What has been the attitude of the other class of Dutch and British newcomers, of the trader and colonist group, toward the natives whom they found living under native law and custom? Some will call it a credit, others a discredit, to the European regime that more than a century and a half passed before any inroads were made upon native independence and sovereignty. Members of the Dutch East India Company, under Jan van Riebeek, landed on the Cape of Good Hope as early as 1652; the British occupied the Cape in 1806, but it was not until 1846 that any portion of the South African territory came under British control. Before this time the Boer and Briton had been bent almost solely upon the establishment of amicable and successful trade relations with the natives. The Boer had come to the Cape to find an ocean port for his vessels, and while it is true that wars were waged between Boer and Bantu for the duration of a century, the natives were only driven inland and no attempt was made to establish European sovereignty over them. In 1806, however, the British obtained final control of the Cape, and in 1846 put an end to their former policy of "hands off" by making a British province, called Kaffraria, of all the country lying between the Kei and the Keiskama Rivers. In 1865 this province was formally annexed to and incorporated in the English state, called Cape Colony, which had been set up on the Cape. From this time colony after colony was formed, annexed and incorporated by both British and Boers, the latter of whom had marched northward in "the Great Trek" of 1836. The Boers formed the Republic of Natal in 1838, but moved out in 1842, and Natal was annexed to the British Cape Colony in 1844. The Boers, continuing northward, next set up Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The constitution of the latter bears the date 1854, and of the former 1858. Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal and the Orange Free State, then, are the South African States which were set up by British and Boer--now five-sixths Negro and one-sixth European in population. An examination of the constitutions and laws of these republics, as they appear on the statute books and in practice, reveals that the relationship between European and native has not been the same in all of the states. CAPE COLONY Cape Colony, farthest south and the oldest of the four states, was founded upon the principle of political equality of all inhabitants, black and white. A proclamation of the Duke of Newcastle (1853) contained the following statement: "It is the earnest desire of Her Majesty's Government that all her subjects at the Cape, without distinction of class or colour, should be united by one bond of loyalty, and we believe that the exercise of political rights by all alike will prove one of the best methods of attaining this object."[4]