Seven Nations, One State: South Africa in the Age of Victoria

[LiveAtBirdland]

Hello all, I am LiveAtBirdland, longtime lurker, first time contributor! I first picked up Victoria II about two and a half years ago, and have been absolutely enthralled by it ever since. Not too long after that, I happened upon the Paradox forums and the excellent AARs that have been posted here, so I've just now decided to take a whack at sharing one myself.

I intend this to be a history book-style AAR, inspired by the work of posters like RossN and volksmarschall. However, this will not quite be as true to historical fact as their works, as some fictional characters will be introduced along the way and some liberties will have to be taken both in-game and in-universe for the sake of narrative expediency, but those will most likely be denoted with footnotes.

As for in-game goals, this is a bit of a tricky area, as unlike the European or New World nations, there's really not of long-standing conflicts and rivalries for South Africa, so this AAR may be a bit less dramatic than most. That said, what I'm hoping to accomplish during this run is to at least become the dominant force in Africa, either defending the continent from European incursions and colonization, or, failing that, still develop enough to stand toe-to-toe with the colonial powers and challenge them for further control. I should also mention in the interests of full disclosure that I am using the Blood and Iron mod for this playthrough.

Anyway, that's enough pre-intro, let's get into it, shall we?

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Seven Nations, One State: South Africa in the Age of Victoria ​

Prologue: From Colony to Dominion - South Africa 1795-1835

​

European settlement of what is now South Africa dates back to the year 1652, when Jan Van Riebeeck established a maritime way station at the Cape of Good Hope in the name of the Dutch East India Company. For roughly the next 140 years, hardy Dutch settlers known as boers began to colonize the lands along the coast and further inland, and aside from small numbers of Scandinavian and French Hugenot immigrants, the Dutch were the sole white inhabitants along the southern tip of the continent.

However, during the period immediately following the French Revolution, Europe was thrown into a series of wars against the nascent French Republic. In 1795, France occupied the Netherlands, causing the British to seize control of the Cape Colony at the Battle of Muizenberg. Three years later, the Dutch East India Company ceded nominal control of the area to the French puppet state of the Batavian Republic, and the company itself folded one year after that. After war broke out once again between Britain and France (now an empire under Napoleon Bonaparte as opposed to a fledgling republic) in 1803, the British took a greater interest in the Cape, eventually creating a permanent colony in 1806, breaking the largely unchecked hegemony of the Dutch and their descendants in the region. The British took a far more active role in establishing an official government presence than the Dutch did, including sending around 4,000 British subjects to the Eastern Cape in 1820.

Over the next fifteen years, the British colonists became the dominant presence in South Africa, much to the chagrin of some of the native African tribes and the Boers themselves. Three wars between the British and the native Xhosa ensued (this was after three previous conflicts between the Xhosa and the Boers had already been fought between 1779 and 1803), the latest of which sparked in 1834 after raids by Xhosa tribesmen against white-owned cattle farms. On top of armed struggle, the Cape Colony faced quiet problems with the Boers, who believed that the British were less than respectful of their culture and either wished to assimilate them or treat them as second-class persons within the colony. This resentment caused a great many Boer families to prepare a grand migration even further inwards through the African hinterlands. However, not all Boers were willing to pack up their lives and move north; some were demanding the chance to fight for what they felt they had lost over the last three decades.

​

Sir Benjamin Alfred D'Urban, Governor of the Cape Colony​

​

Sir Benjamin D'Urban was named Governor of the Cape Colony in 1834. A highly decorated career military man, D'Urban's short time at the helm of the Cape Colony saw the abolition of slavery there, as well as successes against the Xhosa in the latest outbreak of war along the eastern frontier. D'Urban was a competent administrator, popular with the colonists of British descent. The Boers, on the other hand, viewed him as little more than the latest lackey of the British Crown, sent to continue their subjugation.

In December of 1834, D'Urban had decided to personally link up with a combined British and Boer military unit and lead them in a demonstration against the Xhosa chief Hintsa ka Khawuta. D'Urban and his retinue arrived on the 11th of that month, preparing to break camp the following morning. During the night, D'Urban and a British colonel, Sir Harry Smith, were meeting to discuss what the British demands against the Xhosa should be upon their arrival, when a young Boer soldier, Dirk Van der Molen, requested to see General D'Urban, saying he had happened upon a map that he believed was drawn by the Xhosa that illustrated where the Xhosa had hidden a cache of pilfered British munitions. The general's adjutants, apparently not realizing the unlikely prospect of a clearly labeled map having been drawn by a Xhosa tribesman and understood by a Dutch-speaking soldier barely out of his teenage years, admitted Van der Molen.

It was a ruse. Van der Molen, armed with two daggers and a stolen officer's pistol, stabbed a surprised D'Urban twice in the chest, and when Colonel Smith attempted to restrain the attacker, Van der Molen unsheathed his second dagger and slashed Smith across the throat before guards rushed onto the scene and subdued him. Smith bled out before medical help arrived, and D'Urban, though still alive, was mortally wounded, and eventually succumbed to his injuries the next day. Van der Molen was tried before a drumhead court and executed by firing squad the day after.

