The Founding of Cape Town

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb explores the story of a shipwreck that led to the creation of a city and a nation. Exactly 375 years ago, on 25 March 1647, a Dutch cargo ship Nieuw Haarlem foundered in Table Bay’s shallow waters. While 58 crew members were taken back to the Netherlands, 62 remained at the southern tip of Africa. If they had not stayed, says our guest Professor Gerald Groenewald of the University of Johannesburg, the history of colonial South Africa could have turned out very differently.

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