Colonial Impact Quotes
1st Earl of Beaconsfield. The Dutch and British landed at Capetown, the Southern tip of Africa and gradually expanded North. The Zulus were equally expansionist in Africa. They started from Central Africa and expanded South. Both these expansionist powers seized the land from the indigenous Blacks. It was a race for who could dominate the land first. Eventually, these two powers ran into each other and there were two Zulu-English wars in which the Zulus not only held their own against the dominant white world power, but defeated them in several major battles. Many of the English clergy admired the Zulus, and the major political issues in Europe had to do with what was called the “Scramble or Africa”.
When the British first colonized South Africa, the area they used was akmost uninhabited or very sparcely so. However, some Black tribes (including the Zulus) were moving from the north and themselves were colonizing or annexing the areas to their kingdom. The British were most interested in Trading so did not have large land asperations. The Dutch white Boer Africanners, in contrast, wanted to farm the lands and use the range for their cattle. They wanted the land. The English policy was that there would be friendly relations with the Black tribes surrounding their Cape Colony and no one should take their land. However the Boers started attacking the Black areas and seizing their farms and villages. At first, the English assumed that the Blacks would easily be able to ward off the invasion as the Afrikanners had no professional troops like the British. However, the neighboring tribes were not very warlike or good fighters. They were being overrun by the Zulus coming from the North and the Boers from the South. The British Government had a real problem in that they would have to have British soldiers fight the white Afrikanners if they wanted to stop the illegal white invasions. This was the root of the Boer War where the British would be fully at war with the Africanners.
Carson was one of the few Indian Agents who spent every penny of his budget on the Indians as opposed to himself. He was married to an Indian woman and was close enough to many Indians that he understood their resentment whenever they came into a town. They were treated terribly and while most of them were literally starving, seeing the white opulence produced resentment.