News of the dual assassinations shocked the British public. Parliament was beset with demands to send a substantial military force to the Cape Colony to simultaneously break the Xhosa and punish the Boers. However, the British government was far less sanguine about the prospect, believing that a military expedition to root out the Boers would end no better than Napoleon's invasion of Spain had gone a few decades prior, or worse, go the route of the American Revolution, with the other great powers of Europe funding and supplying the Boers to fuel a proxy war that would weaken Britain's prestige.

Instead, a plan was devised to give the impression of appeasing the Boers in the name of unity against the Xhosa while maintaining Crown dominance over the region. The scheme involved making the Cape Colony an independent state, although largely in name only. While the new nation would have control over its own affairs, it would still largely be in the British sphere of influence, and British subjects who remained in the soon-to-be former Cape Colony would still hold primacy. As for the Boers, they were very open to the idea of independence, even if the British government believed they had devised a scam that did little more for them but trade one form of British rule for another. The South Africa Autonomy Bill, as it became known in Parliament, was passed in early February 1835 (along with a rider to the bill renaming the town of Port Natal to Durban in honor of the slain general).

On January 1st, 1836, the nation of South Africa was born. [1]

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The Borders of South Africa and the Surrounding Areas, 1 January 1836​

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[1] - I started as the United Kingdom and proposed white peace to the Xhosa on the first day, then released South Africa on the 2nd, partially to give myself as close to 100 years as possible and partially to keep Xhosa out of the British sphere and give myself a clean slate in the area to work with.

 

[PresidentStorm]

Subbed. Interesting aar start, I will follow along!

 

[the_hdk]

very nice start...SAF is one of my favo countries to play.
curious what way you will go....republican/monarchy pro Anglo or pro boer

I'll def follow

 

[slothinator]

Curious to see which direction you take this in.
I'll be following!

 

[volksmarschall]

Welcome @LiveAtBirdland to the wonderful world of AAR writing! May this, your first AAR, be successful and memorable so as to introduce you properly to the magnificent world of the AAR and the AARland community. And a great choice too, South Africa has so much potential. Should be interesting to see how you develop and present the tale.

Cheers!

 

[stnylan]

Interesting start and it reads like a good way to form South Africa early.

And welcome to AAR writing. I hope you enjoy yourself.

 

[Southernpride]

Hopefully the Boers can get rid of the evil empire.

 

[LiveAtBirdland]

Chapter I: The First Steps

Sir Peregrine Maitland, First Head of State of South Africa
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South Africa's first year of independence would prove to be an eventful one. In an amazing feat of political expediency, a framework for the new nation's government was cobbled out in a scant eleven months, the time between the passing of the South Africa Autonomy Bill in Parliament and the beginning of 1836 when the bill took effect. Modeled largely after the British parliamentary system, only with a designated head of state in place of a monarch, it was generally agreed upon by all sides that such continuity would minimize the potential administrative headaches of the shift to independence. In September of 1835, a suitable candidate for the role of Head of State (colloquially referred to in South Africa as "governor" despite not actually answering to the Crown) was nominated, Sir Peregrine Maitland, a British general who was both a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and a somewhat experienced administrator, having served previously as lieutenant governor of Upper Canada [1].

Unfortunately, while the new South African government was based largely on a system already largely familiar to the residents of the former Cape Colony, it also maintained a lot of the aspects that had driven the Boers to so virulently oppose British rule. For one, the vote franchise was restricted to those who met a draconian standard of property ownership and wealth, which locked many of the Afrikaners out of the electoral process. This lack of Boer representation led to the easy election of the Unionist Party (later to rename themselves the Progressive Party in the initial parliamentary elections of 1835) and the appointment of George Lennox Stretch as South Africa's first Prime Minister. Secondly, the tax burden was heaviest on South Africa's poorer citizens, namely the subsistence farmers of the Eastern Cape, while taxes were far less harsh on the middle classes and borderline nonexistent on the wealthy, who were largely those of British descent. Combined with a low tariff rate that favored merchants and businessmen over struggling farmers and Boer artisans, this led to a general undercurrent of economic discrimination. Thirdly, the ruling Progressive Party favored a system of limited citizenship for native Africans living in the new nation, a move that led the Boers to believe that they would eventually be the proverbial low man on the social totem pole [2].

At this juncture, one might very well wonder why, exactly, Great Britain was so keen to let South Africa out from under its thumb (or its boot, depending on whose perspective you are seeking). The answer lies in simple utilitarianism. Canada served both as a flashpoint to subjugate the French and as a refuge for loyalists fleeing the United States after the Revolutionary War. Australia served the useful purpose of a penal colony literally on the other end of the world from the British Isles. India presented innumerable agricultural opportunities and was a potential source for massive amounts of colonial manpower in case of another large-scale conflict. South Africa was a small, poor area that Britain had taken control over largely for the sake of it not falling into the hands of Napoleon, and to serve as a way station for ships passing to or from India and Australia. The cost of administering such a far-flung holding, without being able to delegate it to a private entity like the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada or the East India Company, with no visible return on investment, complete with two largely hostile populations to juggle, made the decision seem an easy one for the British.

