Cape of Good Hope

Where it is

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland near the southern end of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. It is not the southernmost point of Africa — that is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometres to the south-east, which is also the formal dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The Cape's importance is navigational rather than geographical: for a ship coming down the Atlantic it is the point at which the coast turns east and the course changes, and the seas there are notoriously rough where currents and prevailing westerlies meet.

The land and water around it

• Table Mountainmountains

  The flat-topped massif above Table Bay, a landmark visible far out to sea and the reason the bay is identifiable from a distance.

• The Cape Peninsulaheadland

  A narrow mountainous spur running south from the mainland, with Table Bay on one side and False Bay on the other. The Cape of Good Hope sits near its tip.

• The Cape Floral Regionforest

  Fynbos shrubland of extraordinary plant diversity, much of it found nowhere else, occupying a very small area. Fire is part of its ecology rather than a threat to it.

Its history, in short

Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape in 1488, and Vasco da Gama passed it on the way to India ten years later, opening a sea route between Europe and the Indian Ocean that did not pass through the Mediterranean or the Levant. For the next three and a half centuries every ship on that route turned this corner. That single fact produced the settlement at Table Bay in 1652, the colony that grew from it, and the country that grew from the colony. The Suez Canal opened in 1869 and took much of the traffic; the Cape route remains in use for the largest vessels and whenever Suez is disrupted.

Timeline

Dates are shown on a timeline rather than as changing shapes on the map. The globe draws modern boundaries only, and tinting a modern outline to stand for a historical one would state something we cannot source.

Places that carry meaning

• Cape AgulhasGeographic

  The actual southern tip of Africa and the formal Atlantic–Indian boundary. The Cape of Good Hope is more famous and less southerly, which is worth noticing about how places become famous.

• Robben Island17th century onward

  In Table Bay, in plain view of the city, used as a place of banishment for centuries and as a maximum-security political prison under apartheid.

Learn the language here

1. 1Understand which languages are spoken hereCape of Good Hope is multilingual. Start with which languages are used, by whom, and for what — the phrase list only covers one of them.Written by Globe Quest

Check yourself

• Is the Cape of Good Hope the southern tip of Africa?

  No — Cape Agulhas is, about 150 km south-east

  The Cape's significance is navigational: it is where the coast turns east for a ship coming down the Atlantic.

• What did the opening of Suez in 1869 do to the Cape route?

  Took much of the Europe–Asia traffic, though the Cape route is still used

  The largest vessels and any Suez disruption still send traffic around the Cape.

Worth arguing about

• The Cape mattered because of where ships had to turn, not because of anything on it. How many places near you exist for a similar reason?
• Afrikaans was made at the Cape by Dutch, Khoikhoi, Malay and enslaved people together. Who gets remembered as a language's authors?

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