Historical Context
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was established in 1602. The Netherlands’ Government granted it a monopoly to the spice trade in East Asia and it dominated European trade in that market during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its charter also gave it powers to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, mint money, establish colonies and enslave indigenous peoples.
In 1649, a decision was made to establish a refreshment station on the southern tip of Africa to supply VOC ships en route between East Asia and the Netherlands. In 1652, an expedition of ninety Calvinist settlers established the station at the Cape of Good Hope.
The settlers were apathetic towards developing and improving the station and in 1685 a commission was set up with the aim of attracting more progressive settlers to the settlement. This coincided with a resurgent persecution of Protestants (known as Huguenots) in France. Large numbers fled their country to settle in other parts of the world, including the Cape. By the end of 1689, Huguenots made up nearly twenty per cent of the white population at the station at the Cape of Good Hope. The Huguenots were
Source: http://www.warmuseum.ca/
soon fully integrated into the Dutch community, aided by shared religious beliefs and a
VOC policy that schools taught exclusively in Dutch.
Increasing dissatisfaction among the settlers with the governance by the VOC eventually evolved into an aversion of imposed government and libertarian viewpoints that became characteristic of the Dutch farmers (Boers). Seeking to escape the governance of the VOC, the Boers migrated farther and farther east, away from the seat of government in Cape Town. The Company attempted to continue controlling these Boers by placing magistrates in the new settlements they established. In 1780, it declared the Great Fish River as the boundary to the colony. The new boundary was established partly in order to avoid conflict with the Bantu tribes that were advancing southwards down the east coast of Southern Africa.
In 1795, the Netherlands fell to Napoleon Bonaparte and the British sent their army to Cape Town to secure the colony against the French. Taking advantage of the situation, the Boers of the frontier districts in the east of the Cape Colony established independent governments at Swellendam and Graaff Reinet. In response, the British sent an army against the Boers and returned the towns to the Cape Colony. However, the Boers subsequently rose in revolt in 1799, and again in 1801. In 1803, the colony was returned to the Batavian Republic, a Dutch vassal state of the French. By 1806, resurgent hostility between the British and French led to another British occupation of the colony and in 1814 the Dutch government formally ceded sovereignty of the Cape to the British.
To strengthen its position within the colony, the British Government encouraged its own citizens to settle in the colony and large numbers arrived through Port Elizabeth in 1820. The Boer community, especially those along the eastern frontier, became increasingly dissatisfied with the situation and between 1830 and 1840 a Great Trek took place in which an estimated twelve thousand Boers left the Cape for the South African interior. These pioneers, or Voortrekkers, entered a land that had been subjected to many Bantu wars, forced migrations and famines – a period known to the indigenous people as the Difaqane or mfecane. Its effect was to greatly weaken their social structures, creating conditions that allowed the Voortrekkers to displace them with little effort, the exceptions being the Ndebele, the Basotho and the Zulus.
The Voortrekkers first halted near present-day Bloemfontein and established a Boer republic. However, following disagreements among their leadership, various Voortrekker groups split away, with some continuing north across the Vaal River and others east across the Drakensberg mountain range into Zululand. The latter came into bloody conflict with the Zulu Nation, but eventually the Zulu king, Mpande, allowed them to establish the Natalia Republic in 1839. In 1843, the Republic was annexed by Britain and most of the Boers left for the Transvaal to join the Boers who had settled there. The Boer territories of the Transvaal and Orange Free State were officially recognised as independent by Britain in 1852 and 1854, respectively. Their independence was also recognised by other nations, including the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium and the United States of America. In 1857, they united to form the South African Republic.
In 1877, Britain annexed the South African Republic on the basis that annexation would avoid a war between the Boers and the Zulus and also because the Republic was bankrupt. The Boers viewed this as an act of aggression and the episode culminated in the First Anglo-Boer War, or the War of Independence, of 1881. The British were defeated at the Battle of Majuba Hill (27 February 1881) and sued for peace. One consequence of the war was that the Transvaal and the Orange Free State reverted to two separate, independent sovereign states, the former being known as the South African Republic.
In 1886, the discovery of huge reserves of gold within the Republic caused a gold rush and thousands of prospectors and others entered the country. They subsequently became disgruntled about the manner in which they were treated by the Republic’s Government. Their discontent played into the hands of those expounding British imperialist and expansionist views, most notably the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes. As tensions increased, it became inevitable that war would result, and ever more apparent to the Orange Free State that its position of neutrality was untenable.
War was declared on 11 October 1899.
​