In 1879 Great Britain became involved in war with Cetewayo, chief of a
powerful race of savages on the north-eastern border of the colony of
Natal in South Africa, and two years after in a short conflict with the
Boers, or Dutch farmers, in the Transvaal; and in both of these wars a
Naval Brigade took part. From this time onward, South Africa has held a
position of increasing importance in our colonial history, and is likely
to continue to do so for many years to come; it will be well therefore
before considering the wars referred to, to give a general view of the
position of the British, the Dutch, and the Zulu at the date of their
commencement.
Cape Colony was originally founded by the Dutch about the middle of the
seventeenth century; it was seized by Great Britain during the wars with
France in 1806, and finally annexed to the British Empire by virtue of
the Treaty of Vienna in 1815.
A great proportion of the colonists, and especially of the farmers in
the districts farthest from the coast and from civilisation, did not
take kindly to British rule; and in 1835 and succeeding years a great
number crossed the Orange River--at that time the boundary of the colony
on the north--with the intention of setting up independent Dutch
communities. To this movement, known as the Great Trek, the occupation
by the Dutch Boers (i.e. farmers) of the territories, since known as the
Orange Free State and the Transvaal, or South African Republic, is due.
At that time the limits of the British colony were, on the north, the
Orange River; and, on the east, the Fish River. Beyond this, on the
east, was territory occupied by hostile Kaffir tribes, afterwards called
British Kaffraria, and now annexed to Cape Colony, and still farther to
the east of these lay the fertile land of Natal.
A large section of the trekking Boers, after passing the Orange and
going north, crossed the mountains, and descended upon Natal. There
were a few English hunters and traders settled upon the coast, but the
country had been depopulated of its original inhabitants by a ferocious
and warlike race of superior physique, whom we call the Zulu. These had
been trained to a high state of military and athletic perfection by a
succession of sanguinary chiefs, and had broken and massacred every
tribe with whom they had come in contact, so that in this district of
Natal alone it is computed that over a million had perished, and but
five or six thousand of the original inhabitants remained lurking in
caverns and amid the dense bush.
The first leader of the Boers, Retief, and some 70 persons, were
treacherously murdered by Dingaan, the chief or king of the Zulus, at
his kraal, which they had visited at his request in February 1838; and
the chief made a sudden attack with his armies upon the isolated bands
of farmers, and killed a great many of them. After many bloody fights,
in which large numbers of Zulus were killed, the Boers drove Dingaan and
his armies across the Tugela, and occupied the country.
The British Government, however, declined to recognise the right of its
colonists to leave the colony, wage war upon the native tribes, and set
up as independent republics, and therefore, after overcoming the
resistance of the Boers, occupied Natal, and eventually made it into a
separate colony. After some trial of British rule, the bulk of the
Dutch recrossed the mountains, and joined their fellow-countrymen in the
Orange Free State, or in the land beyond the Vaal.
At length in 1852 the British Government, having enough to do with
native wars on the Cape frontier, found it expedient to concede
independence to the Transvaal Boers; and two years afterwards abandoned
the territory between the Orange and Vaal Rivers to its inhabitants, the
Dutch farmers, who thus founded the Orange Free State.
The Dutch of the Free State were of much the same type and education as
the Cape Dutch, and soon settled down and arranged their affairs, and
evolved an almost ideal form of republican government, under which,
after having at great sacrifice and courage overcome the native
difficulties on their borders, they lived a happy and contented
existence, with increasing prosperity, no public enemy, perfect civil
and religious equality, and, except for railways and public works, no
public debt, until in 1899 that wonderful loyalty to race which is so
remarkable a trait in the Dutch African involved them in the ambitions
and the ruin of the South African Republic.
With the Transvaal Boer it was far otherwise. Amongst the leaders of
the Voor-trekkers, as the original emigrants from Cape Colony are
called, were leaders of whom colonists of any race might be proud, such
as Pretorius, Potgieter, Uys, and Retief, and, no doubt, among their
followers were many like them; but it was the most discontented and the
most uncivilised and turbulent, as a rule, that crossed the Vaal
originally; and there they lived isolated lives, far away from any white
being but those of their own family, without books, without intercourse
with the outer world, surrounded only by their wives and children and
Kaffir servants, or rather slaves; and thus the Transvaal Boer, to whom
alone we ought to apply the name, became more sullen, obstinate,
bigoted, and ignorant than his cousins farther south.
Very little good could such people, with few exceptions little above the
average of an English farm-labourer, do with independence. Many years
were wasted in quarrelling and even fighting among themselves, every
leader of a district with a few scattered farms claiming independence,
before all were united under one government. There was constant war
with natives on the border, no means of collecting taxes or providing
for public works, and by the year 1877 it seemed as though the State
must collapse and the Transvaal be overrun by its enemies. The Boers
were defeated by Sekukuni, chief of the Bapedi; they had an open dispute
with Cetewayo about territory which they had annexed from his country,
and he was preparing for war; the tribes in the north had driven back
the farmers; the State was bankrupt, and all was confusion. The more
settled members of the community in the towns called for firm
government, but the president had no power at his back to enforce it.
Such a state of things encouraged a general native rising, and was a
menace to the safety of all the whites in South Africa. The Cape
Government watched the situation with anxiety, and at length the British
Government intervened, and on 12th April 1877 proclaimed the Transvaal
to be annexed to the British dominions.
At the time it was believed that the majority of the burghers were in
favour of this step, which met with no serious opposition. Subsequent
events, however, proved that this belief was not well founded. It is,
however, tolerably certain that it saved the Transvaal an attack from
the thirty or forty thousand Zulus collected by Cetewayo on its
frontier.