Boers

Flag of the Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie; VOC) was formed in the Dutch Republic in 1602, and at this time the Dutch had entered the competition for the colonial and imperial trade of commerce in Southeast Asia. The end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 saw European soldiers and refugees widely dispersed across Europe. Immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland traveled to the Netherlands in the hope of finding employment with the VOC. During the same year, one of their ships was stranded in Table Bay near what would eventually become Cape Town, and the shipwrecked crew had to forage for themselves on shore for several months. They were so impressed with the natural resources of the country that on their return to the Republic, they represented to the VOC directors the great advantages to be had for the Dutch Eastern trade from a properly provided and fortified station at the Cape. As a result, the VOC sent a Dutch expedition in 1652 led by Jan van Riebeek, who constructed a fort and laid out vegetable gardens at Table Bay.

Landing at Table Bay, Van Riebeek took control over Cape Town, and after ten years and one month of governing the colony, in 1662, Jan van Riebeeck stepped down as Commander at the Cape.

VOC favoured the idea of freemen at the Cape and many workers of VOC requested to be discharged in order to become free burghers. As a result Jan van Riebeeck approved the notion on favourable conditions and earmarked two areas near the Liesbeek River for farming purposes in 1657. The two areas which were allocated to the freemen, for agricultural purposes, were named Groeneveld and Dutch Garden. These areas were separated by the Amstel River (Liesbeek River). Nine of the best applicants were selected to use the land for agricultural purposes. The freemen or free burghers as they were afterwards termed, thus became subjects of VOC and were no longer its servants.[9]

In 1671, the Dutch first purchased land from the indigenous Khoikhoi beyond the limits of the fort built by Van Riebeek; this marked the development of the Colony proper. As the result of the investigations of a 1685 commissioner, the government worked to recruit a greater variety of immigrants to develop a stable community. They formed part of the class of vrijlieden, also known as vrijburgers ('free citizens'), former VOC employees who remained at the Cape after serving their contracts.[10] A large number of vrijburgers became independent farmers and applied for grants of land, as well as loans of seed and tools, from VOC administration.[10]

VOC authorities had been endeavouring to induce gardeners and small farmers to emigrate from Europe to South Africa, but with little success. They were only able to attract a few families through tales of wealth, but the Cape had little charm in comparison. In October 1670, however, the Chamber of Amsterdam announced that a few families were willing to leave for the Cape and Mauritius during the following December. Among the new names of burghers at this time are Jacob and Dirk van Niekerk, Johannes van As, Francois Villion, Jacob Brouwer, Jan van Eden, Hermanus Potgieter, Albertus Gildenhuis, and Jacobus van den Berg.[11]

During 1688–1689, the colony was greatly strengthened by the arrival of nearly two hundred French Huguenots, who were political refugees from the religious wars in France following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They joined colonies at Stellenbosch, Drakenstein, Franschhoek and Paarl.[12] The influence of the Huguenots on the character of the colonists was marked, leading to the VOC directing in 1701 that only Dutch should be taught in schools. This resulted in the Huguenots assimilating by the middle of the 18th century, with a loss in the use and knowledge of French. The colony gradually spread eastwards, and in 1754 land as far as Algoa Bay was included in the colony.

At this time the European colonists numbered eight to ten thousand. They possessed numerous slaves, grew wheat in sufficient quantity to make it a commodity crop for export, and were famed for the good quality of their wines. But their chief wealth was in cattle. They enjoyed considerable prosperity.

Through the latter half of the 17th and the whole of the 18th century, troubles arose between the colonists and the government as the VOC administration was despotic. Its policies were not directed at development of the colony, but to using it to profit the VOC. VOC closed the colony against free immigration, kept the whole of the trade in its own hands, combined the administrative, legislative and judicial powers in one body, prescribed to the farmers the nature of the crops they were to grow, demanded a large part of their produce as a kind of tax, and made other exactions.

From time to time, indentured VOC servants were endowed with the right of freeburghers but the VOC retained the power to compel them to return into its service whenever they deemed it necessary. This right to force into servitude those who might incur the displeasure of the governor or other high officers was not only exercised with reference to the individuals themselves; it was claimed by the government to be applicable to their children as well.

