Great Trek
The Great Trek (
The Great Trek led directly to the founding of several autonomous Boer republics, namely the South African Republic (also known simply as the Transvaal), the Orange Free State, and the Natalia Republic.[5] It also led to conflicts that resulted in the displacement of the Northern Ndebele people,[6] and conflicts with the Zulu people that contributed to the decline and eventual collapse of the Zulu Kingdom.[3]
Background
Before the arrival of Europeans, the
Following the Flanders Campaign and the Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam, France assisted in the establishment of a pro-French client state, the Batavian Republic, on Dutch soil.[2] This opened the Cape to French warships.[3] To protect her own prosperous maritime shipping routes, Great Britain occupied the fledgling colony by force until 1803.[2] From 1806 to 1814, the Cape was governed as a British military dependency, whose sole importance to the Royal Navy was its strategic relation to Indian maritime traffic.[2] The British formally assumed permanent administrative control around 1815, as a result of the Treaty of Paris.[2]
Causes
At the onset of the British rule, the Cape Colony encompassed 100,000 square miles (260,000 km2) and was populated by about 26,720 people of European descent, a relative majority of whom were of Dutch origin.[2][12] Just over a quarter were of German ancestry and about one-sixth were descended from French Huguenots,[12] although most had ceased speaking French since about 1750.[13] There were also 30,000 African and Asian slaves owned by the settlers, and about 17,000 indigenous Khoisan. Relations between the settlers – especially the Boers – and the new administration quickly soured.[5] The British authorities were adamantly opposed to the Boers' ownership of slaves and what was perceived as their unduly harsh treatment of the indigenous peoples.[5]
The British government insisted that the Cape finance its own affairs through self-taxation, an approach which was alien to both the Boers and the Dutch merchants in Cape Town.[3] In 1815, the controversial arrest of a white farmer for allegedly assaulting one of his servants resulted in the abortive Slachter's Nek Rebellion. The British retaliated by hanging at least five Boers for insurrection.[2] In 1828, the Cape governor declared that all native inhabitants but slaves were to have the rights of "citizens", in respect of security and property ownership, on parity with the settlers. This had the effect of further alienating the colony's white population.[2][15] Boer resentment of successive British administrators continued to grow throughout the late 1820s and early 1830s, especially with the official imposition of the English language.[6] This replaced Dutch with English as the language used in the Cape's judicial and political systems, putting the Boers at a disadvantage, as most spoke little or no English.[2][15]
Britain's alienation of the Boers was particularly amplified by the decision to abolish slavery in all its colonies in 1834.[2][3] All 35,000 slaves registered with the Cape governor were to be freed and given rights on par with other citizens, although in most cases their masters could retain them as apprentices until 1838.[15][16] Many Boers, especially those involved with grain and wine production, were dependent on slave labour; for example, 94% of all white farmers in the vicinity of Stellenbosch owned slaves at the time, and the size of their slave holdings correlated greatly to their production output.[16] Compensation was offered by the British government, but payment had to be received in London, and few Boers possessed the funds to make the trip.[3]
Bridling at what they considered an unwarranted intrusion into their way of life, some in the Boer community considered selling their farms and venturing deep into South Africa's unmapped interior to preempt further disputes and live completely independent from British rule.[3] Others, especially trekboers, a class of Boers who pursued semi-nomadic pastoral activities, were frustrated by the apparent unwillingness or inability of the British government to extend the borders of the Cape Colony eastward and provide them with access to more prime pasture and economic opportunities. They resolved to trek beyond the colony's borders on their own.[6]
Opposition
Although it did nothing to impede the Great Trek, Great Britain viewed the movement with pronounced trepidation.
The Great Trek was not universally popular among the settlers either. Around 12,000 of them took part in the migration, about a fifth of the colony's Dutch-speaking white population at the time.[3][1] The Dutch Reformed Church, to which most of the Boers belonged, explicitly refused to endorse the Great Trek.[3] Despite their hostility towards the British, there were Boers who chose to remain in the Cape of their own accord.[5]
For its part, the distinct Cape Dutch community had accepted British rule; many of its members even considered themselves loyal British subjects with a special affection for English culture.[18] The Cape Dutch were also much more heavily urbanised and therefore less likely to be susceptible to the same rural grievances and considerations as those held by the Boers.[14]
Exploratory treks to Natal
In January 1832, Andrew Smith (an Englishman) and William Berg (a Boer farmer) scouted
In June 1834, the Boer leaders of
In June 1834 at Graaff-Reinet,
On 8 September 1834, the Kommissietrek of 40 men and one woman, as well as a retinue of coloured servants, set off from Grahamstown for Natal with 14 wagons. Moving through the Eastern Cape, they were welcomed by the Xhosa who were in dispute with the neighbouring Zulu King Dingane ka Senzangakhona, and they passed unharmed into Natal. They travelled more or less the same route that Smith and Berg had taken two years earlier.
