CHAPTER VIII 
SOUTH AFRICAN EXPANSION AND UNION 
TrE term “South Africa” has been employed in such a 
variety of ways that it no longer conveys a definite impres- 
sion to the mind of the general reader. To the ordinary 
Britisher or Cape resident it means the territory included in 
the four states of the Union — Cape Colony, Natal, Orange 
Free State, and the Transvaal — and lying between Cape 
Town, Durban, and the Limpopo River. For administra- 
tive, strategical, geographical, and commercial reasons, the 
vast regions of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, stretching 
northward to Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, should be con- 
sidered integral portions of British South Africa. The Eng- 
lish residents of the Rhodesias are in no haste to see their 
territory linked definitely to the South African Union; the 
citizens of the Union are apt to look upon the northern re- 
gions as outside the natural limits of their own country. 
Yet, so intimate are the present relations, and so closely are 
the futures of the two districts interwoven, that the whole 
region from the Cape to Tanganyika must — for some time 
to come at least — be regarded as a geographical unit. 
The story of South Africa is one of a conflict for supremacy 
between two distinct political ideals emanating from differ- 
ent branches of the great Teutohic family, complicated by a 
vexatious “native question,” and the interposition of an im- 
perative expansion policy. The landing of Jan van Riebeek 
at Table Bay in 1652, the subsequent rule of the Dutch at 
1 Politically the Union of South Africa and the Rhodesias have gone 
separate ways — the new Domirson of Rhodesia dates from September, 
1923. See Chapter IX.