 Britain's desire to control the entire Rand region (which overlapped neighbouring Transvaal), remove potential threats to the mines, and encourage industrial expansion by replacing the slow and inexperienced Afrikaner bureaucracy with British laws and regulations led to increasing tension between the British colonies and the Afrikaner states, resulting in the outbreak of war in 1899.The Second Anglo-Boer War united South Africa as a single state (initially British, but granted independence in 1910).Mining operations at the Rand and at Kimberley caused severe environmental damage.