The trek avoided the coastal route, keeping to the flatter inland terrain. The Kommissietrek approached Port Natal from
They arrived at the sweltering hot bay of Port Natal in February 1835, exhausted after their long journey. There, the trek was soon welcomed with open arms by the few British hunters and ivory traders there such as James Collis, including Reverend Allen Francis Gardiner, an ex-commander of the Royal Navy ship Clinker, who had decided to start a mission station there. After congenial exchanges between the Boers and British sides, the party joined them and invited Dick King to become their guide.
The Boers set up their laager ('wagon fort') camp in the area of the present-day Greyville Racecourse in Durban, chosen because it had suitable grazing for the oxen and horses and was far from the foraging hippos in the bay. Several small streams running off the Berea ridge provided fresh water. Alexander Biggar was also at the bay as a professional elephant-hunter and provided the trekkers with information regarding conditions at Port Natal. Bantjes made notes suggested by Uys, which later formed the basis of his more comprehensive report on the positive aspects of Natal. Bantjes also made rough maps of the bay - although this journal is now missing - showing the potential for a harbour which could supply the Boers in their new homeland.
At Port Natal, Uys sent Dick King, who could speak Zulu, to uMgungundlovu to investigate with King Dingane the possibility of granting them land. When Dick King returned to Port Natal some weeks later, he reported that King Dingane insisted they visit him in person. Johannes Uys, brother of Piet Uys, and a number of comrades with a few wagons travelled toward King Dingane's capital at uMgungundlovu, and after making a laager camp at the mouth of the Mvoti River, they proceeded on horseback, but were halted by a flooded Tugela River and forced to return to the laager.
The Kommissietrek left Port Natal for Grahamstown with a stash of ivory in early June 1835, following more or less the same route back to the Cape, and arrived at Grahamstown in October 1835. On Piet Uys's recommendation, Bantjes set to work on the first draft of the Natalialand Report. Meetings and talks took place in the main church to much approval, and the first sparks of Trek Fever began to take hold. From all the information accumulated at Port Natal, Bantjes drew up the final report on "Natalia or Natal Land" that acted as the catalyst which inspired the Boers at the Cape to set in motion the Great Trek.
First wave
Largest first wave trek parties[17]: 162–163 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Leader | Date of departure | Point of departure | Size | |
Louis Tregardt | September 1835 | Nine families including the Tregardt family | ||
Hans van Rensburg | September 1835 | 49 | ||
Hendrik Potgieter | late 1835 or early 1836 | Over 200 once united with the parties of Sarel Cilliers and Casper Kruger. | ||
Gerrit Maritz | September 1836 | Graaff-Reinet | Over 700 people including roughly 100 white men | |
Piet Retief | February 1837 | Albany | Roughly 100 men, women, and children. | |
Piet Uys | April 1837 | Uitenhage |
Over 100 members of the Uys family. |
The first wave of Voortrekkers lasted from 1835 to 1840, during which an estimated 6,000 people (roughly 20% of the Cape Colony's total population or 10% of the white population in the 1830s) trekked.[17]
The first two parties of Voortrekkers left in September 1835, led by
In late July 1836 van Rensburg's entire party of 49, except two children who were saved by a Zulu warrior, were massacred at
A party led by Hendrik Potgieter trekked out of the Tarka area in either late 1835 or early 1836, and in September 1836 a party led by Gerrit Maritz began their trek from Graaff-Reinet. There was no clear consensus amongst the trekkers on where they were going to settle, but they all had the goal of settling near an outlet to the sea.[17]: 162, 163
Conflict with the Matebele
In August 1836, despite pre-existing peace agreements with local black leaders, a Ndebele (Matebele) patrol attacked the Liebenberg family part of Potgieter's party, killing six men, two women and six children. It is thought that their primary aim was to plunder the Voortrekkers' cattle. On 20 October 1836, Potgieter's party was attacked by an army of 4,600 Ndebele warriors at the Battle of Vegkop. Thirty-five armed trekkers repulsed the Ndebele assault on their laager with the loss of two men and almost all the trekkers' cattle. Potgieter, Uys and Maritz mounted two punitive commando raids. The first resulted in the sacking of the Ndebele colony at Mosega, the death of 400 Ndebele, and the taking of 7,000 cattle. The second commando forced Mzilikazi and his followers to flee to what is now modern day Zimbabwe.[17]: 163
By spring 1837, five to six large Voortrekker colonies had been established between the Vaal and Orange Rivers with a total population of around 2,000 trekkers.
