History of South Africa (1815–1910)
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During the
British colonization
At the tip of the continent, the British found an established colony with 25,000 slaves, 20,000 white colonists, 15,000 Khoisan, and 1,000 freed black slaves. Power resided solely with a white élite in Cape Town, and differentiation on the basis of
Like the Dutch before them, the British initially had little interest in the Cape Colony, other than as a strategically located port. As one of their first tasks they tried to resolve a troublesome border dispute between the Boers and the Xhosa on the colony's eastern frontier. In 1820 the British authorities persuaded about 5,000 middle-class British immigrants (most of them "in trade") to leave England behind and settle on tracts of land between the feuding groups with the idea of providing a buffer zone. The plan was singularly unsuccessful. Within three years, almost half of these
While doing nothing to resolve the border dispute, this influx of settlers solidified the British presence in the area, thus fracturing the relative unity of white South Africa. Where the Boers and their ideas had before gone largely unchallenged, European Southern Africa now had two language groups and two cultures. A pattern soon emerged whereby English-speakers became highly urbanised, and dominated politics, trade, finance, mining, and manufacturing, while the largely uneducated Boers remained on their farms.
The gap between the British settlers and the Boers further widened with the abolition of slavery in 1833, not because the slaves were freed, but the way in which they were freed (compensation for freed slaves, for example, had to be fetched personally in London). Yet the British settlers' conservatism and sense of racial superiority stopped any radical social reforms, and in 1841 the authorities passed a Masters and Servants Ordinance, which perpetuated white control. Meanwhile, British numbers increased rapidly in Cape Town, in the area east of the Cape Colony (present-day
Difaqane and destruction
The early 19th century saw a time of immense upheaval relating to the military expansion of the Zulu kingdom.
The full causes of the difaqane remain in dispute, although certain factors stand out. The rise of a unified Zulu kingdom had particular significance. In the early 19th century,
Peoples in the path of Shaka's armies moved out of his way, becoming in their turn aggressors against their neighbours. This wave of displacement spread throughout Southern Africa and beyond. It also accelerated the formation of several states, notably those of the Sotho (present-day
In 1828 Shaka was killed by his half-brothers
The Great Trek
Meanwhile, the Boers had started to grow increasingly dissatisfied with British rule in the Cape Colony. Various factors contributed to the migration, summarised in the Voortrekker leader, Piet Retief's manifesto.
With the exception of the more powerful
British vs. Boers vs. Zulus
The
Following this victory, however, the Boers' hopes for establishing a Natal republic was short lived. The British annexed the area in 1843, and founded their new Natal colony at present-day Durban. The British set about establishing large sugar plantations in Natal, but found few inhabitants of the neighbouring Zulu areas willing to provide labour. The British confronted stiff resistance to their encroachments from the Zulus, a nation with well-established traditions of waging war, who inflicted one of the most humiliating defeats on the British army at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879, where over 1400 British soldiers were killed. During the ongoing Anglo-Zulu Wars, the British eventually established their control over what was then named Zululand, and is today known as KwaZulu-Natal.
The British turned to
Growth of independent South Africa
The Boer republics
The Boers meanwhile persevered with their search for land and freedom, ultimately establishing themselves in various
The discovery of the Kimberley diamond-mines unleashed a flood of European and black labourers into the area. Towns sprang up in which the inhabitants ignored the "proper" separation of whites and blacks, and the Boers expressed anger that their impoverished republics had missed out on the economic benefits of the mines.
The Anglo-Boer Wars
First Anglo-Boer War
Long-standing Boer resentment turned into full-blown rebellion in the Transvaal (under British control from 1877), and the first
Inter-war period
In 1879, Zululand came under British control. Then in 1886, an Australian prospector
The enormous wealth of the mines, soon became irresistible for British imperialists. In 1895, a group of renegades led by Captain Leander Starr Jameson entered the ZAR with the intention of sparking an uprising on the Witwatersrand and installing a British administration. This incursion became known as the Jameson Raid. The scheme ended in fiasco, but it seemed obvious to Kruger that it had at least the tacit approval of the Cape Colony government, and that his republic faced danger. He reacted by forming an alliance with Orange Free State.
Second Anglo-Boer War
The situation peaked in 1899 with the Second Anglo-Boer War. Unable to defeat the Boers with traditional war tactics, the British employed the controversial scorched earth tactics, which included the capturing of hundreds of thousands of Boer women and children, and uncounted natives, in concentration camps. By 1902, 26,000 Boers (mainly women and children) had died of disease, hunger and neglect in the camps, the brutal conditions documented by the British humanitarian Emily Hobhouse. On 31 May 1902 a superficial peace came with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging. Under its terms, the Boer republics acknowledged British sovereignty, while the British in turn committed themselves to reconstruction of the areas under their control.
Roots of union
During the immediate post-war years the British focussed their attention on rebuilding the country, in particular the mining industry. By 1907 the mines of the Witwatersrand produced almost one-third of the world's annual gold production. But the peace brought by the treaty remained fragile and challenged on all sides. The Afrikaners found themselves in the position of poor farmers in a country where big mining ventures and foreign capital rendered them irrelevant. Britain's unsuccessful attempts to anglicise them, and to impose English as the official language in schools and the workplace particularly incensed them. Partly as a backlash to this, the Boers came to see Afrikaans as the volkstaal ("people's language") and as a symbol of Afrikaner nationhood. Several nationalist organisations sprang up.
Blacks and Coloureds remained marginalised in society. After much negotiation with the Boers a form of "segregation" was introduced. The authorities imposed unpopular taxes, while the British caretaker administrator encouraged the immigration of thousands of Chinese that undercut wages. Resentment exploded in the Bambatha Rebellion of 1906, in which 4,000 Zulus lost their lives after rebelling due to onerous tax legislation.
The British meanwhile moved ahead with their plans for union. After several years of negotiations, the
) continued under direct rule from Britain.English and Dutch became the official languages. Afrikaans did not gain recognition as an official language until 1925. Despite a major campaign by Blacks and Coloureds, the voter franchise remained as in the pre-Union republics and colonies, and only whites could gain election to Parliament.
1910 Union of South Africa
In 1910 the
References
- ^ "Piet Retief's Great Trek manifesto is completed | South African History Online". www.sahistory.org.za. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
- ^ "The South Africa Act, 1909". The American Journal of International Law. 1 January 1910 – via Internet Archive.
Further reading
- Elizabeth Elbourne. Empire, kinship and violence: family histories, indigenous rights and the making of settler colonialism, 1770-1842. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
- Lagden, Godfrey (1905).. The Empire and the century. London: John Murray. pp. 539–556.