The mineral discoveries that launched its industrial revolution between the late 1860's and the end of the 1890's were crucial in the shaping of modern South Africa and the peculiarities of its social order. Within that period, the years between 1880 and 1899 were both violent and formative. Framed by wars of conquest at their beginning and by the outbreak of the South African War of 1899–1902 at their end, at the heart of those years lay the mineral discoveries of the 1860's–1880's, first diamonds in Griqualand West in 1868 and then alluvial gold in the EasternTransvaal in the early 1870s, followed by gold on the Witwatersrand in 1884. All over Southern Africa, mining led to a dramatic increase in economic activity and to renewed imperial intervention in its affairs.
For the first time, the region received large flows of immigrants and capital investment from abroad. New towns, railways, roads and harbours were built, and new urban markets opened up for locally produced food and manufactured goods. The earlier movement of African migrants in search of work in colonial labour markets was greatly accelerated. As the demand for African land and labour spiralled, conflict was heightened as white Afrikaans farmers tightened their grip on rent and labour tenants on their land and encroached on African lands beyond the colonial and republican borders.