Conflict with the Zulu
In October 1837
Various interpretations of what transpired exist, as only the missionary Francis Owen's written eye-witness account survived.[21] Retief's written request for land contained veiled threats by referring to the Voortrekker's defeat of indigenous groups encountered along their journey. The Voortrekker demand for a written contract guaranteeing private property ownership was incompatible with the contemporaneous Zulu oral culture which prescribed that a chief could only temporarily dispense land as it was communally owned.[22]
Most versions agree that the following happened: King Dingane's authority extended over some of the land in which the Boers wanted to settle. As prerequisite to granting the Voortrekker request, he demanded that the Voortrekkers return some cattle stolen by Sekonyela, a rival chief. After the Boers retrieved the cattle, King Dingane invited Retief to his residence at uMgungundlovu to finalise the treaty, having either planned the massacre in advance, or deciding to do so after Retief and his men arrived.
King Dingane's reputed instruction to his warriors, "Bulalani abathakathi!" (Zulu for "kill the wizards") may indicate that he considered the Boers to wield evil supernatural powers. After killing Retief's delegation, a Zulu army of 7,000 impis were sent out and immediately attacked Voortrekker encampments in the Drakensberg foothills at what later was called
on the eastern Cape frontier, the Zulus killed women and children along with men, wiping out half of the Natal contingent of Voortrekkers.The Voortrekkers retaliated with a 347-strong punitive raid against the Zulu (later known as the Flight Commando), supported by new arrivals from the
In November 1838
After the defeat of the Zulu forces and the recovery of the treaty between Dingane and Retief from Retief's body, the Voortrekkers proclaimed the Natalia Republic.[24] After Dingane's death, Mpande was proclaimed king, and the Zulu nation allied with the short-lived Natalia Republic until its annexation by the British Empire in 1843.[17]: 164 [25]
The Voortrekkers' guns offered them a technological advantage over the Zulu's traditional weaponry of short stabbing spears, fighting sticks, and cattle-hide shields. The Boers attributed their victory to a vow they made to God before the battle: if victorious, they and future generations would commemorate the day as a
Impact
Conflict amongst the Voortrekkers was a problem because the trek levelled out the pre-existing class hierarchy which had previously enforced discipline, and thus social cohesion broke down. Instead the trek leaders became more reliant on patriarchal family structure and military reputation to maintain control over their parties. This had a large and lasting impact on Afrikaans culture and society.[17]: 163
Centenary celebrations
The celebration of the Great Trek in the 1930s played a major role in the growth of Afrikaans nationalism. It is thought that the experiences of the Second Boer War and the following period, between 1906 and 1934, of a lack of public discussion about the war within the Afrikaans community helped set the scene for a large increase in interest in Afrikaans national identity. The celebration of the centenary of the Great Trek along with a new generation of Afrikaners interested in learning about the Afrikaans experiences of the Boer War catalysed a surge of Afrikaans nationalism.[17]: 433
The centenary celebrations began with a re-enactment of the trek beginning on 8 August 1938 with nine ox wagons at the statue of Jan van Riebeeck in Cape Town and ended at the newly completed Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria and attended by over 100,000 people. A second re-enactment trek starting at the same time and place ended at the scene of the Battle of Blood River.[17]: 432
The commemoration sparked mass enthusiasm amongst Afrikaners as the re-enactment trek passed through the small towns and cities of South Africa. Both participants and spectators participated by dressing in Voortrekker clothing, renaming streets, holding ceremonies, erecting monuments, and laying wreaths at the graves of Afrikaner heroes. Cooking meals over an open fire in the same way the Voortrekkers did became fashionable amongst urbanites, giving birth to the South African tradition of
A number of Afrikaans organisations such as the
Political impact
The Great Trek was used by
A few years later, "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" ('The Voice of South Africa'), a poem written by Cornelis Jacobus Langenhoven referring to the Great Trek, was chosen to be the words of the pre-1994 South African national anthem. The post-1997 national anthem of South Africa incorporates a section of "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" but it was decided to omit the section in "reference to the Great Trek ('met die kreun van ossewa'), since this was the experience of only one section of our community".[29] When apartheid in South Africa ended and the country transitioned to majority rule, President F. W. de Klerk invoked the measures as a new Great Trek.[30]
In fiction
Literature
English
- H. Rider Haggard, Swallow (1899) and Marie (1912)
- Stuart Cloete, Turning Wheels (1937)
- Helga Moray, Untamed (1950) - a 1955 movie of the same name is based on this book.
