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While the Dutch originally colonzied southern Africa in the late seventeenth century, their power was fading by the close of the eighteenth century. Britain took over in 1795 to save the colony from the hands of the French.
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Britain relinquished control of the Cape colonies briefly before reconquering the area in 1806.
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The British officially gained control of south African colonies in 1815, though they had been in possession of them since 1806, during the Congress of Vienna.
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Shaka Zulu created the Zulu Kingdom in much of southern Africa, and united many similar African tribes to create a unified empire.
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Middle-class settlers from England moved to the rural areas around the colonies in order to create a "buffer zone" between the warring Boers and the Xhosa, to no avail. Within three years, fifty percent of the settlers had moved back to urban cities in south Africa.
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Shaka Zulu is murdered by his half-brother, Dingane, after suffering a mental collapse. He was ruler of the Zulu Kingdom for over a decade.
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The British abolished slavery in the Cape Colony in 1834, but subsequently passed legislature ensuring white dominance in the region in 1841.
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Five thousand Boer farmers, or descendants of the original Dutch settlers, moved into lands outside of the British colonies in an effort to protest European urbanization and escape the new laws implemented by British officials.
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The Zulu Kingdom is defeated at the battle of Blood River by an army of Boers. Three Boers are injured, but managed to kill about three thousand Zulu warriors using advanced weaponry.
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This region north and east of the Orange River is where Boer settlers moved and fought with the native African population for control of the land. The British finally moved in and took over in 1843 in order to establish sugar plantations, but found resistance from the Zulu tribes.
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The British finally recognized the independence of the Orange Free State, an area settled by Afrikaners, and originally considered of little value until the discovery of diamonds in the late nineteenth century. It was officially recognized by the United States in 1871.
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Britain officially recognizes the Transvaal, or South African Republic, as an independent state. The region was originally established by Afrikaner, or Boer, settlers, and had little industry.
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A ship carrying three hundred Indian workers arrived in Durban in order to fill the British sugar plantantions' labor shortages. Over the next fifty years, 150,000 more Indian workers would arrive until they would eventually outnumber whites in southern Africa by 1893, when Mahatma Gandhi arrived in Durban.
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Diamonds were discovered in Kimberly in 1869, causing a scramble by the British, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State to annex this area, which was originally held by the Griqua.
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click here to watch a video on the battle of IsandlwanaThe British suffered a humilating defeat at the hands of the Zulu Kingdom, where two thousand British soldiers were attacked by a Zulu force of twenty thousand.
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Tensions between Boer settlers and the British finally broke in the First Boer War, after large deposits of gold and diamonds were found on lands surrounding the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Transvaal lost its independence in 1877 when Britain once again annexed it, which led to the outbreak of violence in 1880.
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George Harrison discovered gold on his ranch on a Sunday in March of 1886, thereby making the formerly unprofitable land of the ZAR and the Transvaal very desirable. While Harrison registered his claim with the Transvaal government, neighboring colonies also laid claim to his land, causing the First Boer War.
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The Jameson Raid took place during the interwar period between the First and Second Boer Wars. In an attempt to annnex the Transvaal, a British commander took a small number of his forces to the Transvaal in order to incite a rebellion by other British workers living there. While it failed to do so, it was a deciding factor in the start of the Second Boer War.
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The conflict between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State against the British Empire finally erupted into violence during the Second Boer War, which ended in 1902 with the annexation of both by the British. All three colonies would eventually be united in 1910 into the Union of South Africa. The Second Boer War was much a continuation of the First Boer War, however, the boers underestimated their British rivals and ended up losing, killing nearly 26,000 women and children and 24,000 soldiers.
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Pretoria was the last major urban center of the Boers to fall the the British during the Second Beor War, however, Boer guerillas continued to fight it out for another two years, until 1902, when a peace treaty was signed. While this did not stop all of the violence, to did bring some sense of security to the settlers.Picture slide of the boer wars. discription tells all about them.