The tyranny caused many to feel desperate and to flee from oppression, even before 1700 trekking began. In 1780, Joachim van Plettenberg, the governor, proclaimed the Sneeuberge to be the northern boundary of the colony, expressing "the anxious hope that no more extension should take place, and with heavy penalties forbidding the rambling peasants to wander beyond". In 1789, so strong had feelings amongst the burghers become that delegates were sent from the Cape to interview the authorities at Amsterdam. After this deputation, some nominal reforms were granted.

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  Descending from the Sneeuberge, a scene near Graaff-Reinet, by Burchell
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  Passing Cradock Pass, Outeniqua Mountains, by Charles Collier Michell
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  An aquatint by Samuel Daniell of Trekboers making camp
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  Trekboers crossing the Karoo by Charles Davidson Bell

It was largely to escape oppression that the farmers trekked farther and farther from the seat of government. VOC, to control the emigrants, established a magistracy at Swellendam in 1745 and another at Graaff Reinet in 1786. The Gamtoos River had been declared, c. 1740, the eastern frontier of the colony but it was soon passed. In 1780, however, the Dutch, to avoid collision with the Bantu peoples, agreed with them to make the Great Fish River the common boundary. In 1795 the heavily taxed burghers of the frontier districts, who were afforded no protection against the Bantus, expelled the VOC officials, and set up independent governments at Swellendam and Graaff Reinet.

The trekboers of the 19th century were the lineal descendants of the trekboers of the 18th century. The end of the 19th century saw a revival of the same tyrannical monopolist policy as that in the VOC government in the Transvaal. If the formula, "In all things political, purely despotic; in all things commercial, purely monopolist", was true of the VOC government in the 18th century, it was equally true of Kruger's government in the latter part of the 19th.

The underlying fact which made the trek possible is that the Dutch-descended colonists in the eastern and northeastern parts of the colony were not cultivators of the soil, but of purely pastoral and nomadic habits, ever ready to seek new pastures for their flocks and herds, possessing no special affection for any particular locality. These people, thinly scattered over a wide territory, had lived for so long with little restraint from the law that when, in 1815, by the institution of "Commissions of Circuit", justice was brought nearer to their homes, various offences were brought to light, the remedying of which caused much resentment.

The Dutch-descended colonists in the eastern and northeastern parts of the colony, as a result of the Great Trek, had removed themselves from governmental rule and become widely spread out. However, the institution of "Commissions of Circuit" in 1815 allowed the prosecution of crimes, with offences committed by the trekboers—notably including many against people they had enslaved—seeing justice. These prosecutions were very unpopular amongst the trekkers and were seen as interfering with their rights over the enslaved people they viewed as their property.

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  A map of the expansion of the Trekboers (1700–1800)
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  Evolution of the Dutch Cape Colony (1700–1800)
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  Administrative divisions of the Dutch Cape Colony

Although the colony was fairly prosperous, many of the Dutch farmers were as dissatisfied with British rule as they had been with that of the VOC, though their grounds for complaint were not the same. In 1792, Moravian missions had been established which targeted the Khoikhoi, and in 1799 the London Missionary Society began work among both Khoikhoi and Bantu peoples. The missionaries' championing of Khoikhoi grievances caused much dissatisfaction among the majority of the Dutch colonists, whose views temporarily prevailed, for in 1812 an ordinance was issued which empowered magistrates to bind Khoikhoi children as apprentices under conditions which differed little from slavery. [13] Simultaneously, the movement for the abolition of slavery was gaining strength in England, and the missionaries appealed from the colonists to the mother country.

A farmer named Frederick Bezuidenhout refused to obey a summons issued on the complaint of a Khoikhoi, and, firing on the party sent to arrest him, was killed by the return fire. This caused a small rebellion in 1815, known as Slachters Nek, described as "the most insane attempt ever made by a set of men to wage war against their sovereign" by Henry Cloete. Upon its suppression, five ringleaders were publicly hanged at the spot where they had sworn to expel "the English tyrants". The feeling caused by the hanging of these men was deepened by the circumstances of the execution, as the scaffold on which the rebels were simultaneously hanged broke down from their united weight and the men were afterwards hanged one by one. An ordinance was passed in 1827, abolishing the old Dutch courts of landdrost and heemraden (resident magistrates being substituted) and establishing that henceforth all legal proceedings should be conducted in English. The granting in 1828, as a result of the representations of the missionaries, of equal rights with whites to the Khoikhoi and other free coloured people, the imposition (1830) of heavy penalties for harsh treatment of enslaved people, and finally the emancipation of the enslaved people in 1834, were measures which combined to aggravate the farmers' dislike of government. Moreover, what these enslavers viewed as the inadequate compensation for the freeing of the enslaved people, and the suspicions engendered by the method of payment, caused much resentment; and in 1835 the farmers again removed themselves to unknown country to escape the government. While emigration beyond the colonial border had been continuous for 150 years, it now took on larger proportions.