That was to change, however, around the end of March of 1836. In the Mossel Bay province, a group of land surveyors made a discovery while attempting to sort out a disputed claim between two cattle farmers: a substantial vein of diamonds, one that appeared to have been largely untouched by the natives and quite deep. Combined with a similar find the next month in the province of Beaufort, the dual diamond scores boosted South Africa's economy greatly, allowing them to convert their newfound wealth into their entry onto the world stage, becoming a major lender for cash-strapped nations who distrusted usurious private foreign banks or tight-fisted government exchequers. Even established powers like the Russian Empire found dealing with the South Africans to be far less frustrating than their French or Austrian counterparts.

Even with the sudden surge of liquid capital, though, not everyone in South Africa was content. The Boers, fed up with what they perceived to be second-rate status in the new nation, and in search of new lands to settle, began to pack up their belongings and head east and north into lands populated by native tribes. Over the course of the next two years, Die Groot Trek (The Great Trek) saw thousands of Dutch-speaking South Africans emigrate into the lands of the Xhosa, the Matebele, the Zulu Nation, and the Basuto. For the most part, the Boers and the various African tribes maintained a tense but somewhat stable peace, the Boers generally negotiated fair deals with the tribes for land and kept to themselves, and the Africans now had access to Western trading goods. This entente was shattered, however, in 1838, with the Zulu massacre of Piet Retief and his party as they attempted to negotiate a border to a new settlement. The slaughter prompted a swift and decisive response by the Boers, coming to a head on June 21st, 1838.

News of the Battle of Blood River reaches Cape Town
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The Boers handily defeated the Zulu during the battle, circling their wagons and holding off a force of thousands. This victory enabled the Boers to set up a new settlement, known as Natalia. Unfortunately, the Boers knew that if the Zulu decided to return in force, they most likely would not be able to recreate the success of Blood River. Faced with this possibility, the Natalians petitioned for help from the only people willing to listen - the South African government, the very regime they had made the trek to escape from. The government in Cape Town accepted the request, making Natalia an official exclave of South Africa, promising to take up defense of the area should the need arise, and generally allowing Natal to govern itself, that is, largely by Dutch-speaking as opposed to English-speaking leaders. This was not done entirely out of altruism, however. The South African government was well aware that it was growing in unpopularity amongst the Boers, and the move to grant Natal a large degree of autonomy was largely to shore up support with the Afrikaners who had stayed in South Africa instead of migrating.

South Africa's foreign policy was very vague at this point. Aside from a generally pro-British stance, South Africa had almost no relations with any of the European powers, and only informal talks with the local native tribes, let alone Asia or the Americas. While this was a sensible move, as domestic issues in the newly birthed state were far more pressing than external matters, some South African parliamentarians and political figures were less than enthused about a course that seemed to tie South Africa to the British Empire abroad, some going as far as to announce a desire to make overtures to France, the Netherlands, possibly even the United States of America. With the first election as an officially independent country approaching in 1840, the matter of foreign policy still looked like a secondary issue amongst the public, one to be placed on the backburner for the next year and a half. But unforeseen events in Europe would have wide-ranging effects, even as far away as the southern tip of Africa.

Ireland had been a thorn in the side of Great Britain for centuries. Though a union was signed between Britain and Ireland in 1707, the majority of the Irish were never particularly pleased with this arrangement, and many Irish sought a return to independence, which was further fueled when the Irish witnessed the ease at which South Africa was spun off into freedom. Though most Irishmen were content to express their unhappiness through peaceful means, some sought to take more direct action, illicitly purchasing foreign weapons and arming themselves for a violent resistance. Throughout the early months of 1838, small-scale attacks on British military personnel, arson against British-owned businesses, and harassment of Anglo-Protestant civilians ratcheted up in number and intensity. The Crown was determined to put a stop to the sudden uptick in bloodshed, sending British troops alongside the Royal Irish Constabulary to root out the insurrection. In early April, a raid on a previously uninhabited farm in Connaught uncovered a massive cache of foreign weaponry, including two small Russian-made cannons and hundreds of Russian muskets. When news of the raid broke out across Ireland, the rebels decided to take action, turning the embers of insurgency into a full-scale crisis [3].

Britain loudly protested Russian interference in Irish affairs. Russia stood firm, decrying Britain for its "brutal occupation" of the Emerald Isle and demanding a plebiscite be held in Ireland so that the people themselves could decide whether Britain actually had their best interests in mind. The rest of Europe began to take sides; France and Austria joined alongside the Russian Empire, France always being willing to bloody the nose of Perfidious Albion and Austria looking to settle scores with her northern neighbor Prussia, who tossed in her lot alongside her British ally. Spain, on the other hand, was too wracked by internal issues, namely the rise of the Carlists, to participate in the crisis. As time ticked on, the chances of a peaceful resolution to "the Irish Question" diminished, and on October 17th, 1838, the issue devolved into full-scale war, with the Anglo-Saxon allies on one side and the coalition of Russia, France, and Austria on the other.

