In April 1652, the Dutch navigator Jan van Riebeeck founded the first European settlement on the southern tip of the African continent, at the foot of “Table Mountain”: this was the birth of the city of Cape Town. The Cape of Good Hope was circumnavigated for the first time in 1488 by the Portuguese Bartolomeu Dias, who opened the Indian Ocean sea route. In 1497, Vasco de Gama passed the Cape of Good Hope, landed on the coast of Natal and then made his way to Goa, on the west coast of India. The Portuguese do not settle in Cape Town because they favor stopovers in Mozambique.
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In 1616, the Dutch East India Company (the VOC) requires its fleet to refuel in Table Bay, on the sea route between the Holland and Indonesia, and to stop at the island Saint Helena on return. The establishment, officially founded in 1652 by Commander Jan van Riebeeck, is a fortified supply base: a stone fort was built in 1666, and a Company garden was even laid out. African slaves are imported, a community of farmers and farmers (the Boers) is formed, occupying the best lands of the local populations, the Khoisans.
The arrival of French Protestants
To the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, about two hundred French families of Protestant religion settled in the Cape colony alongside the Boers. The majority of these protestants French-speakers come from regions stretching from Flanders to Paris and from Dauphiné to Languedoc via Provence. They receive between 15 to 30 hectares of cultivable land and settle in the northeast of the Cape, in the “Franschhoek” (the French corner). The occupation of the lands by the Europeans causes violent clashes with the Khoisans who are reduced to slavery. At the end of the 17th century, the Dutch colony of Cape Town called upon slaves from the Gulf of Guinea, Angola and Madagascar; interbreeding becomes a common practice between Europeans and Africans. The Dutch authorities hope to see the French assimilate to the population of the Boers but they wish to preserve their language and their culture. The Dutch East India Company then decides to prohibit the arrival of French pastors and teachers; around 1730, in less than two generations, the French language has disappeared.
The birth of the Boer “Afrikaner” society
The colony accentuated its development in the 18th century: urbanization extended around the Cape and the importation of slaves continued; around 1770, the Cape colony had just over 8,000 settlers for 9,000 slaves. The agricultural colonists who always need new lands, come up against the Bantus: in 1779 and 1780, the first war occurs with the “Trekboers”, Dutch peasants who have decided to migrate towards the interior of the country.
An “Afrikaner” particularism is gradually being developed, with a specific language, Afrikaans, and the constitution of a system of values specific to the colonizers, of Calvinist religion, confronted with a harsh environment, hostile indigenous populations and conflicts with the British. Afrikaans was formed from a dialectal variety of Dutch spoken in southern Holland; it is distinguished from Dutch by a particular phonological system, resulting from its geographical location, by its borrowings from English, French, German and African languages.
In the 1790s, the London Missionary Society moved to Cape Town and worked to evangelize the Khoisan and Bantu peoples. On the other hand, the colony completely freed itself from the tutelage of the VOC: the regression of Asian trade, the crushing debt generated by the defense of its possessions in Asia and the Cape, sounded the death knell of the Dutch East India Company. in 1795.
English colonization
In 1806, the Boers definitely gave way to Great Britain, a new colonial power; at the Treaty of Paris of 1814, the British officially acquired the colony of Cape Town. The first English governor moved into the former residence of the Dutch governors, renamed Government House; it currently serves as the residence of the President of South Africa. The city called Kaapstad in Dutch times becomes Capetown. In the 1820s, thousands of English settlers landed in Cape Town; in 1822, English became the official language of the colony, which aroused the anger of the Boers who took refuge in their linguistic particularism (Afrikaans), their culture and their Calvinist religion. Britain abolishes slavery in 1834; the Boers who precisely exploit their lands thanks to the slaves, feel threatened in their identity and decide to move towards the north, beyond the Orange river. This migration called the “Great Trek”, takes place between 1835 to 1837 and will forge the identity of the Boers. They clashed with the Zulus until December 1838 and then founded the Republic of Natal in 1840.
However, the British refused the Boers access to the sea and took this strategic maritime possession from them, annexing Natal in 1843. The Boers returned inland and founded two new republics: the Transvaal Republic in 1852 and the Orange Free State in 1854. With the creation of the Boer republics, Afrikaans became the official oral and written language. The discovery of deposits diamonds in the Transvaal in 1867, relaunched English expansionism: in 1877, the English annexed the Transvaal Republic and definitively destroyed the Zulu Empire in 1879. The Boers decided on a war of reconquest in 1880: the first Anglo conflict -boer ends with the defeat of the British in 1881; two years later, Paul Kruger is elected president of the independent republic of Transvaal.
The Boer War
Like mining (diamonds and gold) is financed by the British, thousands of English miners come to settle in the Transvaal. In 1890, the United Kingdom thwarted Paul Kruger’s plan to take control of Bechuanaland (present-day Botswana). In return, Kruger denies equal rights to English miners and imposes heavy taxes on foreign, British and German companies.
In 1895, the British unsuccessfully attempted a new military expedition against the Transvaal Republic; relations between the British Cape Colony and the boer republics (Transvaal and Orange) deteriorate considerably. In October 1899, Paul Kruger declared war on the British who opened “concentration camps” (a term used for the first time) where Boer women and children were locked up. The war continued until May 1902: the Transvaal and the Orange Free State became British colonies; in compensation, the Boers have an autonomous government, the use of Afrikaans is authorized in schools and courts of justice, and a subsidy is paid for the reconstruction of the country.
In 1910, Great Britain created the Union of South Africa; the Boers are now referred to as ‘Afrikaners’ and are a majority group among white South Africans. Blacks and mestizos, who represent two-thirds of the population, are systematically excluded from political life. The former commander of the Boer army, Louis Botha, becomes prime minister of the Union of South Africa.
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