In 1888 a treaty made with Lo Bengula extended the range of British influence and claim not only over Matabililand proper, but over Mashonaland and an undefined territory to the eastward, whereof Lo Bengula claimed to be suzerain. Next came, in 1889, the grant of a royal charter to a company, known as the British South Africa Company, which had been formed to develop this eastern side of Lo Bengula's dominion, and to work the gold mines believed to exist there, an undertaking chiefly due to the bold and forceful spirit of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who perceived that if Britain did not speedily establish some right to the country, the Transvaal Boers would trek in and acquire it. In 1890 the pioneer British settlers moved up through Bechuanaland into Mashonaland, and the Company, which, like the East India Company of the eighteenth century, was to be a ruling and administering power as well as a trading association, established itself along the eastern part of the great plateau and began to build forts. Here it came into collision with the Portuguese, who, stimulated by the activity of other nations, had been re-asserting their dormant claims to the interior and sending up expeditions to occupy the country. A skirmish which occurred near Massikessi, in Manicaland, ended in the repulse of the Portuguese, and the capture of their commanders, who were, however, soon after released by Dr. Jameson, the newly appointed administrator of the Company; and another conflict in May, 1891, in which the Portuguese again suffered severely, hastened the conclusion of a treaty (June, 1891) between Great Britain and Portugal, by which the boundary between the Portuguese territories and those included in the British "sphere of influence" was fixed. By this treaty a vast region in the interior which lies along the Upper Zambesi west of Portuguese territory and south of the Congo Free State was recognized by Portugal as within the British sphere. An agreement of the preceding year between Germany and Great Britain (July 1, 1890) had defined the limits of German and British influence on the east side of the continent; and as Germany, Portugal, and the Congo State were the only civilized powers conterminous with Great Britain in this part of the world, these treaties, together with the instrument—to which Great Britain had been a party—that determined the limits of the Congo State, settled finally all these questions of the interior, and gave to Great Britain a legal title to her share of it.
That title, however, like the other titles by which the European powers held their new African possessions, was a paper title, and valid only as against other neighbouring European powers. It had nothing whatever to do with the Kafir tribes who dwelt in the country. What are called the rights of a civilized Power as against the natives rests in some cases upon treaties made with the chiefs, treaties of whose effect the chiefs are often ignorant, and in others on the mere will of the European power which proclaims to the world that it claims the country; and it is held that the Power which makes the claim must, at least in the latter class of cases, perfect its claim by actual occupation. In the case of these new British territories treaties were made with a certain number of chiefs. One already existed with Lo Bengula, king of the Matabili; but it merely bound him not to league himself with any other power, and did not make him a British vassal. It was clear, however, that with so restless and warlike a race as the Matabili this state of things could not last long. Lo Bengula had been annoyed at the march of the pioneers into Mashonaland, and tried to stop them, but was foiled by the swiftness of their movements. Once they were established there he seems to have desired to keep the peace; but his young warriors would not suffer him to do so. They had been accustomed to go raiding among the feeble and disunited Mashonas, whom they slaughtered and plundered to their hearts' content. When they found that the Company resented these attacks, collisions occurred, and the reluctance to fight which Lo Bengula probably felt counted for little. What he could do he did: he protected with scrupulous care not only the missionaries, but other Europeans at his kraal, and, after the war had broken out, he sent envoys to treat, two of whom, by a deplorable error, were killed by the advancing column of Bechuanaland imperial police, for as the Company's officers were not at the moment prepared, either in money or in men, for a conflict, the imperial government sent a force northward from Bechuanaland to co-operate with that which the Company had in Mashonaland. A raid by Matabili warriors on the Mashonas living near Fort Victoria, whom they called their slaves, precipitated hostilities (July to October, 1893). The Matabili, whose vain confidence in their own prowess led them to attack in the open when they ought to have resorted to bush fighting, were defeated in two battles by the Company's men. Lo Bengula fled towards the Zambesi and died there (January, 1894) of fever and despair, as Shere Ali Khan had died when chased out of Kabul by the British in 1878; while his indunas and the bulk of the Matabili people submitted with little further resistance. Matabililand was now occupied by the Company, which shortly afterwards took possession of the northern part of its sphere of operations by running a telegraph wire across the Zambesi and by placing officers on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. In March, 1896, the Matabili and some of the Mashona chiefs revolted, but after five months' fighting, in which many lives were lost, peace was restored, and the subsequent construction of two railways into the heart of the country of these tribes has given a great, if not complete, security against a renewal of like troubles.[34]
