The most vexed, difficult, and critical problems in the history of the British Empire since 1878—­perhaps the most difficult in the whole course of its history—­have been those connected with the South African colonies.  In 1878 there were four distinct European provinces in South Africa, besides protected native areas, like Basutoland.  All four had sprung from the original Anglo-Dutch colony of the Cape of Good Hope.  In two of them—­Cape Colony and Natal—­the two European peoples, British and Dutch, dwelt side by side, the Dutch being in a majority in the former, the British in the latter; but in both the difficulty of their relationship was complicated by the presence of large coloured populations, which included not only the native African peoples, Hottentots, Kaffirs, Zulus, and so forth, but also a large number of Asiatics, Malays who had been brought in by the Dutch before the British conquest, and Indians who had begun to come in more recently in large numbers, especially to Natal.  Difference of attitude towards these peoples between the British authorities and the Dutch settlers had been in the past, as we have seen, a main cause of friction between the two European peoples, and had caused the long postponement of full self-government.  In the other two provinces, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, the white inhabitants were, in 1878, almost exclusively Dutch.  The native populations in these states were no longer in a state of formal slavery, but they were treated as definitely subject and inferior peoples:  a law of the Transvaal laid it down that ’there shall be no equality in Church or State between white and black.’  Thus the mutual distrust originally aroused by the native question still survived.  It was intensified by ill-feeling between the Boers and British missionaries.  When Livingstone, the British missionary hero, reported the difficulties which the Boers had put in his way, British opinion was made more hostile than ever.  Of the two Boer republics, the Orange Free State had enjoyed complete independence since 1854; and no serious friction ever arose between it and the British government.  But the Transvaal, which had been turbulent and restless from the first, had been annexed in 1878, largely because it seemed to be drifting into a war of extermination with the Zulus.  As a consequence, Britain was drawn into a badly managed Zulu-War; and when this dangerous tribe had been conquered, the Transvaal revolted.  The Boers defeated a small British force at Majuba; whereupon, instead of pursuing the struggle, the British government resolved to try the effect of magnanimity, and conceded (1881 and 1884) full local independence to the Transvaal, subject only to a vague recognition of British suzerainty.