Each led to an annexation, till at last all the country south of the Orange River had passed into the hands of the settlers, though large reserved tracts were set aside for the native tribes. Meanwhile the Dutch and English colonists held apart, and have always remained more or less estranged. The first rapid development of the settlement began in 1867, when the discovery of diamond-mines in Griqualand West, beyond the Orange River, led to the northward extension of the British boundary, to the grave discontent of the Boers of the Orange Free State (1872). The great mining town of Kimberley has arisen as the centre of this arid but busy district.
The most formidable difficulty which the English have met in South Africa came from the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877. The Boers of that republic having engaged themselves in dangerous wars with the natives, Lord Beaconsfield's government resolved to place them under British rule. This was done, and, as heirs to the Boers' quarrels, we fought out the sanguinary Zulu war of 1879.
The Zulus, an immigrant tribe from the north, had built up a military monarchy over their neighbours under a despot named Chaka, who had disciplined them and formed them into regiments in imitation of European organization. We made war on his grandson Cetewayo, and incurred, on our first meeting with the formidable Zulu army, the disaster of Isandula, where a whole British battalion and 1000 native auxiliaries were exterminated to the last man. It required the dispatch of 10,000 men from England under Sir Garnet Wolseley, and three sharp battles at Ekowe, Kambula, and Ulundi to break Cetewayo's army and restore the prestige of the British arms.
Hardly was the Zulu war over when the Boers of the Transvaal revolted, and defeated the small British force in Natal at Laing's Neck and Majuba Hill. We have related elsewhere how the Gladstone government thereupon made peace, and gave the Boers their independence. [71]
The history of British Africa during the years 1885-95 was mainly the story of a scramble with the other European powers for the possession of the unoccupied parts of the continent. Since the Germans began to seize large tracts of southern Africa, and the French to extend their power into the Sahara and the valley of the Niger, the British government was forced in self-defence to make similar seizures, in order to prevent its colonies from being cut off from the interior. This has resulted in the annexation of three great tracts—one reaching from the Orange River and Griqualand up to the Zambezi, and circling round three sides of the Transvaal Republic; a second round Lake Nyassa; a third further north, including a slip of coast about Mombasa and Witu, and running up inland to the great equatorial lakes which feed the Nile, so as to include the kingdom of Uganda. At the same time the Niger Company has been allowed to establish a protectorate over the lower valley of that great river, where a colony is being built up which throws into the shade the old pestilential seaports at Sierra Leone and on the Gold Coast, which were once the only British possessions in Guinea. The annals of South Africa from the day of the Jameson raid (December 29, 1895) onward have possessed so much more than local importance, that they will be found recorded in the general chapter dealing with the closing years of Queen Victoria.
The history of the British colonies in North America is of a very different character from that of British South Africa. We have spoken in an earlier page of the gallant aid which the colonists gave to England in her struggle with the United States during the years 1812-15. When the excitement of this war had died down, there arose a slowly increasing estrangement between the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada; the English settlers of the former and the old French habitans of the latter were separated from each other by race, language, religion, and prejudices. They were, moreover, administered as wholly different colonies. Gradually a dangerous spirit developed itself among the French Canadians, who complained that their governors and officials were unsympathetic, and chafed against the limited self-government allowed them by Pitt's Canada Act of 1791. Even some of the settlers of the Upper Province expressed disloyal sentiments on this latter grievance, and spoke of asking for annexation to the United States.
This discontent took shape in the Canadian rebellion of 1837, a movement almost entirely confined to the French-speaking districts, and easily suppressed by the loyalists, aided by a few British troops. After investigating the grievances which had led to the rising, the Home Government resolved to unite the two provinces into a single colony, that the French districts might be more closely linked to and controlled by the English. At the same time a more liberal measure of self-government was conceded. The constitution for the future comprised an elective Lower House and an Upper House of life-members, who stood to the governor much as the two Houses of the English Parliament stand to the Queen (1840).
The most important event in the history of British North America has been the federation of all its colonies into the single "Dominion of Canada" in the years 1867-1871. The danger which the British possessions had experienced during the threatened war with the United States in 1862 and the Fenian invasions of 1866-7 impelled the provinces towards the union which gives strength. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, consented to federate themselves with Canada. Only the remote and thinly populated fishing-station of Newfoundland has preferred to remain outside the alliance. The four other colonies send deputies to the Dominion Parliament, which meets at Ottawa, though they retain for local purposes provincial legislatures of their own.
The Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885, so that free communication exists across the whole continent from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. Since then the broad plains between the great lakes and the Rocky Mountains are being rapidly peopled. The old settlement of Manitoba and the newer provinces of Assinboia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta are all being put under the plough or turned into cattle runs.
Our general survey of the history of the British colonial empire brings us to the topic which will be all-important in the twentieth century—the practicability of Imperial Federation. At the present moment the Crown is the only formal link between the many colonies and possessions over which the Union Jack floats. Is a closer connection desirable, and practicable? May we look forward to a firm and well-compacted league of all the British lands? Such a union might almost control the world, but it is hard to bring about. First among the difficulties in the way is the doubt whether Great Britain would ever allow herself to be outvoted by her colonies in an Imperial Parliament, and whether Canada would submit to the dictation of Australia, or Australia to the dictation of South Africa, in matters where their interests clashed. Next comes the question of free trade and protection. Most of the colonies are zealously protectionist in spirit, and as a condition of federation they would probably demand that the mother country should give their goods a preference over those of foreign states, by means of a revised customs tariff. A third set of objections turn on the likelihood of the colonies refusing to countenance the purely European policy of England. A fourth and formidable question is the place which India would have to take in the confederacy; she is not yet fit for self-government and equal partnership with the rest. If she were, the votes of her 250,000,000 inhabitants would swamp those of all the other members of the league. Yet none of these difficulties appear wholly insuperable. The idea of federation is in the air both in Great Britain and in her daughter-states. The day has long gone by when a not inconsiderable number of English statesmen looked forward to the time when the colonies should, as it was phrased, "cut the painter" and steer their own course. The consciousness of common origin and interests grows stronger; the interdependence of the mother country and her colonies is more realized; the development of rapid communication by sea and land makes the distance between the various British communities in different hemispheres less felt as every year rolls by. Facts like the splendid aid granted by all the colonies for the late South African War, speak for themselves. But there are still difficulties in the way. If local jealousies prevail, and the English-speaking peoples drift asunder, each must be content to play a comparatively unimportant part in the annals of the twentieth century. If, on the other hand, the project of federation can be worked out to a successful end, the future of the world lies in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race.