Trekboers
The Trekboers (
Origins
The Trekboers were seminomadic
Trekboers also traded with indigenous people. This meant their herds were of hardy local stock.[citation needed] They formed a vital link between the pool of animals in the interior and the providers of shipping provisions at the Cape. Trekboere were nomadic, living in their wagons and rarely remaining in one location for an extended period of time. A number of Trekboers settled in the eastern Cape, where their descendants became known as Grensboere (Border Farmers).
Expansion
Despite the VOC's attempts to prevent settler expansion beyond the western Cape, the frontier of the Colony remained open: the authorities in Cape Town lacked the means to police the Colony's borders.[1]: 24 [2] By the 1740s the Trekboers had entered the
Independent republics
Due to the collapse of the VOC (which went bankrupt in 1800) and inspired by the French Revolution (1789) and the American Revolution,[citation needed] groups of Boers rebelled against VOC rule. They set up independent republics in the town of Graaff-Reinet (1795), and four months later, in Swellendam (17 June 1795). A few months later, the newly established Batavian Republic nationalised the VOC (1 March 1796); the Netherlands came under the sway of the new post-revolution French government.[1]: 26
The British, who captured Cape Town in September 1795 in the course of the French Revolutionary Wars and took over the administration of Cape Colony, increased the level of government oversight the Trekboers were subject to. Tensions between the Trekboers and the British colonial administration would culminate in the Slachter's Nek Rebellion of 1815, which was rapidly suppressed and the leaders of the rebellion executed. Eventually, due to a combination of dissatisfaction with the British administration, constant frontier wars with the Xhosa to the east, and growing shortages of land, the Trekboers eventually went on the Great Trek.[citation needed]
Legacy
Numerous Trekboers settled down to become border farmers for a few generations and later
Many Trekboers crossed the
By the late 17th century, both the Trekboers and the Voortrekkers were collectively called Boers.
Language
The Trekboers spoke a variety of
See also
- Afrikaner Calvinism
- Afrikaner nationalism
- Boer
- Boer republics
- History of Cape Colony Pre-1806
References
- ^ a b c d
L'Ange, Gerald (2005). The White Africans: From Colonisation to Liberation. Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers. p. 524. ISBN 1-86842-219-4.
- ^
Giliomee, Hermann (2003). The Afrikaners: Biography of a People. Cape Town: Tafleburg Publishers Limited. pp. 31–34. ISBN 0-624-03884-X.
- ^ Van Eeden, Petrus (1995). Afrikaans hoort by Nederlands (PDF). Retrieved 29 October 2014.