At the period of her greatest power Portugal exercised a strong influence in Abyssinia also. In the ruler of Abyssinia (to whose dominions a Portuguese traveller had penetrated before Vasco da Gama's memorable voyage) the Portuguese imagined they had found the legendary Christian king, Prester John, and when the complete overthrow of the native dynasty and the Christian religion was imminent by the victories of Mahommedan invaders, the exploits of a band of 400 Portuguese under Christopher da Gama during 1541-1543 turned the scale in favour of Abyssinia and had thus an enduring result on the future of North-East Africa. After da Gama's time Portuguese Jesuits resorted to Abyssinia. While they failed in their efforts to convert the Abyssinians to Roman Catholicism they acquired an extensive knowledge of the country. Pedro Paez in 1615, and, ten years later, Jeronimo Lobo, both visited the sources of the Blue Nile. In 1663 the Portuguese, who had outstayed their welcome, were expelled from the Abyssinian dominions. At this time Portuguese influence on the Zanzibar coast was waning before the power of the Arabs of Muscat, and by 1730 no point on the east coast north of Cape Delgado was held by Portugal.
It has been seen that Portugal took no steps to acquire the southern part of the continent. To the Portuguese the Cape of Good Hope was simply a landmark on the road to India, and mariners of other nations who followed in their wake used Table Bay only as a convenient spot wherein to refit on their voyage to the East. By the beginning of the 17th century the bay was much resorted to for this purpose, chiefly by English and Dutch vessels. In 1620, with the object of forestalling the Dutch, two officers of the East India Company, on their own initiative, took possession of Table Bay in the name of King James, fearing otherwise that English ships would be "frustrated of watering but by license." Their action was not approved in London and the proclamation they issued remained without effect. The Netherlands profited by the apathy of the English. On the advice of sailors who had been shipwrecked in Table Bay the Netherlands East India Company, in 1651, sent out a fleet of three small vessels under Jan van Riebeek which reached Table Bay on the 6th of April 1652, when, 164 years after its discovery, the first permanent white settlement was made in South Africa. The Portuguese, whose power in Africa was already waning, were not in a position to interfere with the Dutch plans, and England was content to seize the island of St Helena as her half-way house to the East3. In its inception the settlement at the Cape was not intended to become an African colony, but was regarded as the most westerly outpost of the Dutch East Indies. Nevertheless, despite the paucity of ports and the absence of navigable rivers, the Dutch colonists, freed from any apprehension of European trouble by the friendship between Great Britain and Holland, and leavened by Huguenot blood, gradually spread northward, stamping their language, law and religion indelibly upon South Africa. This process, however, was exceedingly slow.
The preceding article is a portion of the subsection "History" under the article Africa, from the 1911 edition of an encyclopedia. The work is out of copyright here in the U.S. and is in the public domain. You may copy, download, print and distribute this article as you see fit.
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