This led to an expansion of the colony's borders and clashes with the Xhosa people over pastureland in the vicinity of the Great Fish River. Some of the existing colonists had become semi-nomadic pastoralists known as trekboers who frequently ventured beyond the Cape's frontier. The remainder were descended from German soldiers and sailors in the service of the Dutch East India Company's former administration and a large number of French Huguenot refugees who resettled there after fleeing religious persecution at home. At this time, the Cape Colony encompassed 100,000 square miles (260,000 km 2) and was populated by about 26,720 people of European descent, a relative majority of whom were still of Dutch origin. In 1795, it was taken over by the British, who were officially granted possession of the Cape by the Netherlands in 1815. The Cape Colony was founded by the Dutch East India Company in 1652.

See also: Invasion of the Cape Colony (1795), Cape Colony § The British Conquest, and Cape Frontier Wars The Cape Parliament's opening (1885) These colonies and their political leaders were the most important and influential of the time, and all were eventually dissolved into the singular Union of South Africa in May 1910. The Cape Colony and Natal were some degree under British control, and the Transvaal (South African Republic) and Orange Free State were independent republics controlled by the Boers. The relationships and boundaries among them became exceedingly more complex, affecting not only themselves but the indigenous African peoples and the land itself.īy 1880, there were four dominant European regions. Territory Political map of Southern Africa in 1885Īs European powers – particularly Dutch Boers and the British – began to claim parts of southern Africa, it became apparent that expansion was imperative in order to maintain their political positions. However, they have also been viewed as outbreaks in a far larger continuous wave of change and conflict in the region, beginning with the Confederation Wars of the 1870s and 80s, escalating with the rise of Cecil Rhodes and the struggle for control of southern Africa's gold and diamonds and more, and leading up to the Second Anglo-Boer War and the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Conflicts such as the First and Second Boer Wars, the Anglo-Zulu War, the Sekhukhune Wars, the Basotho Gun War, the Xhosa Wars, and other concurrent conflicts are typically considered separate events.

Diamond Cut 10.90.7 free instals