Author Description

Excerpt from Great Britain and the Dutch Republic of South Africa: A Summary of the Historical Relations Between Great Britain and the Transvaal and Orange Free State, Giving a True Account of the Present War in South Africa Thus we have the formation and settlement of Natal and the Orange Free State, where in both cases only those settlers remained who were on the whole disposed to recognize the advantages of British rule. The irreconcilable and turbulent sections in all cases drifted to the Trans vaal. The sections of Dutch population which went to the Transvaal were no less bitterly antagonistic to the sections of their own country men which they left behind them than they were to British rule. Couse quently intercourse was rare. The race of the Transvaal Dutch has from the beginning been to some extent differentiated from the remain ing Dutch population of South Africa, and the history of the Transvaal forms a chapter apart. It will be seen that the lawless nature of its population continued for a long time to characterize the new settlement, and that when the Boers of the Transvaal had no one else with whom to fight they fought continuously with one another. The autonomous existence of the Transvaal province was established in the following conditions. In the early years of the Orange River Sovereignty the British Government reaped the results of the encourage ment which it had given to native pretensions. Hottentots, Tembus, Kosas, Basutos, had all in turn at considerable cost to be subdued. The difficulties encountered in these wars made the whole movement of Imperial extension extremely unpopular at home, and in the midst of the perplexities aroused by the necessity for active operations on the spot and lukewarm support from headquarters, Sir Harry Smith found himself confronted simultaneously by an antagonistic movement of the Republican faction in the Orange River Sovereignty, and by a request on the part of the proscribed leaders on the far side of