Cape of Good Hope - History

History

The first European to reach the cape was the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, who named it the "Cape of Storms" (Cabo das Tormentas). It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as "Cape of Good Hope" (Cabo da Boa Esperança) because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East.

The land around the cape was home to the Khoikhoi people when the Dutch first settled there in 1652. The Khoikhoi had arrived in these parts about fifteen hundred years before. They were called Hottentots by the Dutch, a term that has now come to be regarded as pejorative.

Dutch colonial administrator Jan van Riebeeck established a resupply camp for the Dutch East India Company some 50 km north of the cape in Table Bay on 6 April 1652 and this eventually developed into Cape Town. Supplies of fresh food were vital on the long journey around Africa and Cape Town became known as "The Tavern of the Seas".

On 31 December 1687 a community of Huguenots arrived at the Cape from the Netherlands. They had escaped to the Netherlands from France in order to flee religious persecution there; examples of these are Pierre Joubert who came from La Motte-d'Aigues for religious reasons. The Dutch East India Company needed skilled farmers at the Cape of Good Hope and the Dutch Government saw opportunities for the Huguenots at the Cape and sent them over. The colony gradually grew over the next 150 years or so until it stretched for hundreds of kilometres to the north and north-east.

When the Dutch Republic, during the Napoleonic Wars, was occupied by the French in 1795, henceforth becoming their vassal and enemy of the British, the United Kingdom invaded and occupied the Cape Colony that same year; relinquished control of the territory in 1803; only to return and reoccupy the Cape on 19 January 1806. The territory was ceded to the British in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 and was thereafter administered as the Cape Colony. It remained a British colony until being incorporated into the independent Union of South Africa in 1910 (now known as the Republic of South Africa).

The Portuguese government erected two navigational beacons, Dias Cross and Da Gama Cross, to commemorate Vasco da Gama and Bartolomeu Dias as explorers who as mentioned were the first explorers to reach the cape. When lined up, the crosses point to Whittle Rock (34°14.8′S 18°33.6′E / 34.2467°S 18.56°E / -34.2467; 18.56), a large, permanently submerged shipping hazard in False Bay. Two other beacons in Simon's Town provide the intersection.