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Great Trek
The Great Trek was a movement of Dutch-speaking colonists up into the interior of southern Africa in search of land where they could establish their own homeland, independent of British rule. -
David Livingstone missionary work
In 1838 he was accepted by the London Missionary Society. The first of the Opium Wars (1839–42) put an end to his dreams of going to China, but a meeting with Robert Moffat, the notable Scottish missionary in southern Africa, convinced him that Africa should be his sphere of service. On November 20, 1840, he was ordained as a missionary; he set sail for South Africa at the end of the year and arrived at Cape Town on March 14, 1841. -
Suez Canal built
In 1854, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the former French consul to Cairo, secured an agreement with the Ottoman governor of Egypt to build a canal 100 miles across the Isthmus of Suez. -
Boer War
The First Boer War (Afrikaans: Eerste Vryheidsoorlog, literally "First Freedom War"), 1880-1881, also known as the First Anglo-Boer War, the Transvaal War or the Transvaal Rebellion, was a war fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881 between the United Kingdom and Boers of the Transvaal (as the South African