tion of British overseas investment was placed there; and the British govern-
.ment provided the colony with a minimal administrative
establishment
and repeatedly ordered it to restrict expenditure. The contrast with eco-
nomic growth in North America in that period is remarkable. By 1870, the
United States had a population
of over 32 million people of European
descent and nearly 53,000 miles of railroad, but in all of Southern Africa
there were no more than 70 miles of rail and 250,000 white people.
Possession of the colony nevertheless evoked demands that the British
government could, not ignore. Some form of law and order was needed in
the anarchic eastern frontier zone. There, during the first British occupa-
tion of the Cape, Xhosa farming people overran the country far to the west
of the official boundary line at the Fish River; trekboers, accustomed to
taking the law into their own hands, staged short-lived rebellions; groups
of Khoikhoi were trying to maintain .some degree of autonomy; and two
newly arrived radical white missionaries of the London Missionary Society
(an interdenominational
Protestant
organization)
were espousing
the
cause of the Khoikhoi and the Xhosa.t" In Britain, military, commercial,
and evangelical interests interpreted