A set of epic struggles to create a single unified state dominates the southern part of the African continent in the nineteenth century.

British expansion into southern Africa is fueled by three prime factors: first, the desire to control the trade routes to India that pass around the Cape; second, the discovery in 1868 of huge mineral deposits of diamonds around Kimberley on the joint borders of the South African Republic (called the Transvaal by the British), Orange Free State and the Cape Colony, and thereafter in 1886 in the Transvaal of a major gold find, all of which offer enormous wealth and power; and thirdly the race against other European colonial powers, as part of a general colonial expansion in Africa.

Other potential colonizers include Portugal, who already control West Africa (modern day Angola) and East Africa (modern day Mozambique), Germany (modern day Namibia), and further north, Belgium (modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo) and France (West and Equatorial Africa, and Madagascar).

Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British Secretary for Native Affairs in Natal, annexes the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic), for Britain using a special warrant.

The annexation, partly spurred by the Boers' failure to subjugate the Pedi, is a convenient way of resolving the border dispute between the Boers and the Zulus.

This also saves the Transvaal from financial ruin, as its government has little money.

The Transvaal Boers object, but as long as the Zulu threat remains, they fear that if they take up arms to resist the British annexation actively, King Cetshwayo and the Zulus would take the opportunity to attack.

They also fear a war on two fronts, namely that the local tribes would seize the opportunity to rebel and the simmering unrest in the Transvaal would be re-ignited.he British annexation nevertheless results in resentment against the British occupation and a growing nationalism.

The Transvaal Boers led by Vice President Paul Kruger will hereafter elect to deal first with the perceived Zulu threat to the status quo, and local issues, before directly opposing the British annexation.

Kruger makes two visits to London for direct talks with the British government.

Kruger, whose family was of German descent, was born at Bulhoek, on his grandfather's farm, which was approximately fifteen kilometers west of the town of Steynsburg and one hundred kilometers to the north of Cradock in the Eastern Cape Province, and he had grown up on the farm Vaalbank.

He had received only three months of formal education but from life on the veld had become proficient in hunting and horse riding.

Kruger's father, Casper Kruger, had joined the trek party of Hendrik Potgieter when the Great Trek started in 1835.

The trekkers had crossed the Vaal River in 1838, and had at first stayed in the area that is known today as Potchefstroom.

The trekkers had taken advantage of the political vacuum left after the Zulu wars and their aftermath, and had easily overcome the indigenous peoples.

Kruger's father had later decided to settle in the district now known as Rustenburg.

At the age of sixteen, Kruger had been entitled to choose a farm for himself at the foot of the Magaliesberg, where he had settled in 1841.

The following year, he had married Anna Maria Etresia du Plessis (1826-1846), and they had gone together with Paul Kruger's father to live in the Eastern Transvaal.

After the family had returned to Rustenburg, Kruger's wife and infant died in January, 1846.

He then married his second wife, Gezina Susanna Fredrika Wilhelmina du Plessis (1831-1901) in 1847, with whom he will remain until her death in 1901.

The couple will have seven daughters and nine sons, some dying in infancy.

A deeply religious man, Kruger claims to have only read one book, the Bible.

He also claims to know most of it by heart.

He is a founding member of the Reformed Church in South Africa.

He had begun his military service as a field cornet in the commandos and eventually became Commandant-General of the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek (South African Republic), or ZAR.

He was appointed member of a commission of the Volksraad, the republican parliament that was to draw up a constitution.

People had begun to take notice of the young man, who had played a prominent part in ending the quarrel between the Transvaal leader, Stephanus Schoeman, and M.W. Pretorius.

Kruger had been present at the Sand River Convention in 1852.

Kruger had resigned as Commandant-General, and for a time had held no office and retired to his farm, Boekenhoutfontein.

However, he had been elected as a member of the Executive Council in 1874 and shortly after became the Vice-President of the Transvaal.

Paul Kruger meets in Pietermaritzburg with the British representatives, Sir Henry Bartle Frere and Lieutenant General Frederic Thesiger (shortly to inherit the title of Lord Chelmsford) in September 1878, on his return from the second visit to London, n order to update them on the progress of the talks.

