Further Developments
The further developments of the situation were peaceful. Lord Stanley, then Colonial Secretary, wrote a despatch on December 13, 1842, appointing Mr. Cloete as British Commissioner at Durban, and laying down definite and important rules in a new system of administration for the country. Under these instructions the white people were to be called together and given every opportunity for stating the nature of the institutions they desired, although full legislative power was not yet to be granted. "I think it probable," said Lord Stanley, "looking to the nature of the population, that they will desire those institutions to be founded on the Dutch rather than on the English model, and however little some of those institutions may be suited to a more advanced state of civilization, it is the desire of Her Majesty's Government that, in this respect, the contentment of the emigrants, rather than the abstract merits of the institutions, should guide our decision." There were, of course, to be certain limitations in this connection. No distinction or disqualification founded on "color, origin, language or creed," was to be recognized. No "aggression upon natives beyond the Colony" was to be tolerated or sanctioned. Slavery in any shape or form was to be "absolutely unlawful." But the Boers were incorrigible. They would not meet with the British Commissioner or fairly discuss his terms. They would not accept the principle of racial and religious equality under any condition of affairs. They would not accept any restriction upon their right to take whatever territory they liked from the natives outside of Natal and at any time they might feel disposed. They would not endure the principle of negro freedom in this new region any more than in the older Colony at the Cape. Apart from these basic principles of government, practical details also galled them. The establishment of a Land Court to limit and define the possessions of settlers and to give legal rights of ownership to the natives, was especially objectionable, and, by 1847, most of the emigrant farmers had again trekked away to the Orange Free State and the country beyond the Vaal.
British Principles of Government
There seems to have been no valid reason for this movement. The British Government, outside of certain fundamental principles of morality and administration, desired to give the farmers every possible latitude. It had no wish for territorial expansion, and would never have interfered at all if the aggressive policy of the Boers meeting the wild instincts of the Bantu, or Zulus, half-way, had not drenched the region with blood. But the deterioration of the Boer character, or rather the expression of that character in a sphere where it was practically uncontrolled, had assumed a form in which the possession of large tracts of land and the compulsory service of natives appeared as absolute essentials of life, which they had the right to take by force—in the same way as Moselkatze and Tshaka had done previously and with apparently no higher motives than those which had actuated savage chiefs at war with weaker tribes. Moreover, they had failed signally in this first effort at self-government, and the rivalry of leaders like Hendrick Potgieter, Gerrit Maritz and Andries Pretorius had not only helped to prevent the establishment of any form of administration amongst the people capable of levying taxes and compelling obedience to the state, but had made constant raids upon neighboring native tribes appear almost essential to the holding together of the scattered communities in a common bond of conflict and territorial acquisition.
The Trek North of the Vaal River
With the failure to acquire and hold Durban and to rule themselves or the regions of Natal which they had taken from the Zulus ended the first Boer effort to reach the sea and to establish Dutch independent communities in touch with the external world. The bulk of the farmers, as already stated, trekked north of the Orange or the Vaal. Here they found conditions, in 1845-47, which were scarcely less perplexing and troubled than their own had been. Over an area of some 700 miles long and 300 wide was established a Dutch population of about fifteen thousand persons which was constantly at war with the natives, and, as a result of losses in this connection, did not increase greatly in numbers despite the numerous accessions from Cape Colony and Natal. Nominally, and by British theory, they were still British subjects; practically, from the Orange to the Limpopo they were independent communities whom the Colonial Office would have preferred to forget altogether rather than to assert claims over or make demands upon. But their relation of permanent and bitter hostility towards the natives appears to have made absolute British neutrality impossible. Accordingly, in 1843, an effort was made to further isolate the Boers from Cape Colony, and "buffer states" of native or half-breed tribes were established and recognized; much in the same way as in the days of the Kosa tribes on the eastern frontier of the Colony. Then, however, it was for the protection of the Dutch farmers against the natives; now it was for the protection of native and Colonial interests against the turbulent Boers.
Moshesh the Basuto
Moshesh the Basuto was at this time established in much strength upon the borders of the present Orange Free State and in territory now known as Basutoland. He was one of the ablest men produced by the Bantu, or Kaffir, race, and, unlike chiefs of the type of Moselkatze the Matabele or Tshaka the Zulu, did not build his fortunes and his power upon bloodshed and devastation. When the regions afterwards covered by the Dutch republics and Natal were swept by a sanguinary tide of conquest under the leadership of the two chiefs mentioned, Moshesh followed in the wake of the wave of slaughter, gathered together scattered remnants of tribes, conciliated, strengthened and united them until, by almost imperceptible degrees, he had established a strong state around the rock-ribbed heights of Thaba Bosigo—the centre of his kraal and his kingdom. In 1843, therefore, when the British authorities were looking around for some means of restricting the sphere of Boer difficulties and aggressions upon the natives, Moshesh seemed an ideal instrument. He was intensely ambitious to extend and consolidate his power. He was not a savage or barbarous potentate in the sense of Dingaan or his predecessor; and to him the proffered alliance, a small annual subsidy, an extension of recognized territorial rights and supremacy over minor chiefs in contiguous regions, was extremely attractive and easily acceptable. West of his territory lived a tribe of Griquas—a half-breed people of mixed Dutch and Hottentot blood—numbering about two thousand and ruled over by a man named Adam Kok. They were largely influenced by missionaries, and were an inoffensive and, as it turned out, perishing race. Establishment of a Border Native State With Kok a similar arrangement of alliance was made, and he was recognized as ruler of all the territory from the Basuto border westward to where Andries Waterboer—another Griqua chief—held sway over the region afterwards dominated by Kimberley and including Modder River and the southern portion of the present Free State. East of Moshesh and the Basuto territory a similar alliance was made with the Pondo Chief, Faku, and thus the girdle, or league of allied states between British territory and the Boers was complete.
Rebellion by the Boers
But the plan did not work out as well as was expected. The racial elements involved were too mutable, the conditions too loose, the Governments too inadequate in strength and prestige, the Dutch too aggressive and hostile in character, to admit of its permanent success. A strong man, backed up continuously with plenty of British troops, might have saved the situation and averted the wars which followed; but continuity of policy for these fluctuating frontiers seems to have never prevailed at either London or Cape Town. The Treaty States did not prevent personal and commercial intercourse between the Boers of the Cape and of the interior. They did not avert further emigration or encourage the return of those who had left the Colony. The Dutch population in Adam Kok's territory did not like being ruled by a half-breed chief, and the greater part of them repudiated the right of Great Britain to support him in this government. Some of the minor native chiefs refused to accept the sovereignty of Moshesh. The first result was a small Boer rebellion against Kok and the defeat of 250 men by some British troops under Colonel Richardson. The second was an entire rearrangement of existing matters by Sir Peregrine Maitland, who had meantime become Governor at the Cape. Kok's sovereignty over the whole region was still acknowledged, but he was limited in government to the portion of it occupied by Griquas; while the whites living in the other section were placed under the supervision or rule of a British officer, who, in 1846, established himself at a small place called Bloemfontein, where some three hundred Boers of a friendly disposition took the oath of allegiance to the Queen. The rest moved north to Wynburg and out of the region thus controlled by Major Warden. With Moshesh much less could be done. He had been far too shrewd to violate directly the terms of his arrangement with Great Britain or to accept any proposals which would seriously alleviate the differences between himself and the bordering tribes or neighboring Boers. Thus the State, which had been strengthened with a view to maintaining peace, now threatened to promote conflict instead, and in this condition matters rested when Sir Harry Smith came out to Cape Town in 1848 as Governor and High Commissioner. Now the events which immediately followed came the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic.