Commander of the Cape

Cape Colony
Kaapkolonie
Dutch Cape Colony 1652–1795 Dutch Republic First British Cape Colony 1795–1803 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Batavian Cape Colony 1803–1806 Batavian Republic
1652–1806
Flag Coat of arms
Evolution of the Dutch Cape Colony
Capital		First the Castle of Good Hope, then Cape Town
Languages		Dutch (official) Afrikaans Xiri Korana Khoekhoe isiXhosa English
Religion		Dutch Reformed Church including the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk and Gereformeerde Kerke in Suid-Afrika, Anglicanism, Traditional African religion
Political structure		Dutch Cape Colony 1652–1795 Dutch Republic First British Cape Colony 1795–1803 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Batavian Cape Colony 1803–1806 Batavian Republic
Governor
•	1652–1662	Jan van Riebeeck
•	1679–1699	Simon van der Stel
•	1751–1771	Ryk Tulbagh
•	1771–1785	Joachim van Plettenberg
•	1803–1806	Jan Willem Janssens
Historical era		Imperialism
•	Establishment of Cape Town	6 April 1652
•	Elevated to Governorate	1691
•	First British occupation	7 August 1795
•	Cape Colony restored to Dutch rule	1 March 1803
•	Battle of Blaauwberg	8 January 1806
Population
•	1797 est.	61,947
Currency		Dutch rijksdaalder
Succeeded by British Cape Colony
Today part of		South Africa

The Cape Colony (Dutch: Kaapkolonie) was between 1652 and 1691 a Commandment, and between 1691 and 1795 a Governorate of the Dutch East India Company. Jan van Riebeeck established the colony as a re-supply and layover port for vessels of the Dutch East India Company trading with Asia. Much to the dismay of the shareholders of the Dutch East India Company, who focused primarily interested on making profits from the Asian trade, the colony rapidly expanded into a settler colony in the years after its founding.

As the only permanent settlement of the Dutch East India Company not serving as a trading post, it proved an ideal retirement place for employees of the company. After several years of service in the company, an employee could lease a piece of land in the colony as a Vryburgher ("free citizen"), on which he had to cultivate crops that he had to sell to the Dutch East India Company for a fixed price. As these farms were labour-intensive, Vryburghers imported slaves from Madagascar, Mozambique and Asia, which rapidly increased the number of inhabitants. After Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes (October 1685), which had protected the right of Huguenots in France to practise Protestant worship without persecution from the state, the colony attracted many Huguenot settlers, who eventually mixed with the general Vryburgher population.

Due to the authoritarian rule of the Company (telling farmers what to grow for what price, controlling immigration, and monopolising trade) some farmers tried to escape the rule of the company by moving further inland. The Company, in an effort to control these migrants, established a magistracy at Swellendam in 1745 and another at Graaff Reinet in 1786, and declared the Gamtoos River as the eastern frontier of the colony, only to see the Trekboere cross it soon afterwards. In order to avoid collision with the Bantu peoples advancing south and west from east central Africa, the Dutch agreed in 1780 to make the Great Fish River the boundary of the colony.