An expedition of the VOC led by Jan van Riebeeck established a trading post and naval victualing station at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652.

[6] Within about three decades, the Cape had become home to a large community of vrijlieden, also known as vrijburgers ('free citizens'), former VOC employees who settled in the colonies overseas after completing their service contracts.

[7] Vrijburgers were mostly married citizens who undertook to spend at least twenty years farming the land within the fledgling colony's borders; in exchange they received tax exempt status and were loaned tools and seeds.

[8] Reflecting the multi-national nature of the early trading companies, the VOC granted vrijburger status to Dutch, Swiss, Scandinavian and German employees, among others.

[15] The VOC colonial period had a number of bitter, genocidal conflicts between the colonists and the Khoe-speaking indigenes,[16] followed by the Xhosa, both of which they perceived as unwanted competitors for prime farmland.

[15] VOC traders imported thousands of slaves to the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch East Indies and other parts of Africa.

This prompted Great Britain to occupy the Cape Colony in 1795 as a way to better control the seas in order to stop any potential French attempt to reach India.

The British sent a fleet of nine warships which anchored at Simon's Town and, following the defeat of the VOC militia at the Battle of Muizenberg, took control of the territory.

The United East India Company transferred its territories and claims to the Batavian Republic (the Revolutionary period Dutch state) in 1798, and went bankrupt in 1799.

The British, who set up a colony on 8 January 1806,[citation needed] hoped to keep Napoleon out of the Cape, and to control the Far East trade routes.

Most lived in Cape Town and the surrounding farming districts of the Boland, an area favoured with rich soils, a Mediterranean Climate and reliable rainfall.

They also began to introduce the first rudimentary rights for the Cape's Black African population and, in 1834, abolished slavery; however, the government proved unable to rein in settler violence against the San, which continued largely unabated as it had during the Dutch period.

[21] The resentment that the Boers felt against this social change, as well as the imposition of English language and culture, caused them to trek inland en masse.

However, the discovery of diamonds around Kimberley and gold in the Transvaal led to a return to instability, particularly because they fuelled the rise to power of the ambitious imperialist Cecil Rhodes.