Although there were earlier British settlements at ports along the West African coast to facilitate the British Atlantic slave trade, more permanent British settlement in Africa did not begin in earnest until the end of the eighteenth century, at the Cape of Good Hope. British settlement in the Cape gained momentum following the second British occupation of the Dutch Cape Colony in 1806. The government encouraged British settlers in Albany ("Settler Country") in 1820 in order to consolidate the British Cape Colony's eastern frontier during the Cape Frontier Wars against the Xhosa. The Crown proclaimed Natal in southeastern Africa as a British colony in 1843. Following the defeat of the Boers in the Second Boer War in 1902, Britain annexed the Boer Republics of the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State.