Information AboutUitlanders |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT UITLANDER | |
| history of south africa | |
| boer war | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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These vast gold fields were discovered in 1886, within ten years the uitlander population of the Transvaal was double that of the native Transvaalers, 60,000 uitlanders to 30,000 Burghers , all concentrated around the Johannesburg area. Concern as to the effect this large, primarily British, population would have on the independence of the Transvaal led to the implementation of a range of measures designed to ensure that effective political power remained in the hands of Afrikaners . Under President Paul Kruger , the Transvaal government refused to grant voting rights or citizenship to any uitlander who had not been resident for fourteen years. This successfully ensured that the governance of the Transvaal remanined in Afrikaner hands. This, together with high taxation, and corrupt and innefficient public adminiatration, gave rise to considerable discontent. The position of the primarily British uitlanders attracted the attention of the British government, keen to incorporate the Transvaal into a wider South African union. Their treatment served as the pretext for the Jameson Raid in 1895; Cecil Rhodes planned an invasion of the Transvaal to coincide with an uprising of the uitlanders in Johannesburg . Dr Jameson's force invaded but the expected uprising never took place; the invading force were quickly overpowered and arrested. From 1897 onwards the High Commissioner for the Cape Colony , Sir Alfred Milner , and the Colonial Secretary , Joseph Chamberlain , used the denial of rights to the uitlanders as their main point of attack against the Transvaal. They encouraged uitlander agitation and pressed uitlander claims, with veiled threat of war, upon Kruger's government. Kruger's was determined not to turn the Transvaal into, in effect, a British colony; enfranchising the uitlanders would give them the majority voice, British annexation would almost certainly follow. In the end, British insistence and Kruger's intransigence led to the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899. Upon its defeat in 1902, the Transvaal became a British colony. All residents of the Transvaal thereafter became British subjects and so the term uitlander fell into disuse. SEE ALSO Witwatersrand Gold Rush EXTERNAL LINKS |