Digger's Republic of Klipdrift Founded - July 30, 1870

The Diggers' Republic of Klipdrift was founded in South Africa on this day in 1870.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to this day in history class. It's July. The
Diggers Republic of Clip Drift was established in South Africa
on this day in eighteen seventy, So a quick caveat
on this one. There's a little historical cloud nous around
this event. The republican question is also called the Diggers
Republic and the diamond Diggers Republic and sometimes described as

(00:25):
not even a republic at all, and a lot of
those sources that we have on at our third hand
at best. But this one event is like a little
snapshot of ongoing international strife in South Africa over who
would get control of its diamonds. So a huge rush
for diamonds started in South Africa after they were discovered

(00:46):
there in eighteen sixty six, and multiple different people's and
factions were all fighting for control of the same diamonds territory.
There were the Boar also pronounced more like Boor, who
were people of descent who had colonized South Africa, and
there were multiple different factions within these people. There were

(01:07):
also the British and multiple indigenous peoples including the Koi
Koi and the Greek Wa. They all were trying to
gain access to this same area until the president of
the Transvaal, which was one of these borer factions, declared
that it was all for property. Naturally, this infuriated everyone else,

(01:27):
and a group of immigrant miners from Britain, led by
Stafford Parker, fought back. They tried to drive all of
the Transvaal personnel out of the region. Parker had been
born in England in eighteen thirty three, and it's not
totally clear when he made his way to South Africa,
but he does seem to have been in the area
and working as a miner by eighteen sixty nine. Once

(01:49):
they had pressed back the trans fall forces, Parker declared
the whole area its own republic, that being the Republic
of clip Drift, named for its capital of clip Drift,
and Stafford Parker was elected as its president. So in
some accounts this isn't described so much as the establishment
of a republic has more like the creation of a
mutual protection agreement among the miners, and instead of being

(02:12):
the president, Stafford Parker was more just like the executive
of this whole of this whole mutual agreement. Regardless of
which is more accurate, the result was the same. About
a thousand British miners moved into the area and they
started working out rules about who could stake claims where
and who should have authority over what. But this self

(02:33):
proclaimed republic didn't last for very long. Were forces kept
trying to negotiate to take it back over, and eventually
a British force moved in and did take it back over,
but this was just the start of ongoing back and
forth about who had control of it. It was eventually
absorbed into Greek Land West and it later became part
of the Orange Free State. And like I said, this

(02:55):
was part of the ongoing conflict between the British and
Dutch Boor forces in South Africa and against South Africa's
indigenous peoples, and these conflicts, which sometimes escalated into all
out wars, went on for decades. Thanks to Christopher Hasciotis
for his research work on today's episode, Antatari, Harrison for
her audio skills and all of these episodes, you can

(03:17):
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usually overshadowed by Christopher Columbus's famous voyage