South Africa — Mineral Revolution and the South African War
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Flip to reveal answersWhat two mineral discoveries make up the Mineral Revolution, and when?
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All 12 Flashcards — South Africa — Mineral Revolution and the South African War
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Question
What two mineral discoveries make up the Mineral Revolution, and when?
Answer
Diamonds near the Orange River (1867) and gold on the Witwatersrand in the Transvaal (1886).
Question
Uitlanders
Answer
Afrikaans term meaning "foreigners" — mainly British migrants who flooded into the Transvaal for gold mining and had no vote despite paying heavy taxes.
Question
Who controlled most world diamond production by 1889, and how?
Answer
Cecil Rhodes, through De Beers Consolidated Mines — small diggers were bought out because deep-level mining needed huge capital.
Question
Randlords
Answer
The small group of powerful financiers who came to dominate Witwatersrand gold mining, needing huge capital for deep, low-grade gold deposits.
Question
Explain the process by which African men became migrant mine labourers.
Answer
Colonial taxes (like hut tax) and the need for cash wages pushed African men to leave rural homesteads; labour agents recruited them, often from far away, to work under contract in the mines.
Question
Compound system
Answer
Housing African miners in fenced, guarded compounds near the mine, isolated from surrounding towns and their own families.
Question
Colour bar
Answer
A rule, informal then legal, reserving skilled and supervisory mining jobs for white workers while confining Africans to low-paid, unskilled labour.
Question
Compare the British/Uitlander view and the Boer view on Uitlander voting rights.
Answer
British/Uitlanders: taxation without representation was unjust and Kruger's government was corrupt. Boers: fast enfranchisement would let outsiders vote away Transvaal independence.
Question
Name the three main causes historians debate for the South African War.
Answer
Economic (control of goldfields/Randlord interests), political/strategic (British "paramountcy" over the region), and the Uitlander rights question used as the immediate trigger.
Question
What were Britain's scorched-earth and concentration camp policies, and roughly how many Boer civilians died?
Answer
Farms were burned to deny guerrillas support, and over 100,000 Boer civilians were interned in camps where roughly 26,000 died from disease and poor conditions; thousands of Africans in separate camps also died.
Question
What did the Peace of Vereeniging (1902) establish?
Answer
The Boer republics surrendered their independence to Britain, in exchange for a promise of eventual self-government and no immediate political rights for Africans.
Question
How did the South African War affect Afrikaner identity in the long term?
Answer
The suffering in the concentration camps deepened resentment of Britain and hardened a more defensive Afrikaner nationalism, which later shaped the politics that produced apartheid in 1948.
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Topic 10.6 hub
Developments in South Africa (1867–2020)
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