The first-known European to explore South Africa was Portuguese Bartolomeu Dias towards the end of the 1400s; however, it was the Dutch East India Company that first established a settlement of free burghers – farmers – to provide a port and supplies for ships, at Good Hope. These early migrants were largely Dutch, German and French; their slaves were in the main imported from far-eastern Dutch colonies.

Towards the end of the 1700s British traders began to establish themselves as the successors of the Dutch. In 1795, they seized the Cape before the French were able to, returning it to the Dutch in 1803; the British then regaining control in 1806, by which time Holland was French-controlled. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna established British sovereignty, and £6 million was paid to the Dutch. The Dutch-built colony at Good Hope remained, but Cape Town, the new home of the elite white settlers, became the most important power base.

Dutch had been banned as a language from 1806 in favour of English. This, and enforced British cultural imperialism, meant that remaining Dutch settlers dispersed further afield. The ‘Great Trek’ saw large numbers relocating inland in the 1830s.

In 1852 these Dutch migrants, or Voortrekkers, founded the South African Republic (Transvaal). It defeated the British in the First Boer War but was forced to surrender after the Second Boer War, in 1902.

As well as British-Boer (in Dutch, Boer means farmer, the name given to the early settlers) confrontation, the colonisation of South Africa meant that settlers experienced often tense confrontations with indigenous peoples, including Xhosa-speaking people and the Zulus. The Zulu tribe expanded militarily from around 1800, and in 1818 formed a powerful state under the leader Shaka. For the British, they were a formidable enemy.

It was two major discoveries in the 1800s that attracted far larger numbers of British, and other, settlers to migrate to South Africa: diamonds and gold. Kimberley, where diamonds were found, was annexed and became British territory, but gold was located in the Transvaal, where prospectors became known as Uitlanders (‘foreigners’). This influx and British attempts to annex the fields were two of the main causes of the Second Boer War.

The end of the Boer War in 1902 saw the defeat of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, which then became British colonies, and all residents became British subjects. In 1910 South Africa became the first part of British colonial Africa to achieve self-rule.

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