Prussia, surrounded on three sides, was overrun relatively quickly, leaving Britain to essentially fend for herself, and while the Royal Navy was the single largest maritime force in the world, the combined naval power on the other side looked to break Britain's grip on the sea, most notably the English Channel, the likely avenue of a continental invasion of the British Isles. The South African government voiced support for London, but took no further steps, contributing no troops (although with a standing army of only 9,000 troops, such intervention would have likely been token at best) and no economic assistance. Over the course of the next year, preparations were made by the French and Austrians to cross the Channel, finally managing to land forces along the southern coast of England during the summer of 1839. Britain was fighting hard, but the French and Austrians were making headway into the British hinterlands, and it looked that London was living on borrowed time.

This previously unthinkable outcome shook the government in Cape Town. Election campaigning was underway in July, and the pro-British Progressive Party suddenly looked like it was attempting to tie South Africa to a badly wounded animal. This shift in perspective, combined with the overwhelming resentment still felt by the Boers, painted a very grim picture for their re-election hopes on New Year's Day 1840. The situation was so dire, in fact, that Governor Maitland, who had very little actual power, was conscripted into making speeches and actively campaigning for Progressive candidates during the fall in winter, banking on his still relatively intact personal reputation to champion the cause. This, however, did little to stem the bleeding, and when the polls opened, the influx of Boers at the voting booths (now including those living in the Natal) made the results appear inevitable, and indeed, when the votes were tallied, the Progressives had dropped from holding a majority of seats in Parliament to less than a third, with some disgruntled citizens of British descent protest voting for the reactionary Voortrekker Party instead of voting Progressive. The new majority party, though, was the Boer-led Afrikaner Bond, championed by South Africa's new Prime Minister, Andries Pretorius.

The military situation in Europe at the beginning of 1840 - most of southern and eastern England has been overrun by the French, which contributed to the defeat of the pro-British Progressives in South Africa
​

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[1] - South Africa begins as a Constitutional Monarchy, not a Republic, but since I couldn't imagine an actual king ruling the country, Maitland as a figurehead head of state makes a serviceable substitute, I think.
[2] - The party in charge to begin is a liberal kind of economic model, despite being a Conservative party and we begin with all of Britain's social and political reforms, so Vote Franchise is based on Wealth, we have a free press, public meetings, non-secret ballots, and the social reforms are pretty advanced in everything except health care and schools (the ones I actually want).
[3] - While I'm not terribly surprised to get a crisis in the early game, its normally either over Poland or some Ottoman holdings. I've NEVER seen Ireland spark into a crisis this fast and have someone back them against Britain.

 

[the_hdk]

Andries Pretorius PM there will be war

great start!!! keep them coming.

 

[stnylan]

Britain should have maintined their isolation.

 

[Southernpride]

Long live the Afrikkaners

 

[Idhrendur]

That's a wild crisis and war to start with.

 

[LiveAtBirdland]

Chapter II: Pretorius and Progress

Andries Pretorius, Second Prime Minister of South Africa
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It would not be incorrect to suggest that the results of South Africa's elections in 1840 were more based on events abroad than events within the home borders and the performance of the ruling Progressive Party. Whatever the causes, though, the Boer-led Afrikaner Bond swept into power with a resounding mandate, securing almost two-thirds of the vote, and sending Andries Pretorius into the Prime Minister's seat. Pretorius, a relatively young man at age 42, believed his main priority at the helm was to improve conditions for the Boers, leveling the playing field that the British-descended oligarchy had created and addressing other Afrikaner concerns, mostly in an effort to limit the Boer migrations out of South Africa and into the hinterlands to a minimum.

To that end, tax rates on the poor were slashed in half, while middle-class taxes rose and taxation on the wealthy was instituted in practice as well as in theory, replacing the Progressives' system in which the rich were taxed in name only. Tariffs also rose considerably, from 10% to 35%, both for the purpose of closing the gap between British and Boer aristocrats and in order to fund the construction of two expansions of South Africa's naval bases, at Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. There was also a planned recruitment drive to increase the size of South Africa's standing army, which, at the time of Pretorius's election, stood at a measly 3,000 troops, and less resembled a European-style army and more of an expanded Boer commando force.

These reforms, however, were merely the tip of the iceberg. South Africa in 1840 had an appallingly low literacy rate, hovering around 15%, and also suffered from an extremely high mortality rate, due in large part to the rough conditions of the region, the far-flung settlements, and a non-existent national healthcare system. Pretorius wished to institute changes, but found himself largely unable to; while the Afrikaner Bond made up the overwhelming majority of the South African Parliament, they were not entirely on the same page. In fact, the party was less of a singular party and more a coalition of various pro-Boer interest groups rolled into one entity for the purpose of electoral expediency.

