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The Boers
The Boers, Dutch farmers who were
hungry for land, had been moving
inland ever since the Cape Colony of
what is now South Africa was
established by the Dutch East India
Company in 1652. By the time the
British seized the colony in 1795, the
Dutch had gradually acquired all the
land of the
indigenous
Khoikhoi,
many of whom were killed, died of
smallpox, or become herdsmen to
the colonists. The Dutch government
passed a law in 1787 subjecting the
remaining nomadic Khoikhoi to
certain restrictions, which either
made them more dependent upon
the farmers or compelled them to
migrate northwards, facing the
hostility of their old foe, the
Bushmen, which the Boers were
already hunting down.
When the British tried to enforce
a
humanitarian
native policy in the
1830s, the stubbornly independent
Boers trekked further into the
boundless interior, where they
clashed with other fiercer African
people of Bantu stock, and suffered
an appalling massacre at the hands
Southern Africa
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Words to Understand
Humanitarian:
Concerned with or seeking to promote
human welfare.
Indigenous:
Originating or occurring naturally in a particular
place (native).
Migrants:
People who move from one place to another in order to
find work or better living conditions.
BELOW:
A Bas-relief panel on the
Voortrekker Monument, near Pretoria,
South Africa. It depicts the exodus of
farmers from the eastern Cape colony,
1836–37, known as the Great Trek.
OPPOSITE:
Depiction of a Zulu attack
on a Boer camp in February 1838,
known as the Weenen Massacre.