The British in South Africa had initially attempted to strengthen their own position by extending colonial control beyond the Cape Colony's boundaries.

In 1848, after the northern frontier was threatened by fighting between Voortrekkers and Griqua on the Orange River and by continued competition for resources among settlers and Africans, the governor of the Cape Colony, Sir Harry Smith, had annexed all the land between the Orange and the Vaal rivers.

This area, which the British called the Orange River Sovereignty, comprised large numbers of Voortrekker communities and practically all of the Sotho state, Lesotho.

Smith, urged on by land-hungry white settlers, also annexed the Xhosa lands between the Keiskama and the Great Kei rivers that the British had first taken and then returned in 1835 and 1836.

Moreover, he sought to win a decisive military victory over the Xhosa and to break forever the power of their chiefs by pursuing a ruthless war against them from 1850 to 1852.