This was further complicated by an influx of immigrants a year later. On September 7th, 1841, Britain, who had been slowly losing more and more of the home soil to French and Austrian invaders in their war over Irish freedom, finally surrendered. All of Ireland, including the predominantly-Protestant area of Ulster, was now under the administration of Dublin (and to a lesser extent, Moscow, as the Russians were the guarantors of Irish independence) instead of Dublin. Pro-British Protestants in Ireland felt themselves in peril of retribution by grudge-holding Catholic neighbors, and began leaving Ireland in any direction possible, some back to the British Isles, some to the Americas, and some, largely those from the Ascendancy, the Anglo-Irish aristocratic class, to South Africa, where they believed they could start a new life along similar lines as theirs in Ireland.

Unfortunately for these immigrants, they had moved from one minority situation to another, only this time, instead of wary looks and muttered curses in Gaelic greeting them as they traveled, they faced the same in Afrikaans. Coupled with the Pretorius government making things less favorable for the British-bred upper classes, and these new migrants began to take matters into their own hands, forming vigilance committees to defend themselves from the possible threat of Boer violence, much as they had against Irish nationalists [1].

Pretorius was facing a precarious situation. Alongside the Anglo-Irish entrants stoking the fire of English-speaking resentment, South Africa's black population was less than enthused with the new government. While the Afrikaner Bond had somewhat divergent goals, one plank of their platform was to remove the limited citizenship held by the natives living in South African territory, limiting them to a program of residency only, restricting the vote and other privileges only to South Africans of European descent. While South Africa had undergone a successful expansion of the army over the first half of the 1840s, growing from a single brigade of 3,000 to a more substantial 18,000 men, complete with artillery and cavalry, it was still relatively small and somewhat undertrained and under-equipped. It appeared capable of holding off a revolt, but multiple revolts, especially against numbers that favored the African natives, might still break the South African army or at least become too costly to sustain a defense [2].

In an odd moment of inspiration, Pretorius decided to use the unrest to his advantage. In speeches delivered before the South African Parliament, he proclaimed that the root cause of the unrest was a lack of opportunity and a stratification not just between the different ethnic groups in the nation, but within the communities as well. Pretorius argued that the high child mortality rates among Boer ranchers and black farmers meant only the wealthy had a good chance of passing their holdings down, furthering the gap between rich and poor, and that the lack of education throughout the country only ensured a caste system where someone born into a certain profession could only hope to remain in that profession, not getting the chance to explore other fields where their latent talents could be applied elsewhere. Pretorius's rhetoric, combined with the simmering pot of revolt, moved the Afrikaner Bond to relent, agreeing to pass a series of bills that greatly expanded national healthcare and education by 1847.

A chart showing the expansion of South Africa's welfare state, circa 1847 [3].
​

Pretorius parlayed this momentum into a strong re-election campaign. The Progressives, even with the addition of sympathetic Anglo-Irish immigrants with the vote, were loathe to attack what were generally popular programs across the country, and the Afrikaner Bond's assurance that it would seek better relations with the Continental European powers further buried the Progressives' pro-British foreign stance. The African natives, while still furious at having their social status hampered by the majority party, had never held the vote anyway, and even the Progressives' had walked back their stance on granting them the franchise in order to avoid further alienating whatever Dutch-speaking support they still had remaining. When the votes were tallied on New Year's Day 1848, the Afrikaner Bond again emerged victorious, and while by a slightly smaller margin (the Anglo-Irish immigrants making up the majority of that change), they still held a comfortable margin of Parliament, just shy of 60% of the seats, and Andries Pretorius began a second term as Prime Minister of South Africa.

However, the generally Boer-friendly stances of the government also did not necessarily stop what had already begun in the later half of the 1830s with regards to Boer migrations northwards. While some Dutch speakers had decided to remain in South Africa and see how their new leadership would pan out, many were still distrustful of centralized government at-large and followed through with their intentions to trek northwards, some provinces seeing almost their entire Boer populations pack up and leave, settling mostly in the Basutoland and the areas ruled by the Matabele, with the exception of an expedition into the northern Cape lands, where the settlers there applied for a protectorate and later statehood in South Africa proper[4]. Ironically enough, despite being skeptical of the concept of strong national authority, these migrants began to form nations of their own, staking authority in areas where they felt tribal powers did not extend to. By the later half of the 1840s, these ad hoc governments felt themselves to be the new dominant rulers of the land, and even despite being in the minority, proclaimed their new nations as the sovereign entities.

This created a conundrum for Cape Town. Would they establish friendly relations with these new Boer republics as equals or attempt to forcibly integrate them into South Africa proper? Was it possible the opposite would be true, that the Boer states would unite and attempt to seize the Cape lands into their own nations? To this end, Prime Minister Pretorius took a double approach of sorts. He established friendship with the Transvaal (as the Matabele lands were now known) and the Oranje Free State (the former Basutoland), while secretly negotiating an informal alliance with, of all people, the Zulu Nation, promising to defend the Zulu against potential Transvaali or Oranjean incursion in exchange largely for the Zulu keeping tabs on Boer immigration northwards and spying on them whenever possible.

For Andries Pretorius, between this diplomatic success, the expansion of both South Africa's military and land, the passing of his major social reforms, and the mandate of the 1848 election, it appeared that South Africa would be in very good shape heading into the 1850s, and that the coming decade would be an important one for the growing nation; would they be content with a splendid isolation, or would they make bold moves to announce their presence on the world stage?

