ABSTRACT
It started in May 1857 with a mutiny of native Indian troops at Meerut near Delhi, over a question of religious principle. Like the other crises, it was the outcome of European encroachment on non-European societies, but here the encroachment had taken place many years before and in another place. The result was that South Africa remained for years in an interim state, the options as to her future kept open until the situation crystallised, and in the meantime was governed by 'a succession of shifts and expedients'. It was realised at the time that the resident system was not so innocent as it looked, that it could escalate into a more formal imperialism in the peninsula. The acquisition of one or two more sizeable non-European dependencies never took away from the settlement colonies their predominance in people's eyes, but it did shift the balance of the empire very slightly away from them.
