Cape Colony was a former British colony occupying the southern extremity of Africa, bordered on the west, south, and east by the sea. The colony was long noted for its mineral wealth. The principal minerals were gold, copperore, coal, iron ore, manganese, and diamonds, amethysts, agates, etc. Coal and copper were worked, and the diamonds brought a great amount of money into the colony since 1869, and gave rise to the town of Kimberley, the centre of the diamond-fields.
The Dutch first colonized the Cape in 1652, and until the end of the 18th century the colony was under the Dutch East India Company. It was held by the British from 1795-1801, and it came finally into British possession in 1806. The progress of the colony was long retarded by a series of Kaffir wars, :the last of which was in 1851-1853. The colony was further rocked by the Boer War of 1899 to 1902. In 1910 the Union of South Africa was formed and the Cape Colony ceased to exist, instead becoming the major part of what is now the Republic of South Africa. Research Cape Colony
Abbreviations
Gazetteer
Research Cape Colony