The Proclamation of the Transvaal Republic, 1849. The Oranje Free State declared autonomy about a year prior.
​

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[1] - We did get some immigrants from Ireland just after the war, and I noticed my "British" pops grew somewhat higher than normal during this time, so I felt it safe to assume this meant we were getting a share of the Protestant exodus from Ireland.
[2] - Militancy shot through the roof for me during this stretch, so I decided to risk revolts by letting it go high enough to enact the social reforms that I wanted (healthcare and schools) every six months or so throughout the mid-1840s. Thankfully, nothing really popped off between reforms.
[3] - Remember, we started with the reforms Britain already had in place, so we had 10 Hour Work Day and Low Minimum Wage before I put my thumb on the scale of reform.
[4] - We reached Secondary Power status (thanks, Culture techs!) around 1848, and had unlocked Prophylaxis Against Malaria, so we could colonize the neighboring Northern Cape.

 

[Southernpride]

Bring the Boer Republics back into the fold.

 

[stnylan]

Well there is a great deal of social change going on

 

[LiveAtBirdland]

Chapter III: Expanding the Frontiers

South Africa in the late 1840s, the Northern Cape was claimed but not yet officially colonized at the time.
​

As the 1850s dawned on South Africa, the future was looking rather bright. Andries Pretorius and the Afrikaner Bond had decisively won the 1848 elections, propelling them to a third consecutive majority on Parliament, a myriad of social reforms had been passed to improve the well-being of South Africa's populous, and a loose alliance was formed between the growing nation and the largest, most belligerent of its neighbors, the Zulu. The only noticeable problem Pretorius seemed to be facing at the time was the Boer diaspora, as thousands of former citizens (and potential votes that could keep the Afrikaner Bond in power) had packed up and moved northwards. The Transvaal and the Oranje Free State had declared sovereignty at the close of the 1840s, and Pretorius felt his next task was to bring them back into the fold.

To this end, he elected to use the carrot instead of the stick, creating cordial relations with the Boer republics, agreeing to similar alliances as with the Zulu, and loosening restrictions on trade and travel between South Africa and the two newly minted nations. Pretorius's efforts were inadvertently assisted by the whole-scale disaster that was the administration of the Transvaal and the Vrystaat. Corruption and cliquishness permeated the governments of both states, as familial ties and personal friendships were often rewarded and ineptitude unpunished, choice farmlands claimed under dubious legality by the original settlers and rubber-stamped by local authorities, and perhaps even more dangerously, there were no cogent military forces in either country to speak of; national security was generally in the form of ad hoc commando forces levied after a native raid or incursion had already been launched and the attackers had escaped back to their own lands.

Throughout 1850 and 1851, the problems worsened, to the point that even despite the successes of mining operations in the Transvaal and the Vrystaat, national insolvency appeared to be likely by the end of 1851 - that is, of course, had neither government been toppled by popular revolts that appeared to be bubbling just beneath the surface. South Africa's relative stability by comparison made the crisis only appear deeper by comparison, and with Cape Town making almost constant overtures of friendship and unity, it appeared that folding the two Boer states into a South African Union might be the only option available to avoid bloodshed and bankruptcy. However, a combination of national pride and stubborn pigheadedness by the leadership of both countries made this seem unlikely.

In June of 1851, a man requested a chance to speak before the Transvaali Parliament. He was Hendrik Potgieter, a highly respected Voortrekker who had fought the Zulu and carried a reputation of unquestionable integrity and sagacity. Potgeiter had migrated to the Transvaal in 1845, and later founded the town of Zoutpansbergdorp in the northeast of the region, and his large stature and brusque appearance furthered his status as one of the great men of the nation. He was also in poor health, and did not wish to see his people descend into civil war and anarchy just before his passing. Potgeiter's request to speak was granted, and in a 25-minute, off-the-cuff speech, he implored the Transvaali Parliament to set their pride aside and petition Cape Town for union with South Africa "in the interest of all, not the few." The speech moved even the most dug-in of the independence movement, and Potgeiter left the podium to a massive ovation. On June 18th, 1851, the Transvaal's request for annexation reached the desk of Prime Minister Pretorius, and South Africa had grafted a massive new province onto its growing body. Seeing these developments also had the effect of taking the wind out of the sails of the pro-independence voices in the Oranjean government, and on November 3rd of that year, the Oranje Free State's request for annexation was granted, and the next day, the Union of South Africa was officially announced [1].

The Vrystaat petition for statehood, marking the complete annexation of the Boer states into the Union of South Africa.
​

Having the Boer states fall in line was not the only triumph for Pretorius's foreign policy during 1851. South Africa proper was still separated from its Natal province by the lands of the Xhosa, who had fought multiple wars against both the Boers and the British in the centuries preceding South African independence. Pretorius, both wanting to put an end to that threat once and for all, as well as claim the land for his country. Over the summer, bolstered by the addition of former Transvaali soldiers into the South African ranks, the South Africans prepared for war with the Xhosa, eventually making it official in August of 1851. As expected, the war was quick and relatively bloodless, the Xhosa not having the will or ability to defend against a modern, European-style military force as opposed to commando forces and groups of hastily assembled bands they had dealt with before. On the 25th of October, the Xhosa surrendered, their lands also being ceded to South Africa.