Sir Theophilus Shepstone, in his capacity as British governor of Natal, has his own concerns about the expansion of the Zulu army under King Cetshwayo and the potential threat to Natal especially given the adoption by the Zulus of muskets and other modern weapons.

Shepstone had been present at Cetshwayo's coronation, but has turned on the Zulus as he feels he is undermined by Cetshwayo's skillful negotiating for land area compromised by encroaching Boers.

In his new role of Administrator of the Transvaal, he is now responsible for protecting the Transvaal and has direct involvement in the Zulu border dispute from the side of the Transvaal.

Persistent Boer representations and Kruger's diplomatic maneuverings add to the pressure.

There are incidents involving Zulu paramilitary actions on either side of the Transvaal/Natal border, and Sir Shepstone increasingly begins to regard King Cetshwayo (who now finds no defender in Natal save Bishop Colenso) as having permitted such "outrages," and to be in a "defiant mood."

Disraeli's Tory administration in London does not want a war with the Zulus.

"The fact is," writes Sir Michael Hicks Beach, the colonial secretary in November 1878, "that matters in Eastern Europe and India... were so serious an aspect that we cannot have a Zulu war in addition to other greater and too possible troubles."

Sir Henry Bartle Frere, however, had been sent to the Cape Colony as governor and high commissioner in 1877 with the brief of creating a Confederation of South Africa from the various British colonies, Boer Republics and native states.

He concludes that the powerful Zulu kingdom stands in the way of this, and so is receptive to Sir Shepstone's arguments that King Cetshwayo and his Zulu army pose a challenge to the colonial powers’ peaceful occupation of the region.

Bartle Frere had begun to demand from the Zulus reparations for border infractions, mainly angering Cetshwayo, who keeps his calm until December 11, 1878, when Frere, notwithstanding the reluctance of the British government to start yet another colonial war, presents Cetshwayo with an ultimatum that the Zulu army be effectively be disbanded and the Zulus accept a British resident.

This is unacceptable to the Zulus as it effectively means that Cetshwayo, had he agreed, would lose his throne.

Cetshwayo asks for more time but Frere refuses.

Wolseley, promoted to brevet general while serving in South Africa on June 4, 1879, had superseded Lord Chelmsford in command of the forces in the Zulu War, and as governor of Natal and the Transvaal and the High Commissioner of Southern Africa.

Upon his arrival at Durban in July, he had found that the war in Zululand was practically over, and, after effecting a temporary settlement, he had gone on to the Transvaal.

Having reorganized the administration there and reduced the powerful chief, Sekhukhune, to submission, he returns home in May 1880 and is appointed Quartermaster-General to the Forces on July 1, 1880.

For his services in South Africa, he receives the South Africa Medal with clasp, and is advanced to GCB on June 19, 1880.

The Boer uprising has caught by surprise the six small British forts scattered around Transvaal, housing some two thousand troops between them, including irregulars with as few as fifty men at Lydenburg in the east where Anstruther had just left.

Being isolated, and with so few troops, all the forts can do is prepare for sieges, and wait to be relieved.

The other five forts, with a minimum of fifty miles between any two, are at Wakkerstroom and Standerton in the south, Marabastadt in the north and Potchefstroom and Rustenburg in the west.

British army garrisons all over the Transvaal become besieged from December 22, 1880 to January 6, 1881.

Although generally called a war, the actual engagements are of a relatively minor nature, considering the few men involved on both sides and the short duration of the combat, lasting some ten weeks of sporadic action.

At the Battle of Laing's Nek on January 28, 1881, the Natal Field Force under Major-General Sir George Pomeroy Colley attempts with cavalry and infantry attacks to break through the Boer positions on the Drakensberg mountain range to relieve their garrisons.

The British are repelled with heavy losses by the Boers under the command of Piet Joubert.

Of the four hundred and eighty British troops who make the charges, one hundred and fifty never return.

Furthermore, sharpshooting Boers have killed or wounded many senior officers.

