European Imperialism In South Africa

South Africa represents a diversity of human experiences which includes the inception of farming as way of life, and the construction of large urban centres. Moreover, it is a territory where along the years we can identify different shifting systems of beliefs, technological and economic changes due to European cultural influences. The first European influence appeared in 1488 when a Portuguese ship rounded the Cape of Good Hope. In the next centuries, both the British and the Dutch founded settlements in the area of Cape sea route. By the end of the 17th century, the imprint of Dutch colonialism in South Africa was clear. At the beginning of 18th century a census of the Dutch at the Cape listed 1,779 settlers owning 1,107 slaves.
A major change happened in South Africa in 1886 when it was discovered on the Witwatersrand the world’s largest goldfields. The region evolved into a major supplier of precious minerals to the world economy. By 1890, British colonies, Boer republics, and African kingdoms all came under British control because the development of a capitalist mining industry and a sequence of imperialist interventions by Britain. In 1899, the South African War started with the invasion of Natal by the Boer forces in order to preserve their independence. In the same time, the government of Lord Salisbury in Britain went to war to secure its hegemony in Southern Africa. The colonial war lasted two and a half years and both sides used blacks extensively as labour, and at least 10,000 blacks fought for the British. During the conflict, the British placed the civilian population in concentration camps, and over ten thousand blacks died in separate camps and some 25,000 Afrikaner women and children died of disease and