WI English establish a Cape Colony before the Dutch, and keep it long-term?

raharris1973

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What if the English established a Cape Colony before the Dutch? The Dutch set up the Cape Colony in 1652, the English could do it any time between the era of Raleigh and Gilbert in the 1580s up to about 1650.

How is the English colony likely to expand and develop? If the English colony becoming a growing entity during this time period, could it plausibly fight and win a battle for independence before 1800?

Going to throw in a random question about OTL English colonization- which came first, Jamestown or the first English colony in the Caribbean? And about French colonization- Acadia or a Caribbean locale? And Dutch colonization - New Amsterdam or a Caribbean island?
 
How is the English colony likely to expand and develop? If the English colony becoming a growing entity during this time period, could it plausibly fight and win a battle for independence before 1800?
It will probably go the way of Canada, Given its strategic location and way point to India. It would have smaller population then the america and Britain would have an easier fight with the smaller population and use of native tribes in an fight for independence
 

raharris1973

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It will probably go the way of Canada, Given its strategic location and way point to India. It would have smaller population then the america and Britain would have an easier fight with the smaller population and use of native tribes in an fight for independence

Good point that it being on the route to India gives Britain one more motive to hold onto the Colony. And the smaller population makes it possibly easier to subdue.

On the other hand, the French, Spanish and Dutch could still be motivated and able to provide support for any Cape rebellion.


But admittedly, talking about a Cape Colony rebellion is putting the cart before the horse.

In the meantime, what are the likely features of English colonization of the Cape in the first few generations. How does it compare and contrast with the OTL Dutch Cape Colony?
 
Going to throw in a random question about OTL English colonization- which came first, Jamestown or the first English colony in the Caribbean? And about French colonization- Acadia or a Caribbean locale? And Dutch colonization - New Amsterdam or a Caribbean island?

I can answer this - for England, places like Newfoundland were NAMED AND CLAIMED earlier (in 1583), but Jamestown (representing Virginia Colony) was the first successful settlement in America, with everything else after (Newfoundland was finally perma-settled in 1610 with Kirke coming to the island as Governor and settling St. John's Harbor as an actual town). For France, Acadia was briefly settled and failed to manifest in 1604, whereupon Quebec (representing La Canada) was successfully perma-settled in 1608. Both their Caribbean ventures in claims and colonization came after. New Netherland was first settled in 1615 at Fort Nassau/Orange (Albany) and 1624 at New Amsterdam (NYC), whilst their first Caribbean venture was in 1631 at St. Martin.

TL;DR mainland ventures were successfully settled a good couple decades at least before the Caribbean for those three.
 

raharris1973

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I can answer this - for England, places like Newfoundland were NAMED AND CLAIMED earlier (in 1583), but Jamestown (representing Virginia Colony) was the first successful settlement in America, with everything else after (Newfoundland was finally perma-settled in 1610 with Kirke coming to the island as Governor and settling St. John's Harbor as an actual town). For France, Acadia was briefly settled and failed to manifest in 1604, whereupon Quebec (representing La Canada) was successfully perma-settled in 1608. Both their Caribbean ventures in claims and colonization came after. New Netherland was first settled in 1615 at Fort Nassau/Orange (Albany) and 1624 at New Amsterdam (NYC), whilst their first Caribbean venture was in 1631 at St. Martin.

TL;DR mainland ventures were successfully settled a good couple decades at least before the Caribbean for those three.


So, until about 1630 -all of the Caribbean was at least theoretically Spanish with no European competition? Though the Spanish probably didn't permanently occupy many of the islands and natives were left alone in many places?
 

raharris1973

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Two names to take note of: Andrew Shilling and Humphrey Fitzherbert. To wit, the English did explore the Cape region in 1621 (about 30 years before OTL) as a port of call and potential settler colony, but for some unknown reason it never went anywhere. Personally I don't see why it couldn't happen.

Thanks for that, I looked them up and Shilling (but not Fitzherbert) has a wiki page. Interesting life and voyages. I was looking for an indication of where he was on the scale from High Church Anglican on down to Puritan, but couldn't find one. Does anybody know if EIC employees tended more toward the High Church/Cavalier side or the Puritan/Roundhead side?

Although the Cape environment would make for significantly different outcomes than in eastern North America, I tend to think of an English Cape in the 17th century as pulling from one of the early settlement streams to British North America. To whit, if the English settlement predates the Dutch, their settlers will be either more Virginia-ish or New England-y with the odd chance of early Catholic settlements if Lord Baltimore somehow gets involved. If they are established in the restoration era, perhaps some people and groups who were early proprietors and settlers of New Jersey, Pennsylvania or the Carolinas might be involved in the Cape. - So you potentially have Quaker, Presbyterian or Congregationalist influences.

