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The top of the Cape of Good Hope

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of South Africa. There is a very common misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, but in fact the southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometres to the southeast. However, when following the coastline from the equator, the Cape of Good Hope marks the psychologically important point where one begins to travel more eastward than southward. Thus the rounding of the cape in 1488 was a major milestone in the attempts by the Portuguese to establish a sea route to the Far East.
As one of the great capes of the South Atlantic Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope has been of special significance to sailors for many years and is widely referred to by them simply as The Cape. It is a major milestone on the clipper route followed by clipper ships to the Far East and Australia, and still followed by several offshore yacht races.

The term "Cape of Good Hope" was also used to indicate the early Cape Colony established in 1652, in the vicinity of the Cape Peninsula. Just prior to the formation of the Union of South Africa, the term referred to the entire region that was to become the Cape Province in 1910.


Some speculate that before the European explorers reached the Cape of Good Hope, the Chinese, Arabian, or Indian may already have visited it, and kept records of these visits. The Old World maps like Kangnido and Fra Mauro map made before 1488 may be evidence of this.

The first European to reach the cape was the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, who named it the "Cape of Storms" (Cabo das Tormentas). It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as "Cape of Good Hope" (Cabo da Boa Esperança) because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East.

The land around the cape was home to the Khoikhoi (Hottentot) people when the Dutch first settled there in 1652. The Khoikhoi had arrived in these parts about fifteen hundred years before.

Dutch colonial administrator Jan van Riebeeck established a resupply camp for the Dutch East India Company some 50 km north of the cape in Table Bay on April 6, 1652 and this eventually developed into Cape Town. Supplies of fresh food were vital on the long journey around Africa and Cape Town became known as "The Tavern of the Seas".
On December 31, 1687 a community of Huguenots arrived at the Cape from the Netherlands. They had escaped to the Netherlands from France in order to flee religious persecution there, examples of these are Pierre Joubert who came from La Motte-d'Aigues for religious reasons. The Dutch East India Company needed skilled farmers at the Cape of Good Hope and the Dutch Government saw opportunities for the Huguenots at the Cape and sent them over. The colony gradually grew over the next 150 years or so until it stretched for hundreds of kilometres to the north and north-east.
The United Kingdom invaded and occupied the Cape Colony in 1795 ("The First Occupation") but relinquished control of the territory in 1803. However, British forces returned on January 19, 1806 and occupied the Cape once again ("The Second Occupation"). The territory was ceded to the UK in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 and was henceforth administered as the Cape Colony. It remained a British colony until incorporated into the independent Union of South Africa in 1910 (now known as the Republic of South Africa).
after Wikipedia