The Transvaal civil war was a series of skirmishes in the Transvaal Colony (now part of South Africa) in the early 1860s. It began after the British government had recognized trekkers living in the Transvaal Colony independent in 1854. The Boers divided into numerous political factions. It only ended in 1864 when an armistice treaty was signed under a Karee tree south of the site of the later town of Brits.