History of Southern Africa 1652-1806






The Cape of Good Hope, 1488-1806



In 1488, Bartolomeo Diaz rounded the Cape, naming it Cabo de Bona Esperança (Cape of Good Hope) because he believed he finally had found a sea route leading eastward and possibly to India; ten years later, Vasco da Gama was to prove him right.
The Cape area in those days was inhabited by the Khoikhoi people, often derogatorily referred to as Bushmen or Hottentots; in the extreme east of the Cape settled the Xhosa. The Khoikhoi lived of livestock breeding (which their ancestors had learned from the Bantu) and agriculture.


It took European India traders several months to sail from Europe to India and vice versa; sailors and merchants, en route, suffered from scurvy, a disease caused by the lack of vitamins in their diet. European ships sent parties ashore every now and then at Table Bay in order to acquire food, sometimes by trading with the Khoikhoi, often by the means of theft. The lucrative India trade, in order to be maintained in the long term, required the companies involved to establish supply stations. For the Portuguese, Delagoa Bay (Moçambique) functioned as such, for the Dutch Mauritius, for the French Reunion, for the British St. Helena. In 1647 a V.O.C. ship was shipwrecked in Table Bay. Part of the crew was left behind in order to salvage as much of the cargo as they could, to be picked up the following year. Leendert Jansz, after returning to the Dutch Republic, wrote a report about his experience at the Cape. In 1652 the Dutch moved their supply station from Mauritius to the Cape.






EXTERNAL
FILES 		A Brief History of Cape Town, from Cape Town 2004
The Slave Route, from Arts 2000, on the history of slavery in the Cape Colony
History of the Cape Colony, from Wikipedia
DOCUMENTS
REFERENCE Settlement built from a Fort of Sand, pp.36-37 in : Readers Digest Illustrated History of South Africa, Pleasantville NY : Readers Digest 1988 [G]



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2001, last revised on April 22nd 2006

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