Major-General Sir George Pomeroy Colley had sought refuge with the Natal Field Force at Mount Prospect, three miles to the south to await reinforcements.

However, Colley is soon back into action.

On February 7, a mail escort on its way to Newcastle had been attacked by the Boers and forced back to Mount Prospect.

The next day Colley, determined to keep his supplies and communication route open, escorts the mail wagon personally and this time with a larger escort.

At the Battle of Schuinshoogte (also known as Ingogo), the Boers attack the convoy at the Ingogo River crossing, but with a stronger force of some three hundred men.

The firepower is evenly matched and the fight continues for several hours, but the Boer marksmen dominate the action until darkness and a storm permits Colley and the remainder of his troops to retreat back to Mount Prospect.

In this engagement, the British lose one hundred and thirty-nine officers and men, half the original force that had set out to escort the mail convoy.

Hostilities had been suspended on February 14, awaiting the outcome of peace negotiations initiated by an offer from Paul Kruger.

Colley's promised reinforcements had arrived during this time with more to follow.

The British government in the meantime had offered a Royal Commission investigation and possible troop withdrawal, and their attitude toward the Boers is conciliatory.

Colley is critical of this stance and, while waiting for Kruger's final agreement, decides to attack again with a view to enabling the British government to negotiate from a position of strength.

Unfortunately, this results in the disaster of the Battle of Majuba Hill on February 27, 1881, the greatest humiliation for the British.

Amid great confusion and with casualties among his men rising, Colley attempts to order a fighting retreat, but is shot and killed by Boer marksmen.

The rest of the British force flees down the rear slopes of Majuba, where more are hit by the Boer marksmen, who had lined the summit in order to shoot at the retreating foe.

An abortive rearguard action is staged by the 15th King's Hussars and 60th rifles, who had marched from a support base at Mount Prospect, although this makes little impact on the Boer forces.

Two hundred and eighty-five Britons are killed, captured or wounded, including Captain Cornwallis Maude, son of Government Minister Cornwallis Maude, 1st Earl de Montalt.

The Boers suffer only one killed and five wounded.

As the British flee the hill, many are picked off by the superior rifles and marksmen of the Boers.

Several wounded soldiers soon find themselves surrounded by Boer soldiers and will later give their accounts of what they had seen.

Many of the Boers are simply farm boys armed with rifles.

It is thus a major hit on British prestige to have been defeated by a group of Dutch farm boys with a handful of older soldiers leading them.

Britain will never recover from the injury to its honor.

Although small in scope, the battle is historically significant for three reasons: It leads to the signing of a peace treaty and later the Pretoria Convention, between the British and the newly created South African Republic, ending the First Boer War.

The fire and movement ("vuur en beweeg" in Afrikaans) tactics employed by the Boers, especially Commandant Smit in his final assault on the hill, are years ahead of their time.

Coupled with the defeats at Laing's Nek and Schuinshoogte, this third crushing defeat at the hands of the Boers ratifies the strength of the Boers in the minds of the British, arguably to have consequences in the Second Anglo-Boer War.

"Remember Majuba" will become a rallying cry.

Hostilities continue until March 6, 1881, when a truce is declared, ironically on the same terms that Colley had disparaged.

The Transvaal forts have endured, contrary to Colley's forecast, with the sieges being generally uneventful, the Boers content to wait for hunger and sickness to strike.

The forts had suffered only light casualties as an outcome of sporadic engagements, except at Potchefstroom, where twenty-four were killed, and seventeen at Pretoria, in each case resulting from occasional raids on Boer positions.

The British government of William Gladstone is conciliatory as it realizes that any further action will require substantial troop reinforcements, and it is likely that the war would be costly, messy and protracted.

Unwilling to get bogged down in a distant war the British government orders a truce.

Under instructions from the British government, Sir Evelyn Wood (who had replaced Colley upon his death on February 27, 1881) signs an armistice to end the war, and subsequently a peace treaty is signed with Kruger at O'Neil's Cottage on March 6, bringing the war to an end on March 23, 1881.