By the establishment of the British South Africa Company to the north of the Transvaal that State had now become inclosed in British territory on every side except the east; nor could it advance to Delagoa Bay, because Portugal was bound by the Arbitration Treaty of 1872 to allow Great Britain a right of pre-emption over her territory there. Meantime new forces had begun to work within the Republic. Between 1867 and 1872 gold had been found in several places on the eastern side of the country, but in quantities so small that no one attached much importance to the discovery. After 1882, however, it began to be pretty largely worked. In 1885 the conglomerate or banket beds of the Witwatersrand were discovered,[35] and the influx of strangers, which had been considerable from 1882 onward, increased immensely, till in 1895 the number of recent immigrants, most of whom were adult males, had risen to a number (roughly estimated at 100,000) largely exceeding that of the whole Boer population. Although the first result of the working of the gold mines and the growth of the towns had been to swell the revenues of the previously impecunious Republic, President Kruger and the Boers generally were alarmed at seeing a tide of aliens from the British colonies and Europe and the United States, most of them British subjects, and nearly all speaking English, rise up around and threaten to submerge them. They proceeded to defend themselves by restricting the electoral franchise, which had theretofore been easily acquirable by immigrants. Laws were passed which, by excluding the newcomers, kept the native Boer element in a safe majority; and even when in 1890 a concession was made by the creation of a second Legislative Chamber, based on a more extended franchise, its powers were carefully restricted, and the election not only of the First Raad (the principal Chamber), but also of the President and Executive Council, remained confined to those who had full citizenship under the previous statutes. Discontent spread among the new-comers, who complained both of their exclusion from political rights and of various grievances which they and the mining industry suffered at the hands of the government. A reform association was formed in 1892. In 1894 the visit of the British High Commissioner, who had come from the Cape to negotiate with the President on Swaziland and other pending questions, led to a vehement pro-British and anti-Boer demonstration at Pretoria, and thenceforward feeling ran high at Johannesburg, the new centre of the Rand mining district and of the immigrant population. Finally, in December, 1895, a rising took place at Johannesburg, the circumstances attending which must be set forth in the briefest way, for the uncontroverted facts are fresh in every one's recollection, while an attempt to discuss the controverted ones would lead me from the field of history into that of contemporary politics.[36] It is enough to say while a large section of the Uitlanders (as the new alien immigrants are called) in Johannesburg were preparing to press their claims for reforms upon the government, and to provide themselves with arms for that purpose, an outbreak was precipitated by the entry into Transvaal territory from Pitsani in Bechuanaland of a force of about five hundred men, mostly in the service of the British South Africa Company as police, and led by the Company's Administrator, with whom (and with Mr. Rhodes, the managing director of the Company) a prior arrangement had been made by the reform leaders, that in case of trouble at Johannesburg he should, if summoned, come to the aid of the Uitlander movement. A question as to the flag under which the movement was to be made caused a postponement of the day previously fixed for making it. The leaders of the force at Pitsani, however, became impatient, thinking that the Boer government was beginning to suspect their intentions; and thus, though requested to remain quiet, the force started on the evening of December 29. Had they been able, as they expected, to get through without fighting, they might probably have reached Johannesburg in three or four days' march, for the distance is only 170 miles. But while the High Commissioner issued a proclamation disavowing their action and ordering them to retire, they found themselves opposed by the now rapidly gathering Boer levies, were repulsed at Krugersdorp, and ultimately forced to surrender on the forenoon of January 1, 1896, at a place called Doornkop. The Johannesburg Uitlanders, who, though unprepared for any such sudden movement, had risen in sympathy at the news of the inroad, laid down their arms a few days later.[37]
I have given the bare outline of these latest events in South African history for the sake of bringing the narrative down to the date when I began to write. But as I was at Pretoria and Johannesburg immediately before the rising of December 1895 took place, and had good opportunities of seeing what forces were at work, and in what direction the currents of opinion were setting, I propose to give in a subsequent chapter ([Chapter XXV]) a somewhat fuller description of the state of things in the Transvaal at the end of 1895, and to reserve for a still later chapter some general reflections on the course of South African history.