Transvaal (till 1900 THE SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC), a British crown colony in the highlands of South-east Africa, bounded on the N. by Rhodesia, on the E. by Portuguese East Africa and Zululand, on the SE. by Natal, on the S. by the Orange River Colony, and on the W. by Bechuanaland. The length of the country from the Vaal River, its southern boundary, to the Limpopo River, which marks its northern limit, is over 400 miles, while a line between the extreme southern and eastern points running from 25° to 32° E. long. reaches 700 miles. The area is 120,000 square miles, about the size of the British Islands.
Previous to 1830 the land was a terra incognita so far as European knowledge or influence went, and was inhabited by several clans of the Bantu race, speaking dialects of the Bantu tongue. These clans were ruled by a branch of the Zulu race under the paramount chief Umziligase. The country was noted for its abundance of game; on the great undulating plains of the High Veldt or plateau (from 4000 to 7000 feet above the level of the sea) many varieties of the antelope family roamed in tens of thousands. In the valleys and well-timbered savannahs of the low country large game, consisting of the giraffe, elephant, buffalo, lion, leopard, &c., abounded, causing many parts to be dangerous for human habitation. The large rivers were full of alligators, hippopotami, and fowl; indeed, early hunters such as Harris and Gordon Cumming found here a sportsman's paradise. The fifth decade of the 19th century saw the first concerted intrusion of Europeans on this wild scene. A few Cape Colony farmers, offended by some regulations promulgated by certain crown officials, sacrificed their land and belongings, harnessed their cattle to their long lumbering wagons, and, taking with them their families and the most rudimentary necessaries of life (as well as a good supply of lead and powder and a tried musket), struck for the north, preferring the chances of death by wild animals or wild men to the irritating exactions of petty officialdom.
The pastoral wealth of the country was such that during the subsequent years on to 1870 the stream of Boer voortrekkers (Anglice, 'pioneers') fitfully continued to enter, fight for, and possess the land. They had a number of sanguinary battles with Umziligase and his paramount clan. After great slaughter of both sexes and all ages on both sides, the black chief and his people were forced to migrate over the Limpopo, where they peopled the territory of Matabeleland now occupied by their descendants. The other native clans lived on with the Boers, and were gradually subdued or driven out. Native wars were of frequent occurrence, and little progress was made in the development of the country. The Boers then, just as they are to-day, were essentially pioneers. They had none of the trader's instinct, and they did not till the soil to any great extent. Their land rights being scattered far and wide over a country without communications and with no markets to speak of, consumption of soil products was limited to the wants of the individual producer. The little commerce was in the hands of British firms, and nine-tenths of the trade of the country, export and import, remains in British hands.
In 1877, owing to an exhausted public treasury and accumulated debts brought about by chronic native wars, the republic was on the eve of dissolution, and the country about to relapse into barbarism. To avert this catastrophe the British government assumed the care of it, subjugated by imperial forces and Swazi levies certain rebellious natives, and put the finances of the state in order. The promises to the Boers, however, on the subject of self-governing institutions made for the home government at the time the country was annexed were not carried out. Arbitrary officials and military martinets were appointed to rule on behalf of the crown. By reason of their lack of tact, as well as of irritating regulations and the non-fulfilment of political engagements, friction was created between the governing and the governed—the English and the Boers. The spark which caused the explosion that had its final and humiliating episode in Majuba (q.v.) was an ill-timed enforcement of a petty tax. The English officials called out the Queen's troops in ignorance of the fact that the whole state felt sympathetic with a now common cause. Then followed the Transvaal war, the death of General Colley, and the signing of terms of peace, resulting in the conventions of 1880 and 1884 between England and the Transvaal. The first gave the Boers republican rights, but retained British control over boundaries, native affairs, and foreign relations. The 1884 convention restricted British suzerainty to the control of foreign relations. The rapid development of the gold industry greatly increased the financial prosperity, but introduced elements of difficulty into public life. For, as the Boers reserved all political power to themselves, the British and other 'Uitlanders,' to whom the wealth of the country is mainly due, resented not merely their exclusion from political privileges, but the oppressive action of the government in regard to mining regulations, monopolies for the sale of dynamite at exorbitant prices, the unfair incidence of the taxation (the new-comers bearing the great bulk of the burden), and other grievances. The discontent of the Uitlanders, a large majority of the total population, centred principally at Johannesburg, took overt shape in 1895, and