Great Trek

The Great Trek was a migration in African and European-African history that represented a major step toward the founding of the modern country of South Africa. In the seventeenth century, Dutch traders established a settlement called Cape Colony in southern Africa, near the territories of various Indigenous African groups. Later, Cape Colony became known for its farming residents, or Boers. Around 1800, British forces wrested Cape Colony from the Boers and imposed British laws and taxes. Dismayed Boers began leaving the colony in large numbers from 1835 to around 1845 in a migration known in South African history as the Great Trek.

During the Great Trek, numerous parties of Dutch Africans, likely numbering more than ten thousand in all, moved to other areas of southern Africa. There, they established settlements that would become the republics of Orange Free State and the Transvaal. These settlements, ultimately conquered and colonized by the British, provided a foundation for what would become the country of South Africa.

Many modern Dutch Africans, or Afrikaners, have held the Great Trek as a momentous, almost legendary, event, as it helped to establish their culture and nationhood. Critics have noted that the colonization and migration of the Dutch Boers led to widespread warfare with, and exploitation of, Indigenous Black Africans, and the social and cultural underpinnings of systems of racial inequality in South Africa, such as apartheid which continued until 1994.

Background

Southern Africa has been home to humans since deep in prehistory. Groups such as the Khoekhoe and San people have lived there for at least ten thousand years. Later, Bantu-speaking Africans moved into the region; their descendants would constitute much of the Black African majority of modern times.

Life in southern Africa changed dramatically during the Age of Exploration, when European explorers traversed the oceans in search of previously unknown lands. Some explorers searched for new trade routes, while others hoped to discover wealth, living places, or opportunities to spread their religions. One of the main milestones of this era was the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492, but countless other explorers were also active during this time.

Portugal, then a powerful seafaring kingdom, sent explorers far to the southeast to investigate Africa. Northern Africa was at that time well-known to Europeans, but the middle and southern parts of the continent were much less understood. In the late 1400s, Portuguese explorers began navigating along Africa’s long coastlines and its perilous southern tip. In the coming years, interest in this region grew among Europeans.

The region of southern Africa eventually came to the attention of Dutch sailors and businesspeople. In 1652, Dutch settlers began to develop a colony on the southwestern coast of the continent. Early Dutch settlement in the area was prompted by the Dutch East India Company, which saw the potential of southern Africa as a port for resupplying the company’s many trading ships during long intercontinental voyages. Dutch settlers established the Dutch Cape Colony near the Cape of Good Hope, in what became Cape Town.

Over generations, Dutch settlers increased their land holdings and started farms to produce vegetables and livestock for their growing communities. Their agricultural work in the region gained them the title Boers, a Dutch term for “farmers.” The Boers were noted for their exclusionary, and often combative, approach to Indigenous people in the area and fought local groups such as the Xhosa for land and resources during their expansions eastward into the inland regions. Later, as the Boers cemented their presence and developed a unique language, they would become known as Afrikaners.

By the late eighteenth century, Britain, already a preeminent naval and colonial power, turned its attention to southern Africa. British forces targeted the Dutch Cape Colony and, in 1795, invaded and conquered it. By that time, many of the original Boers had already migrated eastward and northward into the continental interior to set up large farms and find better grazing. Many Boers remaining in the southern coastal areas, however, were deeply upset by the British intrusion.

Overview

Treaties and fighting over the Cape Colony continued for several years, but by 1806, it was firmly under British control. The remaining Afrikaners (Boers) found themselves subject to British laws, including the abolition of slavery and increased taxation, and believed that these new ways would threaten their traditions and livelihoods. At the same time, they had grown disgusted by ongoing tensions with their long-time Indigenous rivals, the Xhosa. These feelings of conflict and dissatisfaction grew for years until, by the 1830s, they had reached a boiling point.

By 1835, a large body of Afrikaners decided to leave Cape Colony and move farther inland in search of new agricultural lands and relief from British oversight. The exact number of these migrants is uncertain, but by the end of the migration, they likely totaled about twelve to fourteen thousand. The travelers came to be known as Voortrekkers, meaning “Early Migrants” in the Afrikaans language. Their quest for independence would become a foundational story in the legacy of modern European-African residents of South Africa.

The Voortrekkers followed several important leaders from the old colony, including Andries Pretorius, Piet Retief, and Gerrit Maritz. Their journeying parties included many laborers of Indigenous or mixed-race backgrounds, likely almost as numerous as the Voortrekkers themselves, along with their livestock and possessions. They traveled in trains of horses and ox-drawn wagons, armed with muzzle-loading firearms.

The Great Trek was marked with frequent battles, mainly against Indigenous peoples such as the Ndebele and the Zulu. The Voortrekkers held a technological advantage with their muzzle-loading firearms, cavalry, and knowledge of fortification, but many were overwhelmed by the Black African forces. The Zulu, in particular, proved effective, winning several skirmishes and entrapping and massacring Piet Retief and his followers.

On December 16, 1838, Voortrekkers and Zulu forces met at the Battle of Blood River in Natal, the culmination of ongoing fighting between the factions after the death of Retief. Led by Pretorius, Voortrekker forces lured Zulu warriors out of their capital and defeated them by the Ncome River. Thousands of Zulu people died, and the Afrikaners celebrated a victory that they attributed to the grace of the Christian God. The killing was so intense that the Voortrekkers subsequently called the Ncome River the Bloedrivier, meaning "Blood River."

Ultimately, the Voortrekkers persevered and defeated the Zulu and Ndebele. Through their maneuvering, they also gained a dominating advantage over their foes, the Xhosa, who had previously blocked their expansion inland.

At first, the Voortrekkers all followed a similar path, reaching from the cape to the north-northeast. After crossing the Orange River, however, parties of the migrants disagreed on their destination and parted ways to go in different directions. Some wanted to find high ground inland, while others wanted to find a new living place near the coast where they could resume trading activity.

Ultimately, some groups turned to the northwest, heading toward the modern country of Botswana; others occupied lands in the northeast, near present Zimbabwe; another faction turned sharply southeast to find a home along the Indian Ocean on the eastern coast of Africa. By the end of the migration, around 1845, the Voortrekkers had established settlements in far-flung parts of the region.

Their settlements would take hold and grow briskly. By the 1850s, these settlements would become the Boer Republics. One republic was the Orange Free State, located between the Orange and Vaal Rivers. The republic of the Transvaal was located immediately northward, with the Vaal marking its southern boundary. Although these republics thrived in some ways, particularly from the discovery of diamonds and gold in the area, they also experienced major problems.

Tensions with nearby Indigenous Africans, as well as the British colonists at Cape Town who also sought expansion and resources, led to a variety of concerns for the Voortrekkers and their descendants. Ultimately, British and Boer forces faced off in the South African Wars, also known as the Boer Wars, from 1880 to 1881 and then from 1899 to 1902. The Boers lost despite great determination and guerrilla tactics that brought the word “commando” into the English lexicon.

The Boer territories thus shifted into possession of the British. The British colonies throughout the southern tip of Africa united in 1910 to form a new country known as the Union of South Africa, which would go on to have a complex and often tumultuous history of its own.

Bibliography

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