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Map of the Cape Colony in 1809, showing its eastward expansion. The first European colonial settlement in modern-day South Africa was a small supply station established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 at present-day Cape Town as a place for their merchant ships to resupply en route to and from the East Indies and Japan.
The war of 1817–1819 led to the first wave of immigration of British settlers of any considerable scale, an event with far-reaching consequences. The then-governor, Lord Charles Somerset, whose treaty arrangements with the Xhosa chiefs had proved untenable, wished to buffer the Cape from contact with the Xhosa by settling white colonists in the border region.
Those who survived resorted to begging in the Cape Colony for food and other relief. [4] George Grey, the Governor of the Cape Colony at the time, dispersed the Xhosa refugees to serve as workers for the inhabitants of the colony. Grey also imprisoned several leaders who came to the Cape Colony on charges of inciting a war against the colony. [4]
This led to an expansion of the colony's borders and clashes with the Xhosa people over pastureland in the vicinity of the Great Fish River. [8] Beginning in 1818, thousands of British immigrants were introduced by the colonial government to bolster the local European workforce and help populate the frontier as an additional defense against the ...
Instead of launching a military invasion to destroy the Xhosa armies, Stockenström selected a small group of his mounted commandos, crossed the Colony's border and rapidly rode deep into the Transkei Xhosa heartland, directly towards the kraal of Sarhili ("Kreli"), the paramount chief of all the Xhosa. Due in part to the speed of their ...
The Xhosa forces advanced into the colony and British Kaffraria erupted in a massive uprising in December 1850, joined by half-Khoi, half-Xhosa chief Hermanus Matroos, and by large numbers of the Kat River Khoikhoi. British military villages along the frontier were burned, and the post at Line Drift captured. [5]
Some historians argue that this early absorption into the wage economy is the ultimate origin of the long history of trade union membership and political leadership among Xhosa people. [ citation needed ] That history manifests itself today in high degrees of Xhosa representation in the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), South ...
Those Xhosa who remained in the colony were moved to towns and encouraged to adopt European lifestyles. Harry Smith also attacked and annexed the independent Orange Free State , hanging the Boer resistance leaders, and in the process alienating the Burghers of the Cape Colony.