South African Federation
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territory lay to the South, and they knew that we would defend them against these men. In Australia we had nothing but a few miserable blacks, who could hardly use even bows and arrows in fight. In New Zealand we had a more warlike branch of the same race, called the Maoris, to deal with. But in South Africa we had not only really fierce savages like Zulus and Kaffirs, but also a large population of Dutch farmers and traders, who had been settled there since the middle of the seventeenth century.
The Dutch Boers.These were called the ‘Boers’; they thoroughly disliked our rule, and they were continually retiring farther and farther from Capetown into the interior of the continent. They treated the native Kaflirs very badly, and objected when we tried to protect these against them. Besides ‘Cape Colony’ (at the Cape of Good Hope itself), there were Dutch or half-Dutch States at Natal, on the Orange River, and beyond the Vaal River. One by one, in the reign of Victoria, each of these was annexed by Great Britain, and the last years of our great Queen were made sorrowful by the war which we had to fight against these brave, dogged and cunning Dutch farmers of the Transvaal. This war, though against a mere handful of men, strained the resources of Great Britain to the utmost; it showed us how very badly equipped we were for war upon any serious scale; but it also led to a great outburst of patriotism all over the Empire, and our other colonies sent hundreds of their best young men to help us. The South African Federation.In the end we won, and peace was signed in 1902; a ‘Federation’ of all the South African colonies with a central Parliament at Capetown has recently been concluded, and the hatred between British and Dutch