Many people of European heritage in South Africa are descended from Huguenots. The Huguenots were French Protestants who belonged to the Calvinist Reformed Church, established in 1550. After facing persecution in France for decades, their situation worsened on October 22, 1685, when King Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleau. This edict revoked the Edict of Nantes which had previously granted them the right to practice their faith, and it outlawed Protestantism, leading to large-scale persecution. Most Huguenots who came to South Africa originally settled in the Dutch Cape Colony, but were subsequently absorbed into the Afrikaner and Afrikaans-speaking population due to religious similarities with the Dutch colonists.
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Huguenots in South Africa in the context of Dutch Cape Colony
The Dutch Cape Colony (Dutch: Nederlandse Kaapkolonie), officially known as the Cape of Good Hope Waystation (Dutch: Tussenstation Kaap de Goede Hoop), was a colony of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and Batavian Republic in Southern Africa. Centered on the Cape of Good Hope, from where it derived its name, it was founded in 1652 by a VOC expedition under Jan van Riebeeck to serve as a re-supply and layover port for VOC vessels trading with Asia. The Cape was under VOC rule from 1652 to 1795 and Batavian rule from 1803 to 1806. Much to the dismay of the VOC's shareholders, who focused primarily on making profits from the Asian trade, the Cape Colony rapidly expanded into a settler colony in the years after its founding.
As the only permanent settlement of the VOC which served as a trading post, it proved an ideal retirement place for employees of the company. After several years of service in the company, an employee could lease a piece of land in the Cape Colony as a Free Burgher, on which he had to cultivate crops that he had to sell to the VOC for a fixed price. As these farms were labour-intensive, Free Burghers imported slaves from Madagascar, Mozambique and Asia (mostly the Dutch East Indies and Dutch Ceylon), which rapidly increased the number of inhabitants. After King Louis XIV of France issued the Edict of Fontainebleau in October 1685 (revoking the Edict of Nantes of 1598), thereby ending protection of the right of Huguenots in France to practise Protestant worship without persecution from the state, the Cape Colony attracted some Huguenot settlers, who eventually mixed with the general Dutch population.