River into unclaimed territory in the southern portion of the Zulu Nations territory and founded the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Britain is content to be rid of the Afrikaners for the time being and lets political issues rest in southern Africa until they grant representative government to the cape colony in the 1870s and there is British interests in unifying all of southern Africa. These desires become more intense when the opportunity arises because of the economic difficulties the Transvaal and the Orange Free State were experiencing and because of a new Zulu threat. Lord Carnarvon was the Colonial secretary under Disreli in the 1870s and he pushed for unification and in 1877 he was able to convince the Transvaal and the Orange Free State to be annexed in return for aide against the Zulu threat. When the governments Changed hands in Britain and Gladstone came to power the Afrikaners appealed to him for their independence back as they no longer needed the British as the Zulu had been neutralized. Gladstone was not impressed and it resulted in the rebellion that saw the British embarrassingly routed at Mejuba in 1880. In 1881 at the Convention of Pretoria Gladstone gave the Transvaal and the Orange Free State their independence back in a relationship of suzerainty. This meant that Britain would control native and foreign affairs for the Afrikaner States but that was all. The relationship between Britain and the Transvaal and the Orange Free State is revised once more at the London Convention of 1884 giving the Afrikaners control over native affairs. During this period though a change in economic status in the Afrikaner states economic changed British interests. Valuable diamond mines were discovered in the Orange Free State and the richest gold strike in the known world was found in the Transvaal. These discoveries resulted in a massive influx of people not only from the Cape Colony and Britain but from around the w...
