South African Republic

North of the Vaal River, Boer settlers set up their own landlocked state in 1852, the South African Republic, often called the Transvaal. Its fifty-year history was dominated by relations with Britain: annexed in 1877, it regained self-rule after the First Boer War, became rich on gold, and was finally conquered in the Second Boer War and absorbed into the British Empire in 1902. Its territory now forms much of north-eastern South Africa.

The Boers of the interior descended from Dutch-speaking colonists of the Cape, which Britain had taken in 1806. Unhappy with British rule, many moved inland in the Great Trek. On 17 January 1852, in the Sand River Convention, Britain recognised the independence of the Boers living beyond the Vaal. Marthinus Wessel Pretorius was elected the first president in 1857; the capital moved from Potchefstroom to Pretoria, and the parliament, the Volksraad, had 24 members. The constitution of 1858 fixed the name Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. The neighbouring republics of Lydenburg and Utrecht joined in 1859, and a civil war followed in 1861 to 1864.

All able-bodied burghers served in commandos under elected officers, and the field cornet acted as both local commander and administrator. Elected office tended to go to wealthy, well-connected families. Citizenship and land ownership were restricted by law to white people, and the constitution explicitly rejected equality between white and non-white inhabitants in church or state. Later laws limited the rights of Asian immigrants. Wars against African neighbours, including the Pedi under Sekhukhune from 1876, recur throughout the republic's history. Dutch was the sole official language from 1888. According to the 1897 state almanac, the republic had about 245,000 white and 622,000 black inhabitants.

In the 1870s Britain pursued a plan to confederate southern Africa. With the republic close to bankruptcy and its war with Sekhukhune unresolved, Sir Theophilus Shepstone proclaimed it a British colony on 12 April 1877. Burghers met at Paardekraal in December 1880 and placed power in a triumvirate of Paul Kruger, Piet Joubert and Pretorius. In the war that followed, Boer forces won at Laing's Nek, Ingogo and, on 27 February 1881, at Majuba. Britain made peace; the Pretoria Convention of 1881 restored self-government under British suzerainty, and the London Convention of 27 February 1884 dropped the reference to suzerainty and the republic's old name returned.

The Witwatersrand gold rush, dated to 1886 in most accounts, transformed a poor farming state. Johannesburg, founded that year, grew within a decade to about 100,000 people. Most miners were immigrants, known as uitlanders, whose limited voting rights became a source of conflict with Britain. A railway to Lourenço Marques in Portuguese Mozambique gave the republic a port outside British control.

After the failed Jameson Raid of December 1895, Britain pressed for votes for the uitlanders. Kruger refused, and war began in 1899. British forces occupied Pretoria in 1900, but Boer commandos fought on as guerrillas. Under Lord Kitchener, the British responded by burning farms and interning civilians in camps. Commonly cited figures put deaths in the camps for Boer civilians at around 26,000, most of them children, and at about 20,000 in separate camps for black Africans; figures for the latter are less certain. The Treaty of Vereeniging, signed on 31 May 1902, ended the Second Boer War, and the republic became the Transvaal Colony.

The Transvaal joined the Union of South Africa in 1910. During World War I, the Maritz rebellion of 1914–15 tried and failed to restore the republic. Its four-colour flag, the Vierkleur, formed part of the South African flag from 1928 to 1994.

Our 1878, 1880 and 1900 maps show the republic as Transvaal. In 1878 and 1880 the territory was in fact under British annexation, and by late 1900 it was largely under British occupation. It borders the Orange Free State, Swaziland, the Zulu Kingdom and Portuguese East Africa, with the Cape Colony further south.