Alternatively, the Cape could end up with a cultural matrix like New York/New Amsterdam if the Dutch *do* set up first, but the English win the Cape and keep it from the 1st, 2nd or 3rd Anglo-Dutch Wars.

Of these possibilities, perhaps the most interesting would be if Winthrop directs one stream of the Puritan great migration to the Cape. The "Capeys" might grow into big Indian Ocean traders in their own right. Of course a limiting factor for maritime endeavors from the Cape could be timber limitations. I have the impression that compared with North America, the Cape is very arid and timber poor.
 
The problem I think is that in most wars against local tribes, English settlers traditionally had a pretty stringent view of what counted as victory and defeat, and this would make them many enemies very quickly. The Dutch were a bit less land hungry in the early days.
 
Here's the thing. If the Cape is so obviously useful, why did no one set up there in OTL?
That's a very good question. And the answer at least for the VOC is in my opinion that the VOC in the first period of it's existence was more focussed on beating up and out the Portuguese than setting up own factories. They had invested heavy in warships and wanted to use them to conquer and/or loot portuguese factories and ships.
 
Two very general comments:

1) Time frame. The Dutch got there first for a reason, which I believe is that the Dutch East India Company was operational a generation before Britain was in a good position to be operating in the region of southern Africa, due to the nature of Charles I reign and the subsequent English Civil War. Preempting the Dutch with English settlement is going to require a reason why the English were more capable than the Dutch regionally at the time of or before OTL Dutch claiming and effective control of the Cape. Or it might be possible for the British to leapfrog past an established Cape colony to Natal or something like that, but then the two would be rivaling each other at close range.

2) the success of the Plymouth colony in particular was due largely to a major plague having wiped out the Massachusetts coastal Native people, leaving towns and fields pre-developed for the Puritans to appropriate; Squanto's presence as an advisor was also helpful. Similar opportunities, not quite so one-sided, but giving the English opportunity for easily lodging themselves without too strong Native opposition were important in Virginia earlier too I believe. And in general, Native Americans suffered in their attempts to oppose settlement when English numbers were weak because of their vulnerability to disease. Even so, the colonies despite their proliferating numbers and populations were in a precarious position versus Native resistance at least until the early 18th century. We can look back and say that given ongoing support and emigration from Britain, the outcome was inevitable, but it seemed very "evitable" at the time! Indeed serious worries about Native power to resist, given some organization and ready access to firearms, was a serious concern well into the 19th century; the War of 1812 was mainly about fear that Britain could block American expansion westward via arming and organizing the Indian tribes. Therefore the factor of Native demographic vulnerability to massive die offs due to Eurasian diseases was tremendous in the success of BNA and subsequent USA.

Whereas a colony in South Africa faced Native resistance by Natives who were not nearly so vulnerable; to advance in face of them meant either extermination in combat and subsequent deliberate massacre, or subordination of the Native people under colonist authority in one way or another. The advantages of Early Modern weaponry versus various Native kits around the world were not so tremendous in centuries before the mid-19th; development of weapons such as the Maxim Gun infamously turned the tide. Before that, there is no doubt that very well supplied and organized European forces could indeed outfight larger Native ones, but the balance was much closer, more so in Africa against people like the Zulu who had iron weapons than in North America--even so, in America the Natives were hardly overawed by firearms or other European tech; they could accomplish quite a lot against armored and musket-armed English with arrows, canoes and their usual tactics.

Cape Colony in fact remained initially tightly under the control of the Company OTL; eventually exasperated colonists would curse the Company and move out of range of its short-armed control, but not too far, well within the modern Cape Colony boundaries. It helped that the major warrior peoples of southern Africa were farther west and themselves recent migrants into the region, and that locally they were up against only gatherer-hunter peoples whom they could subjugate easily.

But the point here is that even with a much more expansive demographic base, with a colonizing regime more interested in expansion than in merely maintaining a single strategic seaport, an English colony would have run into a desert in one direction and some really tough Native resistance in the other. The Zulu and other Bantu peoples would not perhaps be a lot more effective, man for man, than the Native Americans--but they would be found in much larger numbers, numbers that do not vanish "mysteriously" or "providentially" upon first contact but persist unless cut back the hard way.

