Rand McNally South Africa This full-colour map of South(ern) Africa was printed by chromolithography

This full-colour map of South(ern) Africa was printed by chromolithography and included in Rand McNally’ 1895 Atlas of the World. It provides an accurate, cartographic snapshot of Southern Africa shortly before the second Anglo Boer War (1899 – 1901).

  The colours of the map also neatly reveal the southern 'Scramble for Africa. In order to frustrate the intentions of the Boers, Tongaland in the north-east of South Africa, was placed under British ‘protection’ in 1895, incorporated into Zululand in 1897 after the infamous Anglo-Zululand War and, within days, it was incorporated into Natal which was under control of the British Cape Colony. Neighbourig Gazaland ('State of East Africa' on the map) was under Portuguese control, while Bechuanaland (now Botswana) became a British Protectorate. German Great Namaqualand later became South West Africa, now Namibia – the tiny enclave of British Walvis Bay can be seen on the coast.

  After the Anglo Boer War the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic came under British control and, in 1910, together with the Cape Colony and Natal, formed the four provinces of the British controlled Union (now the Republic) of South Africa.

  The railway network, construction of which started in earnest in 1875, is well depicted; the railways played an important role in the location of conflict during the war. In 1899, a young Winston Churchill escaped from imprisonment in Pretoria and travelled by the train, on the recently inaugurated line to the coast, to reach safety in Lorenzo Marques (Maputo today) in Mozambique (then Gaza Land).

The original end destination of the Cape railway line, from Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, was the diamond fields in Hope Town (diamonds discovered in 1866) on the Orange River, but discovery of diamonds in Kimberley (1871) and gold on the Witwatersrand (1886) diverted the tracks through the Boer controlled Ornage Free State to Johannesburg in the Transvaal Republic, also controlled by the Boers.  

The is an attractive map of South Africa a few years before the Second Anglo Boer War.