The Cape Colony
A Dutch supply station becomes a settler society.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 148 years
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Early Modern, Holocene
The VOC establishes a refreshment post at the Cape in 1652 for ships on the India route. Within decades it is a settler colony with free burghers, imported slaves from Asia and Madagascar, and expanding frontier conflict with Khoikhoi and San peoples, whose societies are largely destroyed by dispossession and smallpox. The pattern of settlement, dispossession and racial hierarchy established here runs directly into the later history of South Africa.