Boers
Nation | Active
1700 CE to 2057 CE
Boer is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for farmer, which came to denote the descendants of the Dutch-speaking settlers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century, as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State, Transvaal (which are together known as the Boer Republics), and to a lesser extent Natal.
Their primary motivations for leaving the Cape were to escape British rule and extract themselves from the constant border wars between the British imperial government and the native tribes on the eastern frontier.
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With much of the better land close to the Cape in the hands of VOC officials and rich burghers, poorer whites seek to make a living beyond the boundaries of the settlement.
Traveling by wagon inland and along the southwestern coast, individual farmers, along with their immediate families (if any), a few slaves, several Khoikhoi herdsmen, and small numbers of livestock, set out to establish farms on large tracts of land (averaging twenty-five hundred hectares) granted on loan by the VOC.
Because much of this land is already occupied by Khoikhoi pastoralists near the coast and by San hunter-gatherers in the interior, considerable warfare results.
Trekboers raid the herds of the Khoikhoi and seize control of the springs on which pastoralists and hunter-gatherers alike depend for water, while Khoikhoi and San counterraid the herds of the Trekboers.
The powerful Tswana-speaking kingdom in the southern Highveld known as the Rolong had split, ...
The Taung are named for a legendary military leader (Tau) among the Rolong.
Several groups of Bantu-speaking immigrants from the north, known for their skill in smelting iron and in metalworking, had occupied the mountains along the Limpopo River.
This heterogeneous population has coalesced into a number of chiefdoms, known as the Venda, or VaVenda.
Well established by the time of the Dutch arrival in the mid-seventeenth century, the Xhosa occupy much of eastern South Africa from around the Port Elizabeth area to lands inhabited by Zulu-speakers south of the modern city of Durban.
Rivalries among Xhosa chiefs are common, however, and their society will be weakened by repeated clashes with Europeans, especially over land between the Sundays River and the Great Fish River.
The Zulu are still a small group among the Mthethwa and have not yet begun the conquest and assimilation of neighboring groups that will characterize much of the early nineteenth century.
The Griqua, most of whom speak Dutch as their first language and had adopted Christianity, are one of several Khoisan-European populations in the interior in the eighteenth century.
A unique Griqua culture emerges, based on hunting, herding, and trade with both Africans and Europeans along the Orange River.