16. The British Quest to Transform South Africa Into a Southern Hemisphere Canada
In 1878, the authorities in London sent a High Commissioner to South Africa. His brief was to transform that British possession into a federation like Canada. The official, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, was tasked with uniting British colonists, Boer settlers, and African tribes, into a single entity. A major hiccup, however, was the presence of independent states: the Boers of the South African Republic, and the Zulu Kingdom. Those entities would have to be destroyed before South Africa could be united under British control.
To deal with the Zulus, Frere went rogue and decided to instigate a war without the British government’s approval. So in December of 1878, he sent the Zulus an ultimatum that he knew they could not and would not comply with. It included demands that they disband their army, and institute radical cultural changes. When the ultimatum was not met, Frere sent in British forces to invade Zululand and initiated the Anglo-Zulu War. As seen below, the invasion did not go as smoothly as expected.
