The Last Frontier: South Africa Under Different Rule

With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing, on soaring pinions borne,
And all my country’s wars 1 the song adorn;
What kings, what heroes of my native land
Thunder’d on Asia’s and on Afric’s strand
-The Lusiad: Book One (1776 English translation)


The British took control of the Cape of Good Hope in 1795, ostensibly to keep out the French, returned it to the Dutch in 1803, but annexed it again in 1806 after the Dutch East India Company went bankrupt. Their involvment in South Africa would continue from then on.

But WI the British had never gotten involved with South Africa, or had only come much later and the country had been in the hands of the French and the Dutch? Would things have been any better for the natives in terms of apartheid in the 20th century? Would there have been a British and French war in the 1880s over the discovery of gold, for example?
 
But WI the British had never gotten involved with South Africa, or had only come much later and the country had been in the hands of the French and the Dutch? Would things have been any better for the natives in terms of apartheid in the 20th century? Would there have been a British and French war in the 1880s over the discovery of gold, for example?

If Napoleon still goes kablooie, presumably South Africa remains Dutch, and the Netherlands get the gold and diamonds. (if they expand inland, that is: something like OTLs Boertrek is hardly guaranteed - given that OTL the Netherlands did not ban slavery in their Caribbean colonies until 1861, I think the Boers will get less grief from Dutch governors about the way they treat the indigenes).

The Dutch were historically Not Nice in their treatment of peoples of a dusky hue: I doubt Netherlandish South Africa would be a much nicer place for Black people than British South Africa, although the _way_ the black population is opressed may differ from OTL substantially: Apartheid's rather complex system of population movements and racial categorization may be replaced with a more formal division of South Africa, or simply may lead to a White-mixed Cape state if the Dutch don't bother going very far inland. (Perhaps the Portuguese get to the area of the mines first: what does a sudden huge influx of gold and diamonds do to the Portuguese state, circa 1900?)

Bruce
 
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