Founding of Cape Town

Cape Town was founded by the Dutch East India Company, which sent Jan van Riebeeck to set up a supply station at the Cape of Good Hope for ships sailing between Europe and Asia. The settlers grew vegetables and traded with the local Khoikhoi, and soon began to take over land and to bring in enslaved people from elsewhere in Africa and Asia. Britain seized the Cape at the end of the eighteenth century and held it after the Napoleonic Wars. The city grew into a major port beneath Table Mountain, and Robben Island in its bay was later used as a prison, where Nelson Mandela was held. Cape Town is now the legislative capital of South Africa.

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