After the Second Boer War, a Boer diaspora occurred. Starting in 1903, the largest group emigrated to the Patagonia region of Argentina and to Brazil. Another group emigrated to British colony of Kenya, from where most returned to South Africa during the 1930s, while a third group under the leadership of General Ben Viljoen emigrated to Mexico and to New Mexico and Texas in the southwestern United States.

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language spoken widely in South Africa and Namibia, and to a lesser extent in Botswana and Zimbabwe. It evolved from the Dutch vernacular[17][18] of South Holland (Hollandic dialect)[19][20] spoken by the mainly Dutch colonists of what is now South Africa, where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in the course of the 18th century.[21] Hence, it is a daughter language of Dutch, and was previously referred to as Cape Dutch (also used to refer collectively to the early Cape colonists) or kitchen Dutch (a derogatory term used in its earlier days). However, it is also variously (although incorrectly) described as a creole or as a partially creolised language.[n 1] The term is ultimately derived from Dutch Afrikaans-Hollands meaning African Dutch.

Painting depicting the Bullock wagons moving over the billowy plains, 2 January 1860

The desire to wander, known as trekgees, was a notable characteristic of the Boers. It figured prominently in the late 17th century when the Trekboers began to inhabit the northern and eastern Cape frontiers, again during the Great Trek when the Voortrekkers left the eastern Cape en masse, and after the major republics were established during the Thirstland ('Dorsland') Trek.[22] One such trekker described the impetus for emigrating as, "a drifting spirit was in our hearts, and we ourselves could not understand it. We just sold our farms and set out northwestwards to find a new home".[22] A rustic characteristic and tradition was developed quite early on as Boer society was born on the frontiers of white colonisation and on the outskirts of Western civilisation.[2]

The Boer quest for independence manifested in a tradition of declaring republics, which predates the arrival of the British; when the British arrived, Boer republics had already been declared and were in rebellion from the VOC.[23]

The Boers of the frontier were known for their independent spirit, resourcefulness, hardiness, and self-sufficiency, whose political notions verged on anarchy but had begun to be influenced by republicanism.[23]

The Boers had cut their ties to Europe as they emerged from the Trekboer group.[24]

The Boers possessed a distinct Protestant culture, and the majority of Boers and their descendants were members of a Reformed Church. The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk ('Dutch Reformed Church') was the national Church of the South African Republic (1852–1902). The Orange Free State (1854–1902) was named after the Protestant House of Orange in the Netherlands.

The Calvinist influence, in such fundamental Calvinist doctrines such as unconditional predestination and divine providence, remains present in a minority of Boer culture, who see their role in society as abiding by the national laws and accepting calamity and hardship as part of their Christian duty. Many Boers have since converted denominations and are now members of Baptist, Charismatic, Pentecostal or Lutheran Churches.

• Boere-Vryheidsbeweging
• Boerestaat Party
• Freedom Front Plus
• Front National
• Herstigte Nasionale Party
• National Conservative Party of South Africa

The Movement for Christian-National Education is a federation of 47 Calvinist private schools, primarily in the Free State and the Transvaal, committed to educating Boer children from grade 0 through to 12.[36]

Some local radio stations promote the ideals of those who identify with the Boer people, like Radio Rosestad 100.6 FM (in Bloemfontein), Overvaal Stereo and Radio Pretoria. An internet-based radio station, Boerevolk Radio, promotes Boer separatism.

Territorial areas in the form of a Boerestaat ('Boer State') are being developed as colonies exclusively for Boers/Afrikaners, notably Orania in the Northern Cape and Kleinfontein near Pretoria.