The 1820 Settlers By Lynne Bryer & Keith S. Hunt

All Books are second hand

The 1820 Settlers Lynne Bryer & Keith S. Hunt

In 1819 some 4 000 British emigrants set sail for a district called Albany in the remote Cape Colony at the southern tip of Africa. The settlers were a mere handful among the thousands of emigrants leaving Britain for America and Australasia. But at the Cape their impact was both immediate and far-reaching. Overnight they altered the balance of population in Southern Africa and before long they began to agitate for the rights they were accustomed to as Britons.

They had come expecting a paradise of milk and honey. The reality was completely different, yet overwhelmingly they rose to the challenge and created a new life for themselves in an underdeveloped colony. They were to play a vital role in frontier affairs, and their concentrated presence in Albany led to a rapid anglicisation of the Eastern Cape that persists still. Their criticism of an outdated colonial system led to judicial and constitutional reform. In the end, they moved out and away to sheep country in the Karoo, to the new colony of Natal, to the Boer republics and the diamond mines and goldfields of a rapidly changing Southern Africa.