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The British colony was preceded by an earlier corporate colony that became an original Dutch colony of the same name, which was established in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The Cape was under VOC rule from 1652 to 1795 and under rule of the Napoleonic Batavia Republic from 1803 to 1806. [ 4 ]
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.
Direct British rule in the Cape Colony had recently been replaced by responsible government, and the newly elected Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope in Cape Town, under the liberal Molteno-Merriman government, resented the perceived high-handed manner in which Lord Carnarvon presented his proposals from afar without an understanding of local ...
In 1795, after the Battle of Muizenberg in present-day Cape Town, the British occupied the colony. Under the terms of the Peace of Amiens of 1802, Britain ceded the colony back to the Dutch on 1 March 1803, but as the Batavian Republic had since nationalized the United East India Company (1796), the colony came under the direct rule of The Hague.
This article lists the governors of British South African colonies, including the colonial prime ministers. It encompasses the period from 1797 to 1910, when present-day South Africa was divided into four British colonies namely: Cape Colony (preceded by Dutch Cape Colony), Natal Colony, Orange River Colony and Transvaal Colony.
The British meanwhile moved ahead with their plans for union. After several years of negotiations, the South Africa Act 1909 brought the colonies and republics – Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange Free State – together as the Union of South Africa.
A British proposal to make the Cape a penal colony was seen as detrimental to move to greater self government and sparked the Convict crisis of 1849. In 1854, the Cape Colony elected its first parliament , on the basis of the multiracial Cape Qualified Franchise , whereby suffrage qualifications applied universally, regardless of race.
The British took control of the Cape Colony in 1795. It was first used as a naval port on the way to the more established British colonies of India and Australia. [83] In 1820 the British government relocated a large number of settlers to the new South African colony.