In 1868, Augustus Frederick Lindley and three companions, two Americans and a Swiss, travelled to the Cape Colony (now South Africa) on a gold-hunting expedition. Despite not finding the gold they hoped for, Lindley and his party spent two years travelling in the Boer republic of the Orange Free State.

In 1870-1, a supply of diamonds was found in Griqualand, a region populated by the Griqua, a people of mixed European and Khoikhoi descent. The territory had been granted by Britain to the Orange Free State in 1854. However, due to financial constraints caused by ongoing conflicts with neighbouring states, the Boers could not control it, and, as a result, the diamond fields were claimed by several parties: the Griqua, led by Nicolaas Waterboer (1819-96), the Diggers Republic (a quasi-state established by British prospectors at Klipdrift), the Orange Free State and Britain. In 1871, Waterboer offered to place the territory under British protection and Britain swiftly accepted the deal, much to the anger of the Boers. Soon, legal proceedings began, the Boers claiming that as the Griqua were semi-nomadic and having only arrived in the territory 50 years previously, they had no claim to the land, arguing that Britain had illegally occupied Boer territory.

This book was published by Lindley in 1873 in support of the Boer arguments. Written as a plea to the British people and Parliament, Lindley accused the government in the Cape, especially its governors, as having acted irresponsibly and dishonourably in their efforts to control the resources in Griqualand. In addition to referring to the 1854 concession, he argues that Cape officials only wanted the land for profit, stating that the Cape government ‘aided and supported by sundry private individuals, [had] entered into a selfish, illegal, and dishonourable combination to wrest the diamond fields from its rightful owner, the Free State… to gain land, money, diamonds, fat offices and extensive revenue’. He also ascertains that some Cape officials did so ‘inspired with hatred and jealousy of the thriving Free States’ and had consciously pursued an ‘Anti-Boer’ policy. Lindley’s book did little to change the situation. In 1876, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Carnarvon, offered the Orange Free State £90,000 in compensation for the territory. In 1880, under pressure from the Cape government and the increasing population of prospectors, Waterboer was left with no choice but to offer Griqualand up for formal annexation by the Cape Colony.