This second point does not stand in the way of England/Britain establishing and holding an early and securely held Cape Colony, but if someone is thinking an African "Virginia" or "Plymouth" will turn into a white-majority British Southern Africa or US of Africa running up to the fever zones, with southern African natives meeting the same fate that eastern North American ones did, that would be much mistaken. Expansion, especially onto good land, would turn into a slow slog, and given that even defeated African peoples would live on tenaciously a successful English hegemony would almost certainly take a form similar to OTL in the region--which is to say, a small "white" minority ruling over a subjugated but demographically overwhelming majority African population, with a large number of mixed-race people between or socially off to the side. The exact form of racist confrontation SA presented OTL might differ somewhat; conceivably mixed-blood people might be recruited as subaltern but moderately privileged agents of the order instead of shoved to the side as some kind of embarrassment, for instance. But by and large it will be far more difficult for settler descended populations to expand and fill the continent than in North America. British cultural and social success there would be much more a matter of inviting and welcoming African peoples into it and reconfiguring their values to be British; if the color bar is set up as a matter of a privileging hierarchy of any kind, the inevitable result is resistance and limitation--or conceivably, a really terrible instance of genocide perhaps. One quite liable to backfire and turn into a fanatical drive to extirpate Europeans, or anyway Anglo-Europeans, from the continent completely.
 
Demographically I agree it would never be white-majority (especially if/when it reaches OTL South Africa size).

I could see parts of it becoming white-plurality (e.g. *Western Cape or parts of *Free State), but certainly not the whole thing a la the 13 Colonies. In my mind's eye you might see similar demographics to New Spain or Peru with either Native Africans or mulattoes (this is pre-one drop rule or partus sequitur ventum by a considerable amount of time, after all) being the majority with a substantial white minority, depending on immigration and mortality rates (given that it's not a tropical area).
 

raharris1973

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My thought would be Hottentot natives in the boundaries of the Cape Provinces would be less formidable militarily than North American Indians (but probably also less useful to steal from) but once you're up in predominantly Bantu zones (maybe east of Fish River) yeah, the disease advantage turns to a disease disadvantage for the Europeans and you're dealing with tougher native resistance to settlement than in North America.
 
My thought would be Hottentot natives in the boundaries of the Cape Provinces would be less formidable militarily than North American Indians (but probably also less useful to steal from) but once you're up in predominantly Bantu zones (maybe east of Fish River) yeah, the disease advantage turns to a disease disadvantage for the Europeans and you're dealing with tougher native resistance to settlement than in North America.

Well the Zululand region is the only real part of OTL South Africa known for tropical disease (certainly not the Cape itself, or even the Orange Free State or Gauteng areas), given that it's a similar climate to the American Southeast, which still isn't anything like the tropics further north.

Of course, who's to say an English Cape would expand that far anyway. My point is that OTL South Africa is about 80% non-tropical, and the Great Escarpment and Drakensburg offer higher-altitude climate mitigation for such infirmities.
 
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I for one was never talking about tropical situations where the shoe was actually on the other foot. I was only talking about dealing with Native peoples who were not particularly more vulnerable than Europeans, and suggesting that Native resistance is a lot more effective than we tend to see it as in hindsight--so were it not for the massive disease vulnerability problem, Natives in North America would have been more successful and the situation a lot less one sided. Could Europeans have still wound up demographically dominant in North America? I would not rule it out, but factor out the massive disease factor and we'd certainly be looking at a much harder fight anyway, and the idea that some might get sufficient access to alternate channels of weapons supply and perhaps pick up Euro-sphere industrialized abilities of their own, or anyway consistent allies who have those things to trade or give for strategic reasons, and now maybe we'd be looking at regions of NA that never come under European direct rule at all.

Africa tells against that because of course the whole continent was eventually partitioned among European based power groups (counting say Liberia as such; Ethiopia was eventually conquered too) and perhaps that proves that eventually they all must fall under some European-descended flag or other--but now Africa is equally well free of any such formal regime everywhere even in SA itself, so perhaps by the late 20th century all of NA is equally under some nominally native-majority rule.

But nothing I was talking about relates to regions infested with such virulent tropical diseases that it is Europeans who die off there.
 
So, until about 1630 -all of the Caribbean was at least theoretically Spanish with no European competition? Though the Spanish probably didn't permanently occupy many of the islands and natives were left alone in many places?

Spain officially claimed the whole Caribbean but thought the small isles too worthless for colonization, so they were then claimed and initially used as pirate haunts by England, France, and the Netherlands. It wasn't till those three other powers mentioned bought sugarcane from the Portuguese in Brazil to the Lesser Antilles that those islands suddenly became the most valuable real estate for a good two centuries.
 

raharris1973

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sorry if anybody thinks i was confusing their meaning, but i still think the khoisan groups outside the savanna areas can be swept aside and outnumbered as easily as the North American Indians. the were non sedentary and non agricultural, so would have weaker disease resistance than Europeans, and had no metallurgy.

the zone of potential white majority would never extend as far as Xhosa or Zulu or other Bantu lands.


If a white anglo population in the Cape expands to a larger footprint it would more likely be to Australia than deeper into Africa.
 
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