Natal

The autonomy of Natalia (which occupies most of present-day KwaZulu-Natal) was short-lived. After a brief period of war, Britain annexed Natalia to the Cape Colony, and shortly thereafter proclaimed it a crown colony (Natal) in its own right. This led to an influx of English speaking settlers, and large numbers of English settlers arrived in Natal under an organized British settlement programme between 1848 and 1862. Lanham (1982: 325) reports that a higher proportion of settlers to Natal were middle or higher class, and that there was very little contact with Dutch settlers, and no conflicts with indigenous peoples in which civilian colonists were involved. While social distinctions based on position and rank were levelled in the Cape Colony, they tended to be maintained in Natal. Moreover, the origins of the settlers to Natal were less diverse than those to the Cape, and the population more urbanized. Thus, the English of the first generation settlers in Natal differed from that of the Cape settlers in that there was much less social and regional differentiation, but also much less social levelling (Lanham 1982 : 325f).