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10 - Colonial South Africa and its frontiers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
J. D. Omer-Cooper
Edited by
John E. Flint
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Summary

WHITE EXPANSION AND THE BRITISH OCCUPATIONS

When the British took possession of the Cape in 1795 they inherited from the Dutch East India Company a situation which already exhibited many of the most significant features which were to characterize the history of South Africa until well into the nineteenth century. Outside the wheat and wine-growing areas of the Cape, the settlers had developed a system of stock ranching, requiring the exploitation by individual white farming families of large farms worked with the assistance of non-European labour. This resulted in a continuous territorial expansion of the white settlement, which by 1795 had already resulted in the extension of the original tiny settlement around Cape Town to the Fish river, the Sneeuwbergen and the Khamies Bergen. This vast expansion, by scattering the white population so thinly that the growth of urban areas was severely restricted, inhibited the development of alternative economic opportunities for whites and encouraged further expansion.

At first there was little resistance from San and Khoi, but white expansion at length resulted in a situation of endemic frontier conflict. In the north-eastern districts of Tarka, Sneeuwberg and Agter Bruintjies Hoogte, the San hunters mounted a ferocious resistance against further encroachment on their hunting grounds. In the Zuur-veld, where white and African farmers were settled alongside each other, two frontier wars had left the issues between them unresolved.

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The Cambridge History of Africa , pp. 353 - 392
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1977

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