Boer Republics
After defeating the Zulu and the recovery of the treaty between Dingane and Retief, the Voortrekkers proclaimed the Boer state of the Natalia Republic. Soon afterward, in 1843, Britain annexed this territory and the Boers who were not warriors vacated.
Due to the return of British rule, Boers fled to the frontiers to the north-west of the Drakensberg mountains, and onto the highveld of the Transvaal and Transoranje "Transorangia". These areas were lightly occupied due to conflicts in the course of the Mfecane. Some Boers ventured far beyond the present-day borders of South Africa, north as far as present-day Zambia and Angola. Others reached the Portuguese colony of Delagoa Bay, later called Lourenço Marques and subsequently Maputo - the capital of Mozambique.
The Boers created independent states in what is now South Africa: de Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (the South African Republic) and the Orange Free State were the most prominent and lasted the longest.
The discovery of goldfields awakened British interest in the Boer republics.
When the British annexed these territories, the two Boer Wars resulted: The First Boer War (1880–1881) and the Second Boer War (1899–1902). The Boers won the first war and regained their independence temporarily. The second ended with British victory and annexation of the Boer areas into the British colonies. The British employed scorched-earth tactics and held many Boers in concentration camps as they tried to take control. An estimated 27,000 Boer civilians (mainly women and children under sixteen) died in the camps from hunger and disease. This was 15 percent of the Boer population of the republics.
Read more about this topic: Afrikaner People, History, Migrations
Famous quotes containing the word republics:
“Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)