Who were the trekboers in South Africa?
The trekboers were nomadic pastoralists, forerunners of the Voortrekkers, the Dutch pioneers who forsook the Cape Colony and trekked north in the 1830s.
What are Afrikaners known for?
The Afrikaners, descended from hard-working, resourceful pioneers, have developed a rich culture and language over the past four centuries. Although the Afrikaners have been associated with the oppression of apartheid, Afrikaners today live in a multiethnic society where all races can participate in government.
What is the meaning of trekboers?
Definition of trekboer : a migratory grazier of southern Africa.
Why did some of the Boers became known as trekboers?
farmers of Dutch descent, called trekboers or Boers, began to settle the area. After 1836 came the Great Trek, a migratory movement in which larger numbers of Boer farmers seeking freedom from British rule moved north across the Orange River.
How did the Trekboers Live describe their way of life?
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).
Why did the Trekboers leave the Cape?
The Voortrekkers traditionally have been depicted by English historians as economically backward people who left the Cape Colony as a protest against aspects of British rule, especially the ban on holding slaves (implemented after 1834) and British reluctance to take further land from the Xhosa for white settlement.
Who were the Boers and what was the Great Trek?
About a fifth of the total Boer population, including many trekboers, undertook what they called “the Great Trek” in the 1830s and 1840s deep into South Africa’s interior to escape British rule. They then founded their own countries, known as Boer republics.
What is a Trekboer?
The picture given of trekboers (most sources use lower case ‘t’) – “wandering farmers who carelessly tilled a piece of land for nine or ten years, then abandoned it for a better piece of new land forty miles farther east… they practiced the most abusive type of agriculture” – misses important aspects of the trekboer phenomena.
What was the Great Trek in Africa?
Great Trek. Great Trek, Afrikaans Groot Trek, the emigration of some 12,000 to 14,000 Boers from Cape Colony in South Africa between 1835 and the early 1840s, in rebellion against the policies of the British government and in search of fresh pasturelands. The Great Trek is regarded by Afrikaners as a central event…
What was the lifestyle of the Trekboers?
The trekboers’ livelihood depended primarily on stock-breeding, but where the ground was suitable they grew grain. They were not especially devoted to one particular farm; their attachment was reserved for the stock they owned and for the virgin land as a whole which Providence had opened up to them.