The southern part of the African continent was dominated in the 19th century by a set of epic struggles to create within it a single unified state. British aggression into southern Africa was fueled by three prime factors: first, the desire to control the trade routes to India that passed around the cape; second, the discovery, in 1868, of huge mineral deposits of diamonds around Kimberley on the joint borders of the South African Republic (called Transvaal by the British), the Orange Free State and the British-controlled Cape Colony; and finally the race against other European colonial powers as part of a general colonial expansion in Africa. Other potential colonizers included Portugal (who already controlled East and West Africa including modern day Mozambique, Germany (who at the time
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| rdf:type
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| rdfs:label
| - First Anglo-Boer War (South African Union)
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| rdfs:comment
| - The southern part of the African continent was dominated in the 19th century by a set of epic struggles to create within it a single unified state. British aggression into southern Africa was fueled by three prime factors: first, the desire to control the trade routes to India that passed around the cape; second, the discovery, in 1868, of huge mineral deposits of diamonds around Kimberley on the joint borders of the South African Republic (called Transvaal by the British), the Orange Free State and the British-controlled Cape Colony; and finally the race against other European colonial powers as part of a general colonial expansion in Africa. Other potential colonizers included Portugal (who already controlled East and West Africa including modern day Mozambique, Germany (who at the time
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| - United Kingdom
- South African Republic
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| dcterms:subject
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| side2strength
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| side2casualties
| - Boers
- Unknown amounts of Boer Militiamen
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| side1casualties
| - Approximately 2770 British Soldiers
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| side1strength
| - Roughly 4000 British Regulars
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| dbkwik:althistory/...iPageUsesTemplate
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| Commanders
| - Commandant-General Piet Joubert
- Major-General George Pomeroy Colley
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| Battles
| - Bronkhostpruit, Laing's Nek, Schuishoogte, Majuba Hill
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| Result
| - Boer Victory, End of British sovereignty over Transvaal, loss of the Natal Colony to Transvaal
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| abstract
| - The southern part of the African continent was dominated in the 19th century by a set of epic struggles to create within it a single unified state. British aggression into southern Africa was fueled by three prime factors: first, the desire to control the trade routes to India that passed around the cape; second, the discovery, in 1868, of huge mineral deposits of diamonds around Kimberley on the joint borders of the South African Republic (called Transvaal by the British), the Orange Free State and the British-controlled Cape Colony; and finally the race against other European colonial powers as part of a general colonial expansion in Africa. Other potential colonizers included Portugal (who already controlled East and West Africa including modern day Mozambique, Germany (who at the time controlled modern day Namibia, but lost it to the Portuguese in 1892) and farther north Belgium (Congo) and France (which controlled what would become the United States of North Africa and Madagascar). Britain acquired the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa from the Dutch in 1815 during the Napoleonic Wars. Certain groups of Dutch-speaking settler farmers ("Boers") resented British rule, even though British control brought some economic benefits. There were successive waves of migrations of Boer farmers, first east away from the coast towards Natal, and thereafter north toward the Interior eventually establishing the republics that came to be known as the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The British did not try to stop the Boers from moving away from the Cape. The Boers served as pioneers, opening up the interior for those who followed, and the British gradually extended their control away from the Cape along the coast to the east eventually annexing Natal in 1845. Indeed, the British subsequently ratified the two new Republics in a pair of treaties: the Sand River Convention and the Bloemfontein Convention. However, British colonial expansion was, from the 1830s on, marked by skirmishes and wars against both Boers and native African tribes for most of the remainder of the century. The British attempts in 1880 to annex the Transvaal, and in 1899 both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State (leading to the Second Anglo-Boer War) were their biggest incursions into southern Africa, but there were others. In 1868, the British annexed Basutoland in the Drakensberg Mountains following an appeal from Moshesh, the leader of a mixed group of African refugees from the Zulu Wars, who sought protection from the Zulus and from Boer land grabs. In the 1880s, Bechuanaland (modern Botswana) became the object of dispute between the Germans to the west, the Boers to the east and the British in the Cape colony to the south. Although Bechuanaland has almost no economic value, the "Missionaries Road" passed through it and toward territory farther north. The British annexed Bechuanaland in 1885, although they would eventually lose it to the Boers. In the 1870s, the British annexed West Griqualand, site of the Kimberley diamond discoveries. British Colonial Secretary Lord Carnarvon attempted to extend British influence in 1875 and approached the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic and tried to organize a federation of the British and Boer territories to be modeled after the 1867 federation of French and English provinces in Canada, but the Boer leaders turned him down. The successive British annexations, in particular the case of West Griqualand, caused a climate of simmering unease for the Boer Republics.
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