alternatehistory.com

Whilst it was the Portuguese who first rounded the Cape of Good Hope and later landed on it at some point in the 1480s and in 1503 under Bartolomeu Dias and Antonio de Saldanha respectively it wasn't until 1652 that Jan van Riebeeck claimed Table Bay and founded the first European settlement on behalf of the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie. 32 years earlier however two English captains, Andrew Shilling and Humphrey Fitzherbert, in the East India Company fleet had landed and claimed the area of Table Bay and the greater region in the name of James I and England, however for various reasons official support wasn't forthcoming and the claim was quietly dropped.

But what might be the implications if for some reason the government decided that it was a good idea and supported the founding of a small colony? Shilling and Fitzherbert originally envisaged a settler colony like Virginia but realistically I think it would mostly develop just as in our timeline with it mainly being concerned with the victualing of passing shipping and the control of a strategic location, at least in the beginning. What does this do to the character of an eventual Cape Colony and South Africa? No, or much reduced, Boers? Greater migration and a more 'English' South Africa? With the Table Bay and False Bay taken do the Dutch perhaps found their own settlement further along the coast in the Eastern Cape at say our timeline's Port Elizabeth or somewhere in Natal like Durban?
Top