el
movement in Cape Colony, where Dutch and British were learning to live
peaceably together. The Boer extremists also began to look about for
allies, and were tempted to hope for aid from Germany, who had just
established herself in South-West Africa. Full of pride, the
Transvaalers, though they already held a great and rich country which
was very thinly peopled, began to push outwards, and especially to
threaten the native tribes in the barren region of Bechuanaland, which
lay between the Transvaal and the German territory. To this Britain
replied by establishing a protectorate over Bechuanaland (1884) at the
request of native chiefs: the motive of this annexation was, not
suspicion of Germany, for this suspicion did not yet exist, but the
desire to protect the native population.

Kruger's vague project of a Dutch South Africa would probably have
caused little anxiety so long as his resources were limited to the
strength of the thinly scattered Boer farmers. But the situation was
fundamentally altered by the discovery of immense deposits first of
diamonds and then of gold in South Africa, and most richly of all in
the Rand district of the Transvaal. These discoveries brought a rapid
inrush of European miners, financiers, and their miscellaneous
camp-followers, and in a few years a very rich and populous European
community had established itself in the Transvaal, and had created as
its centre the mushroom new city of Johannesburg (founded 1884). These
immigrants, who came from many countries, but especially from Britain,
changed the situation in the Transvaal; it seemed as though the
majority among the white men in that state would soon be British.

A simple and primitive organisation of government, such as sufficed for
the needs of Boer farmers, was manifestly inadequate for the needs of
the new population, which included, in the nature of things, many
undesirable elements; and it was natural that the mining population
should desire to be brought under a more modern type of government, or
to obtain an effective share in the control of their own affairs. But
this was precisely what the Boers of Kruger's way of thinking were
determined to refuse them. They were resolved that Boer ascendancy in
the Transvaal should not be weakened. They therefore denied to the new
immigrants all the rights of citizenship, and would not even permit
them to manage the local affairs of Johannesburg. At the same time
Kruger imposed heavy t