Page 52 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - South Africa

50  INTRODUCING SOUTH AFRIC A

Explorers and Colonizers

Portuguese navigators pioneered the sea route to India, but
it was the Dutch who set up a fortified settlement at the
Cape in 1652. The indigenous Khoi, who initially welcomed
the trade opportunities, were quickly marginalized. Some
took service with the settlers, while others fled
from the Dutch trekboers (migrant graziers). In
1688, the arrival of French Huguenot families Explorers’ Routes
swelled the numbers of the white settlers, driving Dias 1488 Da Gama 1498 Beads and trinkets
even more Khoi away from their ancestral land. Cape Colony 1795 were offered as gifts
to the Khoi.

Dutch flag

Jan van Riebeeck
Matchlock

The Caravel of Dias
In 1988, a replica of the ship commanded by
Bartolomeu Dias 500 years before retraced his
voyage from Lisbon in Portugal to Mossel Bay.
The ship is now housed in Mossel Bay’s Bartolo meu
Dias Museum Complex (see pp240–41).

Jan van Riebeeck’s Arrival
Unique Early Postal Systems On 6 April 1652, Jan van Riebeeck landed at the
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese Cape to establish a permanent settle ment for the
captains anchored in Mossel Bay and left Dutch East India Company. The first commander
messages for each other engraved on flat rocks. of the new outpost and his wife, Maria de la
The stones soon became a type of post box, Quellerie, are commemorated by statues erected
with letters stored beneath them. near the site of their historic landing.

c. 1500 Shipwrecked Portu­
1486 Portuguese sail as guese sailors encounter Iron
far as today’s Namibia Age farmers along South
Africa’s south coast
1400 1450 1500 1550
1510 Dom Francisco
1498 Vasco da Gama d’Almeida, viceroy of
discovers the route Portuguese India, and 57
to India around the of his men are killed by
Vasco da Gama Cape of Good Hope Khoi in Table Bay

050-051_EW_South_Africa.indd 50 25/05/17 2:44 pm