First Boer War
The First Boer War (Afrikaans: Eerste Vryheidsoorlog, literally "First Freedom War"), also known as the First Anglo-Boer War or the Transvaal War, was a war fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881 between the United Kingdom and the South African Republic (also known as Transvaal Republic; not to be confused with the modern-day Republic of South Africa).
Background
1877 annexation
The southern part of the African continent was dominated in the 19th century by a set of epic struggles to create within it a single unified state. British expansion into southern Africa was fueled by three prime factors: first, the desire to control the trade routes to India that passed 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), the Orange Free State and the Cape Colony, and thereafter in 1886 in the Transvaal of a gold rush; and thirdly the race against other European colonial powers, as part of a general colonial expansion in Africa. Other potential colonisers included Portugal, who already controlled West (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).
