Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902)

South Africa before Rhodes

The Collections | Selected links | Southern Africa before Rhodes | Cecil Rhodes | Rhodes Family

Part of a map of Africa showing routes of planned railway, etc., as annotated by Rhodes, 1896 (GB 0162 MSS. Afr. r. 4).

In 1652 a permanent post was established at the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company, attracting Dutch settlers and, after 1688, French Huguenots, whose Calvinism influenced the later Afrikaners. In the 18th century, the Company channelled the activities of many settlers into stock-rearing, granting large estates to these "Veeboere" by leasehold and forcing successive generations northwards and eastwards in the search for land. By the 1770s these migrations of Boer farmers had reached the Great Fish and Bushman's Rivers to the east. Here they were temporarily halted by the southwards expansion of indigenous Nguni-speaking peoples.

The Nguni were caught between the Boers to the south and the impetus of other Nguni peoples from the north. The position of these groups placed them in direct competition with the Boers for land, and resulted in political pressures which led in the early 19th century to the formation of the Zulu empire and the migration of the Ndebele north of the Limpopo.

Dutch maritime power waned in the 18th century, and the British obtained Cape Colony in 1806 after Holland had allied itself with France during the Napoleonic Wars. After about 1820, increasing numbers of British settlers began arriving in the Cape.

There was an almost immediate conflict of British and Boer interests, and, from 1835 to 1838 the Boers, spurred by political and territorial grievances, and the colony's increasing Anglicisation, undertook the so-called "Great Trek" into the Natal and the region of the Orange River. When their migration brought them into further conflict with their Nguni neighbours, the British forcibly ejected them from Natal, ostensibly to keep the peace. After the annexation of the neighbouring Orange River Sovereignty in 1848 many Boers trekked north again, founding the Transvaal. The British eventually re-ceded the Orange River Sovereignty to the Boers, who founded the Orange Free State. Later, the annexation of the Transvaal by the British resulted in their defeat at the Battle of Majuba Hill in 1881 and independence for the republic.

left: 19th century colonial southern Africa: detail of map showing various locations mentioned in the text

Map images copyright © 2003 Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.