[8] He called it Taboa da caba ("table of the cape"). The native inhabitants were forced to declare a fixed residence and were not permitted to move between regions without written permission. Burgher representation on the council increased to six, and from 1785 onward a committee of three burghers and three officials formally advised the council on urban matters. More than 200 firefighters battled to contain a runaway fire that gutted historic Cape Town landmarks including a library housing hard-to-find books at the University of Cape Town … Cape Town. Table Mountain was given its name in 1503 by António de Saldanha, a Portuguese admiral and explorer. Under apartheid, the Cape was considered a "Coloured labour preference area", to the exclusion of Black Africans. Winemakers finally had all the pieces in place to grow, bottle, and sell the Cape wine, and it began a kind of renaissance. The Huguenots had fled from anti-Protestant persecution in Catholic France to the Netherlands, where the VOC offered them free passage to the Cape as well as farmland. A period of strong economic growth and social development ensued, with a rapid expansion of the Cape Government Railways and other infrastructure, connecting Cape Town to the Cape's vast interior. I hope that you will enjoy your journey through time.. As a consequence, Lloyds of London refused to cover ships spending the winter in Table Bay. The German anthropologist Theophilus Hahn recorded that the original name of the area was '||Hui !Gais' – a toponym in the indigenous Khoe language meaning "where clouds gather."[7]. Just offcampus on the … Cape Town was founded in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck of the Dutch East India Company based in The Netherlands arrived to set up a halfway point for ships travelling to the East. The harbour and industrial sites were extended again, and modern buildings rose in the central business district. The importation of slaves, the introduction of political exiles from the Dutch East Indies, and marriage and cohabitation with indigenous Khoekhoe (whom the Dutch called Hottentots) increased the population, but at the beginning of the 18th century the town, known as De Kaap (“The Cape”), still consisted of only 200 houses. Strong winds fanned flames across the slopes of Table Mountain and onto the University of Cape Town campus, destroying a library housing priceless pieces of South African history. Three years later, however, the war resumed and the British returned their garrison to the Cape after defeating Dutch forces at the Battle of Blaauwberg (1806). [15], The discovery and subsequent exploitation of diamonds and gold in the former Transvaal region in the central highveld in the 1870s and 1880s led to rapid change in Cape Town, as well as in Cape Colony as a whole. About 10,000 Dutch families, for various reasons, left for the north in search of new land, thereby opening up the interior of the country. With the dismantling of apartheid, Cape Town’s government was converted to majority rule. Work on the Castle of Good Hope, the first permanent European fortification in the area, began in 1666. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. As in the rest of the British Empire, slaves – estimated to be around 39,000 in number – were emancipated in 1834. [18], Beginning in 2015, Cape Town entered a drought that lasted into 2018. Water from the Fresh River, which descended from Table Mountain, was channelled into canals to provide irrigation. Source: www.castleofgoodhope.co.za. Cape Town is home to artists and performers of every description,. It lasted for the better part of 50 years, until finally in 1994 the first democratic elections took place. In 1657 the company began to release men from its employ so that they could become free burghers (citizens) and farmers, and in 1658 the company began to import slaves. Cape Town is rightly famous for its wine production, with a viticultural history dating back to the 1650s. An influx of people followed the discovery inland of diamonds in 1870 and gold in 1886. In particular, the rise to power of the ambitious colonialist Cecil Rhodes, fueled by the new diamond industry, led to great instability. Term TaxonomyName: Cape Town's history and heritageTerm TaxonomyName: Cape Town's history and heritage. The degree of local control over Cape Town’s affairs has varied considerably throughout its history. The area is also home to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, and in 1990 it housed Nelson Mandela for his first night of freedom after his long incarceration. [9] A Portuguese force led by Francisco de Almeida was defeated in the Battle of Salt River by the indigenous Goringhaiqua Khoikhoi clan. Washing and cooking facilities were public and inadequate, and the grid-like streets were patrolled by …