There was one more bit of fallout from the final Xhosa War: the Zulu Nation, nominally South Africa's ally, refused to participate in the war, saying they had no quarrel with their neighbors and were not inclined to assist in a war of conquest. While Pretorius had not particularly expected the Zulu to actively participate in the war, he had at least expected a sort of quiet, tacit support, and this rebuke he found personally insulting. The alliance was broken, and Pretorius gave the orders to his generals to begin devising a plan to invade and annex the Zululand, which he hoped to undertake after the 1852 elections gave him a fourth term in office.

This, however, was not to be. Pretorius had misjudged the popularity of the annexations of the Xhosa lands and the Boer states. English-speaking South Africans were not thrilled with having tens of thousands of Boers added to the citizenry (and the voting rolls), further marginalizing their own community. Loyalist Boers who had not participated in the Great Trek were unhappy that the Voortrekkers were able to have their cake and eat it, too, having left South Africa once and being readmitted to the fold after their own nations had failed so completely. The various native tribes, who had never particularly been supporters of the Afrikaner Bond, were still without the vote, and the Progressives, whatever their other faults as a party, had at least consistently promised the black population some degree of voting power.

There was another complication. Twelve years at the helm of the South African government were taking a toll physically on Andries Pretorius. He had developed a nagging cough and signs of fatigue throughout the process of annexing the Boer states, and he appeared to spend much of his time hunched over the podium when speaking in Parliament. Though he was still relatively young at age 54, it appeared unlikely that even if he did manage to win a fourth election campaign, he would be able to complete it. His increasing illness became noticeable during his public appearances, as well, and even Afrikaner Bond diehards questioned whether or not it was wise to vote again for someone in apparent ill health.

When the votes were tallied on New Year's Day 1852, the Progressives had indeed clinched a majority, holding about 55% of seats in Parliament, with about 40% going to the Afrikaner Bond and 5% remaining in the hands of the far-right Nationalist Party (formerly the Voortrekker Party). The highly popular Mayor of Cape Town, Hercules Crosse Jarvis, became Prime Minister. Andries Pretorius, the man who had ruled South Africa for over a decade and helped shape it into a rising power, declined to take his seat in Parliament, instead retiring to his farm, where his health continued to decline steadily until his death on July 23rd, 1853, his legacy celebrated by South Africans of all backgrounds.

Immediately, the administration flipped back to the Progressive style of the late-1830s: low tariffs, taxes that fell largely on the lower classes, and an unwillingness to spend state funds on infrastructure or industry[2]. There was one page the Progressives borrowed from the Afrikaner Bond, though, and that was the desire to punish the Zulu for breaking their alliance with South Africa. Over the next two years, South Africa began to expand its army and transport fleets, largely recruiting available soldiers from the former Boer states and the Xhosa (black soldiers were permitted in the South Africa armed forces, but they served in units segregated by ethnicity and origin, as were those of European descent), and in July of 1854, South Africa's army of about 42,000 men began to pour across the border into the Zululand.

The South Africans, preferring not to risk bloodshed for the sake of it, declined the opportunity to face the main Zulu army of about 27,000 in a pitched battle. Instead, they allowed to Zulu to raid farms and homesteads on the frontier that had been evacuated prior, spending time and effort invading useless land, while the South Africans simply occupied and looted everything of use to the Zulu instead, correctly calculating that they could drive the Zulu to surrender without having to fire a shot, and by the beginning of September, the Zulu, their families starving and their homes under South African lock and key, surrendered, being absorbed into statehood in the Union[3].

After this war was concluded, European and American observers began to take notice of the growing republic on the southern tip of Africa. South African gold and diamonds were traded the world over, their loans propping up many public works projects in smaller European and South American countries, and their contributions to fine arts, music, and literature were popular with audiences across the globe for their vivid tales of life on the African frontier and along the heavily-trafficked ports on the Cape. In October of 1854, The Guardian, the renowned London newspaper, published an editorial, stating "while their far-flung nation may seem curious to us here in England, one cannot deny that by the sheer scope of their penetration into the world's consciousness, both financially and culturally, that South Africa is making its debut onto the stage of the Great Powers".

South Africa took this opportunity to present itself on the world stage very seriously. They immediately moved to improve relations with the strategically important Sultanate of Egypt. The Egyptians, who managed to defeat an Ottoman attempt to re-establish Istanbul's control over the rogue khedivate in the Oriental Crisis of 1840-41, had largely been abandoned by her European allies thereafter; Britain preferred to focus its attention on Greece and Belgium instead of Egypt, and the French had their own issues forming in Italy. The Egyptians proved very receptive to South African gestures, and the good faith negotiations on trade and cultural exchanges were proving to lead Egypt into South Africa's sphere of influence. Along the way during these talks, South African diplomats began to float an idea to their British counterparts: the concept of Zionism, a creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, was beginning to gain ground among European Jews, and Jewish traders had brought the idea to South Africa, where it gained ground with the English-speaking community, who sympathized with the Jewish people because of their own struggles establishing an identity in their own nation. South Africa, however, was not able by itself to make such a concept a reality, forcing them to find an agreeable European supporter. As luck would have it, they found one in Britain's Parliament, a well-connected, very wealthy Conservative MP who had the ear of the Prime Minister and the attention of the Royals. Despite the proclmation of support for a Jewish state in the Middle East being largely the work of South Africa, the British parliamentarian's name was the one attached forever to the actual document, and in December of 1855, James Maitland Balfour published the British government's statement, complete with an unfortunate typo, referring to Queen Victoria as "his Majesty"[4].

