orld. This mass emigration made the Afrikaners insecure and they didnt want to grant citizenship to the newly arrived people they called Uitlanders because it would mean that they would lose political control. This economic growth produced a renewed interest in consolidating the south of Africa but the British were still no closer to a solution as Porter explains,Two methods of achieving this federation, the voluntary and the coercive, had both been tried and failed. The current hope in the 1890s was that (in Lord Salisburys words) by impressing them, they might be compelled to fall in line and to join the great unconscious federation that is growing up (Porter, p. 100).It soon became clear that impressing the newly wealthy Afrikaner nations were not going to be impressed into unification either. A new political figure then joins the picture named Cecil Rhodes who eventually pushed the British effort at unification forward in some ways. He became a millionaire because of the diamond mines and rose to control both the British South Africa Company and act as Governor of the Cape Colony. He had British interests a heart but also thought unification would be a positive step forward for the Afrikaners and managed to have some respect with the Afrikaners at least early on in his efforts. Although unification did not happen until the beginning of the 20th century after he had lost his position as governor of the Cape Colony and shamed himself by trying to take the Afrikaner states by force in a failed action called the Jameson Raid he laid the groundwork for the unification that would come at the end of the Boer War. The unification would consist of the conglomeration of the Cape Colony, Natal to east, and the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State. Rhodes Tried to return to Cape Colony politics after settling tribal disputes in Rhodesia which was also under British control do in many ways to Rhodes role as head of the British South Afri...
