ABSTRACT
In many ways the future of modern South Africa was determined by events in 1896, the year that Basil Scho¨nland was born. The two British colonies, the Cape and Natal, were part of the Victorian empire, secure yet undistinguished. The Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal-the homes to a people who had trekked away from the colonial yoke-were about to be dragged back by events which were driven by the discovery of gold just ten years before.
