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The Cape Colony was founded by Jan van Riebeeck as a re-supply and layover port for vessels of the Dutch East India Company trading with Asia. Much to the dismay of the rulers of the Dutch East India Company, who were primarily interested in making profit from the Asian trade, the colony rapidly expanded into a settler colony in the years after its founding.

A long term policy of the VOC was to limit the growth of the colony to a small clearly defined area. Initially the VOC had hoped to employ a small number of servants and employees to produce food close to the fortress whilst obtaining cattle from the local Khoikhoi. However repeated crop failures convinced company officials to release nine servants to become semi-independent burgers who would produce food on free hold farms.

The Company stopped the colony's policy of open immigration, monopolised trade, combined the administrative, legislative and judicial powers into one body, told the farmers what crops to grow, demanded a large percentage of every farmer's harvest, and harassed them.

None the less, by the late 1700s the Cape Colony was one of the best developed European settlements out side Europe or the Americas.


So my question is: How do we make it that by the very latest mid 1700s the colony is allowed to expand and grow more on the level of Colonial America?

These dates, but roughly 50 years earlier.

By 1797 the colony's population (non-whites included) stood at a mere 60 thousand.
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