The Initial Conquest of the Cape

            In their long history, South Africa, located at the cape of the Africa continent, at one point experienced being conquered and colonized by a foreign presence. This was an experience South Africa not only had to deal with once, but twice, under the control of the Dutch and then the British. How each of these two European countries obtained their share of the Cape Colony differed and their motives for conquering it also faced a contrast.

            In the late 16^th and early 17^th century the Dutch sought after the Cape peninsula, seeing it as a “source of fresh water, meat, and timber for masts (1).” In 1652, Verengide Oostidishe Compagnie (VOC), a Dutch East India Company, established the first permanent settlement on the cape in Table Bay. The settlement originally served as a supply station for provisioning Dutch fleets. When the Dutch initially settled on the cape, it was done in peace. No wars were fought and no natives were enslaved. In fact, the VOC didn’t allow any of the settlers enslave the native Khoikhoi.  However, colonial pastoralists began to encroach onto the land of the Khoikhoi and San, South African hunter-gatherers, in an attempt to expand their territory. These colonists continued to do so, forcing the Khoikhoi, San, and other hunter-gatherer communities into “marginal areas (2).”

             The British occupied South Africa in 1795 and then again in 1806. They, on the other hand, conquered the Cape by simply taking it from the Dutch East India Company (how has not been explained by various sources). Their motives for obtaining the Cape were to keep it out of the hands of Napoleon and the French, who the British were at war with, because the Cape served as an important sea route to the East. In Britain’s initial conquest they planned to keep the settlement small. Britain’s key to the settlement lied in its strategic location.