The Balfour Declaration announcing British-South African support for a Jewish state.
​

Events were also unfolding on the European continent and in the United States that directly interested Cape Town. While the age of militant liberalism in Europe had largely calmed down somewhat after a frantic period in the late 1840s, the tide of nationalism was still pushing strong on the Italian peninsula and in the various German-speaking duchies, kingdoms, and city-states. Prussia, the largest and most dominant of the Protestant German states, had been crushed by French, Austrian, and Russian armies during the war for Irish freedom in the late-1830s and early-1840s. This resulted in a sort of power vacuum in the Germanic lands, which had largely been filled by Austria. In December of 1853, Austria-Hungary (renamed after a compromise was reached to give the Hungarians more power and autonomy in the empire after a Hungarian revolt in 1848) united Bavaria, Baden, and Wurttemberg into a singular South German Confederation, bringing the southern, largely Catholic regions under Vienna's control, and serving as a counterbalance to a rearming Prussia. South Africa began to explore the possibilities of investment in South German industry, hoping to expand their financial footprint, seeing as industries outside of mining were not likely to be profitable yet in South Africa itself.

In the United States, the slavery debate had reached its almost inevitable conclusion. The slaveholding states had seceded from the Union in late 1855, leading to the outbreak of the American Civil War on December 7th. South Africa, who had not had the best of relations with the U.S., decided to assist the Confederate States by promising large subsidies to them during the duration of the war. Had the Southern states emerged victorious, it seemed likely that this favor would have been parlayed into a future alliance between the Confederacy and their South African benefactors. However, the Confederate war plans were banking largely on active European intervention that never came, leading to a rather short war that lasted less than a year before the Confederacy was brought back into the United States.

The Confederate defeat turned out to be a much larger issue than expected in South Africa. While the war was not over by any stretch at the beginning of 1856, the Confederacy's prospects had never looked good without the direct assistance of Britain or France, and Jarvis's government was accused of throwing good money after bad. Not only that, they had failed to devise a plan that granted voting rights to black South Africans, and coupled with the Confederate subsidies, it appeared to the public that the Progressives had blatantly misled voters twice. To make matters worse, Jarvis, while popular in Cape Town, was not particularly beloved across the rest of the country, and unlike the dynamic Pretorius, did not possess the charisma or oratorical skill to shore up mass support on the campaign trail. As the 1856 elections drew near, not only was Jarvis and his party losing popularity at an alarming rate, the new leader of the Afrikaner Bond seemed to have everything Jarvis lacked, including, among other things, a name that still resonated loudly to the South African people.

The borders of South Africa and surrounding lands, just prior to the 1856 elections.
​

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[1] - I did not expect Transvaal and Oranje to simply fall into my lap like this, I expected to have to actually declare war on them or sphere them first, but I won't object to this.

[2] - I HATE dealing with the Progressives in power, because I can't invest in anything and we have no capitalists (a problem that drags on for a LONG time). Coupled with their tax limits, and it's basically four years of hemorrhaging money for no return on it.

[3] - I didn't want to waste any of my troops and I wanted to keep the Zulu soldier pops as intact as possible, so I let them attack my province uninterrupted while I sent my armies to siege all of their lands first.

[4] - The Balfour Declaration is not supposed to even be available this early. This is a botch on my part, I had removed the "Revolution and Counterrevolution" prerequisite in the decisions file so I could get a 100-year playthrough as Israel, but I forgot to put it back before starting this game. OOPS!

 

[LiveAtBirdland]

Well there is a great deal of social change going on

The first 15 years or so of this were dreadfully boring, I admit, but things do finally start picking up in the 1850s lol. Just bear with me and we'll get to the good bits down the road.

 

[slothinator]

That was a very quick leap into Great Power! Is South Africa that industrialized or is it relying on prestige and military might?
Also, with Pretorius gone and the home provinces pacified, where will South Africa look to next?

 

[LiveAtBirdland]

That was a very quick leap into Great Power! Is South Africa that industrialized or is it relying on prestige and military might?
Also, with Pretorius gone and the home provinces pacified, where will South Africa look to next?

I went all-in on Prestige techs and the war between Britain/Prussia and France/Austria/Russia set everyone involved back a good bit. As for South Africa's next moves, I have an idea in mind, but we're going to have to move quickly to make it possible.

 

[Southernpride]

What will the South African stance be on the other European powers eating Africa.