Territory
As European powers– particularly Dutch Boers and the British – began to claim parts of southern Africa, it became apparent that to gain and maintain their "elite world status" they must expand. From the time these imperial powers formed their original colonies, relationships and boundaries became exceedingly more complex, affecting not only themselves, but even the indigenous peoples and the land itself. By 1880, there were four dominant European regions: the Cape Colony and Natal by the Anglo-colonists, and the Transvaal (South African Republic) and Orange Free State by the Dutch Boers. These colonies and their political leaders were the most important and influential of the time, and all were eventually dissolved into the singular Union of South Africa in May 1910.
Read more about this topic: South African Wars (1879–1915)
Famous quotes containing the word territory:
“Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“We found ourselves always torn between the mothers in our heads and the women we needed to become simply to stay alive.With one foot in the past and another in the future, we hobbled through first love, motherhood, marriage, divorce, careers, menopause, widowhood—never knowing what or who we were supposed to be, staking out new emotional territory at every turn—like pioneers.”
—Erica Jong (20th century)