In the 19th Century Scramble for Africa, the British Empire tried to control all of southern Africa. They won control of the Cape of Good Hope in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Many Boers (Dutch, German and French farmers) did not like Britain controlling the area. The British taxed them, made English the official language, and in 1834 abolished slavery. Some of the Boers moved north in the Great Trek and made a new country called the Orange Free State. In 1877 the British Army moved in to control the Orange Free State in pursuit of diamonds, one of the Orange Free State's rich natural resources. On 16 December 1880 the First Boer War began. It took ten weeks in 1880 and 1881. The British were defeated.