Sketch Map of the Far Eastern Rand from Johannesburg to Ermelo.

An extremely rare map showing mining concessions on the Eastern Part of the Witwatersrand Vein, the most important gold region in the world, published shortly after the Second Anglo-Boer War, by Kümmerly & Frey of Bern, Switzerland.
This extremely rare and attractive map focuses on the eastern portion of the Witwatersrand Vein, the richest gold deposit in the world, located in the Transvaal (modern Gauteng province), between Johannesburg (far left of map) and Ermelo (far right).
The map was made around 1905, shortly after the Second Boer War (1899 - 1902), during a boom in the gold mining sector fostered by the newly established British regime. The map labels major towns, roads and the lines of the proposed railways that were intended to serve this rapidly growing region.

However, the main purpose of the work is to serve as a cadastral map depicting all of the major properties in the region, many of which were gold mining claims owned by consortiums. The properties owned by the most important companies are color-coded in attractive, bright hues, corresponding to a key below the tile on the far left of the composition.

The map is extremely rare, and we cannot locate even a single reference to it, let alone any other examples. While the map does not bear an imprint, we have it on good authority that it was issued by Kümmerly & Frey of Bern, a leading Swiss mapmaker, best known for its production of mountaineering maps. While it may, at first, seem surprising that such a specialized map of a part of South Africa was made in Switzerland, it must be remembered that the Swiss invested heavily in the South African gold fields, owing to their leading role in the global gold trade.

Depicted here is the region that was at the heart of the ‘Mineral Revolution’ that during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries transformed South Africa from being an agrarian backwater into a modern, industrial state, albeit one with especially sharp social cleavages. By the 1850s, the central and north-western parts of South Africa were comprised of the independent Afrikaner entities of the South African Republic (ZAR) and the Orange Free State, while the Cape Colony and Natal were British possessions.

From the time when diamonds were discovered along the border of the Cape Colony and the Orange Free State, in 1868, the Afrikaner republics came under ever-greater pressure from the Britain, which sought their annexation. Tensions eventually led to the outbreak of the First Anglo-Boer War (1880-1), a short, but sharp conflict during which the Afrikaners defeated the British, so reasserting their independence.

The 1886 discovery of the Witwatersrand Gold Vein in the Transvaal (in the ZAR), being the largest gold deposit ever found worldwide before or since, marked another turning point in South African history, and generally the history of the global commodity trade. Immediately, the main focus of political and economic energy in South Africa turned towards gold. The unprecedented gold rush led to the urbanization and industrialization of the Transvaal. Johannesburg, located along the Witwatersrand, founded in 1886, grew rapidly to become South Africa’s premier commercial centre.

From that point onwards, the British were hell-bent on taking over the Afrikaner republics. The Afrikaners unwisely allowed thousands of British settlers, called uitlanders, to move to their states to work the mines. This created a large pro-British population in their midst, and inevitably led to another showdown between Britain and the Afrikaners.

The Second Anglo-Boer War (1899 - 1902) commenced in October 1899 and, for the first three months, the Afrikaners overran the region, tying down British positions, in so-called “Sitzkrieg” warfare. This proved unwise, as the British deployed 500,000 troops to the region to counter the Afrikaner forces of barely 90,000 men. The British soon had the upper hand, consistently defeating the Afrikaners in conventional battles.
The Afrikaners mounted a fierce guerrilla insurgency, to which the British responded with a “scorched earth” campaign, devastating the Transvaal countryside at tremendous cost to civilian life. The price to Britain was also awesome, as it is estimated that the war cost the equivalent of over £200 billion in today’s money!

The Afrikaners were forced to surrender and signed the Treaty of Vereeninging (May 31, 1902), by which the Afrikaner republics were dissolved and annexed by Britain, in return for Afrikaners retaining their property rights and protection from reprisals. Yet the war proved a pyrrhic victory for Britain, so costly in blood and treasure that it left her severely weakened going into World War I, thus setting the British Empire on a path towards its demise.

The present map was made around 1905, shortly after the war, when a diverse series of gold mining consortiums staked claims to virtually every square inch of the land along the Witwatersrand Vein. It was during this period that the modern Transvaal gold economy was established, on the road to the formation of global behemoth mining firms, such as Anglo-American (founded in Johannesburg in 1917).

The ‘Mineral Revolution’, fuelled by gold and diamonds, allowed South Africa to become the most advanced, industrialized economy on the continent. However, it also concentrated all economic and political power into the hands of a small number of White elites, who would back the creation of the Apartheid State in 1948. This was followed by an epic struggle by the majority of South Africans for their freedom from this oppressive regime, which would end only with Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in February 1990.