quest to gain another foothold in South Africa
led the British to expand up the eastern coast,
eventually coming into conflict with the Zulu
Kingdom. The Anglo-Zulu War was a short and
bloody affair that resulted in a complete British
victory but at the cost of the worst defeat of British
troops by native forces in the entire history of the
British Empire.
• The existence of the Boer Republics – descendants
of the Dutch colonial effort – would also cause
significant conflict, especially after the discovery of
gold in Witwatersrand in the Transvaal. This
eventually led to the Second Anglo-Boer War, which
resulted in horrendous loss of life, concentration
camps, and war crimes committed by the British.
Ultimately, the British won, and the Boer Republics
were annexed into what became known as South
Africa.
• This victory finally ended the struggle between the
British and the Dutch (and their descendants) in
South Africa. Although after South Africa’s Act of
Union, which merged all the territories in 1910, and
Sources
• Beyer, Greg. "Two Colonizers in South Africa: The British vs. The Dutch"
TheCollector.com, October 4, 2023,
https://www.thecollector.com/british-vs-dutch-colonizers-south-africa/.