I recall some right wing site made the claim a few years ago, around the time Mandela passed, that whites actually pre-dated blacks in the region, what became South Africa, and that black “settlors” came later. A claim which was obviously bullshit.
That said, I do seem to recall that actual white settlement in South Africa (as opposed to military and naval outposts which came very early into the age of exploration) is centuries old.
South African Governments own history page isn’t that clear. They mention the first Dutch outposts in the seventeenth century and that soon farmers followed, but aren’t clear when the later began to outgrow the bae itself History | South African Government (www.gov.za)
Yes. It effectively means Christmas, which is the day in 1497 when Vasco de Gama “discovered” it. But there was no European settlement at that point. The English came later to the coast, then the Dutch came in overland. But this area was settled by Bantu peoples long before either of these.
My recollection is that this was one of the talking points used by supporters of apartheid during the apartheid era, but I don’t have a cite for it. Maybe @MrDibble would be able to cast some light on it.
Yes, it sounds like something they would say and frankly it’s on the same level as Ian Smith regime claiming that Great Zimbabwe was built by a lost white race.
The Ottoman Empire was knocking on the gates of Vienna in 1683. The first black (African) slaves were for sale in the American colonies in 1619. Charles I was executed by the parliamentary forces in 1649, and Charles II returned to the throne in 1661. Peter the Great took the Russian throne in 1682, turned it into a modernized western power and empire. It was an interesting century.
“The region” is a nebulous concept. They only left the Cape after the 1830s. The regions they came to, they’d only been in <70 years when that war happened.
Thanks. Why did they remain restricted to the Cape for so long. Everywhere else, attempts to settle the interior were made soon. What was the reason for the delay here.
I don’t think that is actually the case. The American West wasn’t really settled from the East Coast until the 1800s too, and the first East Coast colonies were older than the Cape Colony.
Explorers went out sooner, but that was also the case in SA.
Also, note that the Cape Colony itself was not small, at around 2/3 the size of the Thirteen Colonies of America. It encompassed much more than the area around Cape Town, by the time the Boers started leaving it.
I suspect that this is referring to the Bantu Expansion, that happened relatively recently in the long history of humanity in the African continent. Of course there were Khoisan-speaking peoples living in Southern Africa already, and others.
I’m sure MrDibble can explain the significance of this expansion in its proper context much better than I can.
There’s also geography. The main impediment to moving west in the 13 colonies was the Appalachian mountain chain, making travel difficult. Plus, the French had traversed the entire route from Montreal and the Great Lakes down the Mississippi to Louisiana (French colony) and with their trusty Indian allies, were determined to not let the bloody English encroach.
As we learn in Canadian history, the French - the more feudal system - were less interested in establishing grand overseas settlements. The most lucrative item in New France was not some plantation product, but furs. People ploughing up the wilderness would remove that source of revenue.
That changed when The English took over New France and the associated hinterland, in 1756. Then… lost it to the revolting colonists.
Not European settlement, but reported by a European - according to Herodotus writing c450BCE, the Egyptians had circumnavigated Africa over a century prior to that, stopping more than once over the course of several years long enough to plant and harvest grains. The descriptions of southern Africa are accurate enough that the story is believable, and the only reason Herodoutus doubted it was due to reports of the Sun and stars looking the way they do in the southern hemisphere, which he would not be expected to have understood.
This obviously doesn’t mean that there was anything approaching a North African or European permanent settlement prior to the 1600s, but the existence of what would become South Africa was known in antiquity.
It was referring to the Bantu expansion but the position of the government at the time is that it took place much more recently than in reality. So the narrative had white and black settlers bumping into each other in the middle.
There used to be a display in the Port Elizabeth museum (a coastal city approx. 800km from Cape Town) that stated as such as fact. The display in question was left in place as an example of apartheid era historical chicanery and had a large board explaining the errors. It was removed in a recent museum revamp.
There’s nothing believable about the story. For one thing, most of the African coast is not suitable for growing Mediterranean wheat, the rain falls at the wrong time. And there’s exactly zero description in Herodotus of the South African coast or any part of Southern Africa.
Also, Herodotus? The Father of Lies? Considered a fabulist even by his contemporaries?
If they didn’t complete the circumnavigation, they certainly got well south of the equator.
As for maps, 11th century maps of North America weren’t exactly accurate, but we know beyond doubt that Europeans went there and settled in Greenland and Newfoundland, and probably at least briefly further south.
We know it becuase they observed the sun on the right sailing east, something that would not have been predicted at the time.
You may be right about no maps featuring North America in the 11th century, but they existed by the early 12th when the Bishopric of Garðar was created. Unless you want to claim that Greenland isn’t in North America.
Not in Canada, because geography, as md-2000 points out. ONce the lower Great Lakes area was settled, the Canadian Shield became a major obstacle to any north-western expansion. It wasn’t until the building of the CPR, largely on government funding, that European stock could expand westward into the Prairies.
I think you mean west, and of course it could be predicted. These were people who knew the world was spherical, who later would use that fact, and the orientation of the sun, to calculate the size of the Earth pretty accurately.
You have a 12th C map featuring Greenland, feel free to share it.