Great Trek - History

History

The Voortrekkers comprised two groups from the eastern frontier region of the Cape Colony, semi-nomadic pastoralists known as Trekboers, and established farmers and artisans known as Grensboere, or Border Farmers. Together these groups were later called Voortrekkers (Pioneers). While most settlers who lived in the western Cape (later known as the Cape Dutch) did not trek eastward, a small number did.

The first colonists, who arrived in 1652 to set up a depot for the provision of ships under the auspices of The Dutch East India Company, were of Dutch stock. Many later settlers were of German origin and after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, French Huguenot refugees.

By 1800, white colonists numbered rather fewer than 40,000, and were so interconnected by marriage that they represented a giant family rather than a new polyglot community. The community was also governed by The Council of Seventeen in Amsterdam, who governed the far-reaching empire of the Dutch East India Company. During the Napoleonic Wars the colony passed into the control of the United Kingdom. This was formally ratified in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna.

Historians have identified various factors that contributed to the migration of an estimated 12,000 Voortrekkers to the future Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal regions. The primary motivations included discontent with the British rule: its Anglicisation policies, restrictive laws on slavery and its eventual abolition, arrangements to compensate former slave owners, and the perceived indifference of British authorities to border conflicts along the Cape Colony's eastern frontier. Many contemporary sources argue that Ordinance 50 (1828), which guaranteed equal legal rights to all free persons of colour, and prohibitions on inhumane treatment of workers, spurred the Boer migrations. However, some scholars argue that most Trekboers did not own slaves, unlike the more affluent Cape Dutch who did not migrate from the western Cape. The three republics subsequently founded by the Voortrekkers prohibited slavery, but enshrined racial separatism in their constitutions.

Other possible factors included the desire to escape from relentless border wars with the Xhosa along the eastern frontier of the Cape colony. The migrants also sought fertile farmland, as good land was becoming scarce within the colony's frontiers. The Great Trek also resulted from increasing population pressures, as Trekboer migrations eastward had come to a virtual stop for at least three decades, though some Trekboers did migrate beyond the Orange River prior to the Great Trek.