Here’s a post on what I was thinking on a potential but still unconfirmed English Cape Colony:
1: I was thinking that the Puritans would be a big chunk of the colonists in South Africa, since they can't settle in New England and would still want land of their own where they could found their own ideal society. About 20,000 Puritans settled in New England IOTL, I imagine it'd be more like 5-10,000 going to South Africa, due to how much farther away it is. Even if it is just 5,000 Puritans settling in South Africa, that alone is more than the entire amount of settlers the Dutch Cape Colony of OTL got, and the Puritans wouldn't be the only ones settling in this English Cape Colony. As for other destinations for the Puritans, I've thought of having some of them settle in the New Netherland colony, since there were a sizable amount of Puritans in the Netherlands and the New Netherland colony is much closer than The Cape. The Puritans could also contribute to the New Netherlander ethnogenesis that one of the readers here was suggesting. Tens of thousands of Puritans settled in the Caribbean IOTL (I'm assuming most of them died of tropical diseases), and some more settled in Ireland and the American South (about 5,000 in the latter case). I'm guessing more would wind up in the American South in this world, since, once again, New England isn't there and it's closer than South Africa. Georgia and The Carolinas weren't settled at this time, which means that the Puritans could settle in the Deep South, which would have massive ramifications on the development of the region, but this is running a bit long, so I'll stop here.
2: The Scots-Irish were the main frontiersmen in the English/British colonies of this era, so they'd settle in the Upland South as they did IOTL. In South Africa, they'd push the frontier from the Cape out towards the north and east, adopting a pastoralist lifestyle and filling the role of the Trekboers of OTL's South Africa. They might end up mixing with the Khoisan peoples of the region, forming groups similar to the Griquas and Basters. On the other hand, the Scots-Irish would get themselves into conflicts with the natives, whether they be Khoisan or eventually Bantu. Being a people with a strong martial tradition and having a technological advantage, I’d expect the Scots-Irish to handily defeat the Khoisan in the Karoo and slowly but surely push back the various Bantu peoples from the Highveld, which would be made easier if something like the
Mfecane still occurs.
3: The Cape would be a very convenient location for an English penal colony. IOTL around 50,000 British indentured servants were shipped off to the Thirteen Colonies, mostly to the Chesapeake region, and while that’d still be the case here, the English might send some of them to the Cape Colony. They’d work on farms and plantations around the Cape region for a few years before either being set free to chart their own course in The Cape or returning to England. I’m assuming the vast majority of indentured servants and convicts who were sent to The Cape would stay after their sentences were up. I could see around 5-10,000 convicts and indentured servants being sent to The Cape ITTL, most of whom would stick around permanently. Some would continue to work on farms and plantations as paid fieldhands (many of them likely owned by TTL’s equivalent to the East India Company), others would acquire their own land in the Cape region and finally some would join the trek into the interior, following the path blazed by the Scots-Irish I talked about earlier.
4: Finally, I’m gonna bring up some non-British immigrants to The Cape. I think the most likely non-British source of immigration would be French Huguenots. There were a large number of French Huguenots that settled in Britain after the
Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685, about 40-50,000 IIRC. Many of them later emigrated to the Thirteen Colonies, particularly South Carolina. There were also a small number of Huguenots that settled in the Dutch Cape Colony IOTL, founding the Cape Colony’s grape-growing tradition and eventually assimilating into the Afrikaner population. Seeing how conducive The Cape’s climate is to growing grapes, the Cape Colony’s government could invite some Huguenot viticulturalists to set up vineyards and wineries in the region, with the wine and grapes being used for both local consumption and as nourishment for East India Company sailors, for whom it’d be essential to not catch scurvy. I could also see a few Germans settling in the English Cape, although not nearly as many as in North America. I also expect a smattering of non-European settlers in The Cape, whether they be the South or Southeast Asian wives of English sailors or slaves taken from other parts of Africa (although I don’t expect the English Cape Colony to become a slave colony due to the temperate climate, it’d probably be more along the lines of OTL’s American Mid-Atlantic).
All in all, I see the English Cape Colony getting a number of settlers in the mid five digits (50,000 give or take a bit), far surpassing that of OTL’s Dutch Cape Colony, which had about 3,000 permanent European settlers. This Cape Colony will probably eventually grow into an Anglo state spanning all of Southern Africa at least as far as the Zambezi, maybe even into the East African Highlands (with a fair deal of atrocities along the way, but that’s to be expected for the time period). Having all the different groups that settled in colonial America like the Puritans, Scots-Irish, Cavaliers and Quakers all settling in the same area rather than in separate regions would be very interesting, seeing as these groups all had vastly different values and lifestyles IOTL. I must reiterate that an English Cape Colony is by no means confirmed, as I could still have the Dutch, French or Portuguese colonize it. I might do more of these non-threadmarked essays for the other colonial powers in the future. Still, an English South Africa is the most likely, and thus that’s what I’m working with right now. I’ll get working on another update soon (probably about TTL’s Dutch Revolt), and I’ll have more of these types of thought-spillings as well (as well as another update to EC/FC that I want to have out by the end of the month), but until then, have a great day, I’ll see you soon.