The interior of what would become the Cape Colony had long .... cape coloni

The settlement at Table Bay became , whose purpose was to supply fresh food and water to Dutch trading ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope on their voyages to and from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). The growing volume of shipping around the cape and the consequent demand for livestock provided the incentive for the spread of colonial sheep farmers northeastward beyond the Roggeveldberg and Hantamsberg and eastward through the plateau region of the Karoo until, by 1779, they were in contact with Bantu-speaking Xhosa peoples along the Great Fish River. The British returned the cape to the Dutch in 1803 but occupied it again in 1806, and, at the in 1814, the Dutch permanently ceded the Cape settlement to Britain, which thenceforth ruled the area as the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. The Afrikaners resented this policy and feared Britain's attempts to Anglicize the Cape Colony at their expense. The Cape Colony repeatedly defeated the Xhosa people in the Cape Frontier ! Wars and gradually annexed their territories. These annexations had by 1894 advanced the frontier of the Cape Colony eastward to the Mtamvuna River, the southwestern border of the colony of . This in turn stimulated a rush of British immigrants, an influx of foreign capital, and the extension of railroads northward from Cape Town and other coastal cities far into the interior; in 187384 the small Cape TownWellington railway was extended more than 600 miles (1,000 km) inland to Kimberley. As prime minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896, tried to cement British-Afrikaner cooperation in a possible union of southern Africa's four territories, but this was opposed by the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, which lost their independence in the South African War (18991902) against Britain. In 1910 the Cape Colony joined them in the new Union of South Africa. From 1961, when it became a province in the Republic of South Africa, the Cape Colony was called the Cape Province.