South Africa is known as the rainbow nation, with a population that has been created by waves of migration over the years, and this history and diversity is what makes exploring their stories so fascinating. For example, you can find descendants of Indians who worked as indentured labourers on sugar plantations; Chinese labourers who went there to work in the mines; Dutch settlers who had founded the first permanent European settlement at Cape Town in 1652; or enslaved people transported by the Dutch from Madagascar and south-east Asia. From a genealogical point of view, as a researcher you have to take the history into account, as well as the usual considerations such as name changes and ancestors not always telling us the whole truth.
The history
The British had occupied the Cape in 1795, and it was an important base on the route from Britain to India and the East. In 1819 the governor of the colony wanted more British people to settle there. The British were suffering after the), and a database can