- James A. Michener, The Covenant (1980)
- ISBN 0312423829
- Robin Binckes, Canvas under the Sky (2011) ISBN 1920143637 - a controversial novel about a promiscuous drug-using Voortrekker set during the Great Trek.[31]
Afrikaans
- Jeanette Ferreira
- Die son kom aan die seekant op (2007; 'The sun comes up over the sea')[32]
- F.A. Venter,
- Geknelde land (English: Afflicted land) (1960)
- Offerland (English: Land of sacrifice) (1963)
- Gelofteland (English: Land of the covenant) (1966)
- Bedoelde land (English: Intended land) (1968)
Dutch
- C. W. H. Van der Post, Piet Uijs, of lijden en strijd der voortrekkers in Natal, novel, 1918.
Film
- Untamed (1955), an adventure/love story set in the later part of the trek about an Irish woman seeking a new life in South Africa after the Great Famine. Based on a 1950 novel of the same name by Helga Moray.
- The Fiercest Heart (1961), an adventure/love story about two British soldiers who desert the military and join a group of Boers heading north on the Great Trek.
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0582772618.
- ^ ISBN 978-0198731337.
- ^ ISBN 978-1629145136.
- ISBN 978-1-4058-8118-0.
- ^ ISBN 978-1566638326.
- ^ ISBN 978-1609871222.
- ^ "The Empty Land Myth". South African History Online. Retrieved 7 December 2023.
- ^ ISBN 978-1904744955.
- ISBN 978-9053565179.
- ISBN 978-0306485381.
- ISBN 978-1433107597.
- ^ a b c Entry: Cape Colony. Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 4 Part 2: Brain to Casting. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 1933. James Louis Garvin, editor.
- ^ ISBN 978-0624043591.
- ^ ISBN 978-1107628519.
- ^ a b c Newton, A. P.; Benians, E. A., eds. (1963). The Cambridge History of the British Empire. Vol. 8: South Africa, Rhodesia and the Protectorates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 272, 320–322, 490.
- ^ ISBN 978-0864861160.
- ^ ISBN 062403884X.
- ISBN 978-0714651019.
- ^ Ransford, Oliver (1972). The Great Trek. London: John Murray. p. 42.
- ^ "Johannes Jacobus Janse (Lang Hans) van Rensburg, leader of one of the early Voortrekker treks, is born at the Sundays River". South African History Online. Archived from the original on 19 February 2014. Retrieved 24 August 2014.
- ^ Bulpin, T. V. "9 - The Voortrekkers". Natal and the Zulu Country. T. V. Bulpin Publications.
- ^ du Toit, André. "(Re)reading the Narratives of Political Violence in South Africa: Indigenous founding myths & frontier violence as discourse" (PDF). p. 18. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 December 2008. Retrieved 18 August 2009.
- ^ Johnston, Harry Hamilton (1910). Britain across the seas: Africa; a history and description of the British Empire in Africa. London: National Society's Depository. p. 111.
- ^ Bulpin, T. V. "11 - The Republic of Natal". Natal and the Zuku Country. T. V. Bulpin Publications.
- ^ a b "Battle of Blood River". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 21 May 2010.
- ^ Die Bou van 'n Nasie [Building a Nation] (in Afrikaans). 1938. Retrieved 22 March 2024.
- ^ "Die Bou van 'n Nasie" (in Afrikaans). IMDb. Retrieved 1 March 2015.
- ^ "Great Trek Centenary Celebrations commence". South African History Online. Retrieved 31 December 2014.
- ^ "The national anthem is owned by everyone". South African Music Rights Organisation. 17 June 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
- ^ Lyman, Rick (22 December 1993). "South Africa approves new constitution to end white rule". Knight-Ridder Newspapers. Archived from the original on 19 September 2018 – via HighBeam Research.
- ^ Ritchie, Kevin (11 February 2012). "Mad Boers burn Great Trek bodice ripper". IOL News. Retrieved 1 March 2015.
- ^ Ferreira, Janette (2007). Die Son Kom Aan die Seekant Op (in Afrikaans). Kaapstad: Human & Rousseau.
Further reading
- Benyon, John. "The necessity for new perspectives in South African history with particular reference to the Great Trek." Historia Archive 33.2 (1988): 1–10. online
- Cloete, Henry. The history of the great Boer trek and the origin of the South African republics (J. Murray, 1899) online.
- Etherington, Norman. "The Great Trek in relation to the Mfecane: a reassessment." South African Historical Journal 25.1 (1991): 3–21.
- Petzold, Jochen. "'Translating' the Great Trek to the twentieth century: re-interpretations of the Afrikaner myth in three South African novels." English in Africa 34.1 (2007): 115–131.
- Routh, C. R. N. "The Great South African Trek." History Today (May 1951) 1#5 pp 7–13 online.
- Von Veh, Karen. "The politics of memory in South African art." de arte 54.1 (2019): 3–24.