led to the disastrous invasion by Dr Jameson in December (see JAMESON). Many acts of petty tyranny further accentuated the discontent, and the shooting of a British subject named Edgar by a Boer policeman finally roused the Uitlanders. A petition signed by 21,000 British subjects was sent to Her Majesty through the High Commissioner in March 1899, pointing out that their grievances, instead of being remedied as promised, had rather been aggravated since the Jameson Raid; the enforced submission of the High Court to the Raad, and the fact that trial by jury meant trial by Boers, made justice impossible. Negotiations ensued between the Colonial Office and the Boer government, which repudiated British suzerainty and claimed the position of a sovereign international state. A conference between Sir Alfred Milner, the High Commissioner, and President Kruger was held at Bloemfontein (31st May) to consider certain franchise and other proposals, but without effect, the suzerainty being still repudiated and the arbitration suggested by the Transvaal government being rejected by the Home authorities; and relations rapidly got more strained. In September the Orange Free State announced its determination at all hazards to support the Transvaal, which sent large bodies of burghers to the frontier and seized £800,000 of gold from the mines. The British government in reply called out 25,000 of the reserve forces. On October 9th the Transvaal presented a note demanding that all troops on the frontiers be instantly withdrawn, that all reinforcements sent to South Africa since June 1st be removed, that none of the troops then on the high seas be landed in South Africa, and requiring an answer within two days. As it was out of the question for Britain to concede these demands, the Boer ultimatum was virtually a declaration of war, and on the 11th the Boer forces invaded Natal and the burghers of both republics were called out for service. From the state of their preparations, the number and quality of their guns and rifles, and the enormous quantity of ammunition and other stores, it was seen that the republics had been secretly preparing for war for years. On account of the distance from Britain and the difficulties of transport the Boers had considerable successes at first, especially in Natal, where they invested Ladysmith and 9000 men; but as the British forces increased till nearly 250,000 men were in the field under Lord Roberts, the tide of war turned against the Boers. Kimberley (16th February), Ladysmith (28th February), and Mafeking (17th May) were relieved; Cronje was captured (27th February) with 4000 men; Bloemfontein (13th March), Johannesburg (31st May), and Pretoria (5th June) were occupied, and the South African Republic and the Orange Free State were proclaimed British colonies. On the collapse of the Boer forces President Kruger fled to Lorenzo Marques and thence to Europe, where he arrived on 22nd November, seeking in vain to secure European intervention. The war afterwards drifted into a series of guerilla raids by small bodies of Boers, the British forces being under the command of Lord Kitchener after Lord Roberts returned home in December to assume the position of Commander-in-chief.
The revenue is in a large measure derived from the gold-mines, of which in 1891 the output was valued at £2,924,305, and in 1898 at £16,240,630. In 1898 the revenue was £3,983,560, and the expenditure £3,971,473; while the public debt amounted to only £2,660,400. Coal is found near the gold-fields, the annual output being over 1,600,000 tons. There are also deposits of silver with copper and lead, of iron, coal, cobalt, and other metals and minerals. The country is rich in corn and pasture-land. The gold has been the principal export; the imports had before the war an annual value of from £10,000,000 to £14,000,000. The climate is, as a rule, healthy, and in some parts exceptionally bracing. The population was estimated in 1898 at 1,094,156, of whom 345,397 were whites and 748,759 coloured people, including Kaffirs and Indian and Chinese coolies. In 1899 only 30 per cent. of the whites were Boers, the others being mostly British born or colonial, with immigrants from other European countries and from America. The Boers belong to the several divisions of the Dutch Reformed Church. The natural seaports of the Transvaal are Delagoa Bay and Durban, Pretoria being distant 348 miles from the former and 441 miles from the latter. From Delagoa Bay, Durban, and the Cape Colony ports lines of railway extend to Johannesburg and Pretoria (since 1892-95). Pretoria (pop. 15,000) is the seat of government; Johannesburg, the great centre of mining and finance, has within a radius of three miles a population of 105,000.
See J. Nixon, The Complete Story of the Transvaal (1885); Mather's Golden South Africa (new ed. 1889); C. J. Alford, Geological Features of the Transvaal (1891); W. L. Distant, A Naturalist in the Transvaal (1892); Hatch and Chalmers, The Gold-mines of the Rand (1895); G. M. Theal, History of South Africa (1887-93, including a History of the Boers as vol. v.); C. G. Thomas, Johannesburg in Arms (1896); J. J. Regan, Boer and Uitlander (1896); W. E. Fisher, The Transvaal and the Boers (1896). The war of 1899-1901 produced a large literature, including the Times history, that by Mr Cunliffe, Fitzpatrick's Transvaal from Within (hostile to the Boers), Voigt's Fifty Years of the Republic in South Africa (hostile to Britain), A. H. Keane's Boer States, Conan Doyle's Great Boer War, &c.