for white colonists. Second, the wars provided Whites with unprecedented
opportunities to expand into the eastern part of southern Africa. In much
of the central highveld, the population was sparse throughout the 1830S.
The surviving inhabitants, fearing further disruptions, tended to conceal
themselves from intruders, which gave white travelers the impression that
the area was uninhabited and unclaimed. In fact, however,the rulers of the
newly created Zulu, Ndebele, Swazi, and Sotho kingdoms assumed that,
jointly, they had dominion over the entire region, though they contested its
distribution among themselves. In particular, Dingane and Mzilikazi con-
tinued to send impis through the sparsely occupied southern highveld.
The Afrikaner Great Trek, I 836- I 854
Bythe mid-183os dissatisfaction among the Afrikaner inhabitants of the
eastern districts ofthe Cape colony was widespread.f? The 50th Ordinance
of 1828 and the British parliamentary act of 1833 were depriving Af-
rikaners of their customary controls over labor. They had lost property in
the frontier wars, culminating in the Xhosa invasion of December 1834.
Above all, the British government seemed to be influenced by evangelicals
who were challenging their engrained racial assumptions and practices