South Africa

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				South Africa



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The historical events in 19th century South Africa are marked by the "Groot Trek". Starting in 1835, more than 10,000 Boers, the Voortrekkers, left the Cape Colony with their families and went north and north-east. The reasons for this mass exodus were their economic problems, the threatening danger of conflict with the Xhosa, who settled on the other side of the Fish River, and primarily, discontent with the English colonial authorities who didn't provide sufficient protection and had forbidden the slave trade and postulated the equality of whites and non-whites.

Towards the end of the 18th century, all over southern Africa small tribal groups were amalgamating into larger communities. This was by no means a peaceful process, but the result of protracted wars. The rise of the Zulu Kingdom falls into this period. Through incredible atrocities and cruelties the infamous Zulu warrior Shaka gained control over a number of Zulu clans. He expanded his territory systematically. Shaka's warriors raided Zulu villages and burnt them down. Women and children were gored to death; young men were called up and chiefs tortured and forced into allegiance.

What are them British kids up to now?

From about 1835 colonial boundaries in British South Africa expanded continually but against the will of the Colonial Office in London. It was not a time of prosperity in Britain but, since the Cape Colony was neither self-sufficient nor self-governing, all territorial expansion had to be financed by the British tax-payer. It was commonly believed, on the other hand, that many of the Cape merchants, especially those in Grahamstown, were war-mongers who deliberately provoked frontier wars because of the lucrative trade that would follow with the presence of so many imperial troops in the country.

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