Abstract
The Cape of Good Hope was the supply station of the Dutch Verenigde Oostindische
Compagnie ( VOC ), but was transferred to Britain in 1803 after the defeat of Napoleon.
Between 1803 and 1806, the Cape was under the control of the Dutch government (the
Batavian Government), until Britain finally conquered the colony in 1806. After 1836,
the majority of the Afrikaans-speaking Boers, primarily Dutch immigrants who had
been arriving since the sixteenth century, left the Cape to found their own Boer Republics
further north in Natal, Orange Free State, and Transvaal. As early as 1842, however, the
British were able to annex Natal and combine it with the Cape Colony. The arrival of the
imperial banks from 1862 further consolidated British financial services and British
commercial domination in the region, a fact which affected the republics in the interior
negatively. 1 With the discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1886, the economic
attraction of the South African market underwent a sea change, and British institutions
were well-positioned and suffi ciently capitalized to service the fi nancial requirements of
the growing railway infrastructure, mining expansion, and subsequent industrial manufacturing.
2 These mineral discoveries also led to the two wars of independence between
the Voortrekkers and the British Empire, the most important of which, the South
African War (Boer War) of 1899–1902, secured British domination in the entire subregion,
and led in 1910 to the integration of the Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free State,
and Transvaal into the Union of South Africa.