Yesterday’s Promise: A Novel

Writers who enjoy researching history generally accumulate more information than can be incorporated into a novel. I have, therefore, found it practical to choose certain events from a rich and varied time period which were particularly representative but which did not always fall into a chronology. In Yesterday’s Promise, I was able to condense into a manageable period some of the key events of history which shaped the struggle to form the nation called Rhodesia.

Rogan Chantry and others are now able to take us into South Africa’s color and controversy, and though the time period is condensed, the history I have incorporated into the East of the Sun trilogy is accurate, the historical individuals are genuine, and the fictional lead players are representative of the times in which this novel takes place.

In the interest of accuracy, I have included a list of historical dates and other facts used as the background for both Tomorrow’s Treasure and Yesterday’s Promise.

1600s	Protestant Dutch, later called Boers, arrive at the Cape in much the same time period as the Pilgrims arrived in America, both seeking freedom from religious persecution in Holland and England.
1795–1803	The British capture the Dutch East India Company and form their Cape Colony.
1817	Robert Moffat (1795–1883) was a Scottish pioneer missionary to South Africa who arrived in the Cape in 1817. He and his wife Mary opened mission stations in the interior, and their eldest daughter, Mary, married explorer David Livingstone. Mr. Moffat translated the Bible into the language of the Bechuanas. He served for 53 years and his model Kuruman station was a focal point of the Gospel.
1835	The Boers begin their Great Trek across the Orange and Vaal rivers to be free of British rule and to farm.
1849–50	Explorer and missionary David Livingstone’s first expedition and discovery of Lake Ngami.
1852	Sand River Convention confirms the Boer Transvaal’s independence.
1854	Independence of the Dutch Orange Free State.
1867	Diamonds are discovered in Cape Colony at Hopetown.
1870	Lobengula becomes chief of the Ndebele tribe. He moves into Mashonaland and makes slaves of many of the Shona, and resists Dutch and British from the area. The big Diamond Rush Kimberly founded (spelled Kimberley and Kimberly by some.) England annexes the diamond area, despite protests from the Boers in the Orange Free State. Cape Colony is given governing rights by Her Majesty.
1879	Zulu War
1883	Paul Kruger elected president of the Transvaal for the first time.
1884	A London convention on the Transvaal gives limited Boer independence. The great gold rush to the Transvaal begins, Johannesburg is founded. England annexes Zululand. Portugal refuses weapons to be delivered to English missionaries struggling against slavers on Lake Nyasa.
1888	Cecil Rhodes and allies gain a monopoly of the diamond mines at Kimberly and form De Beers Consolidated.
1888	Cecil Rhodes wins exclusive mining rights in Mashonaland and Matabeleland from Lobengula.
1888	Her Majesty awards a royal charter to form his British South Africa Company, BSA.
1889	Rhodes becomes prime minister at Cape Colony.
1889	The Pioneer Column sponsored by Rhodes’s BSA make their trek into the Zambezi region (Mashonaland) to establish Fort Salisbury and eventually form Rhodesia.
1891	Her Majesty’s Government permits the British South Africa Company to extend operations in Barotseland, which later becomes northern Rhodesia.
1893	Kruger is elected for his third term as the Transvaal president.
1895	Kruger ends isolation of the Transvaal by opening a railway from Pretoria and Johannesburg to Delagoa Bay in Mozambique. Kruger elected president of the Transvaal for fourth term, war with England. Boer War
1902	Peace Treaty signed at Pretoria between England and the Boers.
1910	Union of South Africa formed (31 May).

AUTHOR’S HISTORICAL NOTE