Cape Colony, now part of South Africa was annexed from the Netherlands by Britain in the late eighteenth century. This book is one of a two-volume set published between 1801 and 1804, compiled by Sir John Barrow (1764-1848), a travel writer and official for the Admiralty, on the flora; fauna; geography and economics of the region.

Barrow's work is, however, only superficially an account of the appearance of the area. Southern Africa was of huge strategic and economic importance to Britain in the late-eighteenth and through the nineteenth century. Until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the quickest route to India and China was via the Cape of Good Hope. It was a perilous journey due to the rough seas around the Cape so having safe harbour was a necessity, whoever owned the Cape could control traffic to India. The Dutch had settled the area in the seventeenth century, but as British power in India grew, the region became a target for conquest. Barrow, rather than including plates of interesting sights; infrastructure; ports; people and picturesque landscapes, as was common in books of this genre, instead focuses purely on illustrating the location of Cape Town and its harbour fortifications in relation to the Cape itself.