The Great Trek

The Great Trek (Afrikaans: Die Groot Trek; Dutch: De Grote Trek) was an eastward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyond the Cape's British colonial administration. The Great Trek resulted from the culmination of tensions between rural descendants of the Cape's original European settlers, known collectively as Boers, and the British Empire. It was also reflective of an increasingly common trend among individual Boer communities to pursue an isolationist and semi-nomadic lifestyle away from the developing administrative complexities in Cape Town.

The Great Trek led directly to the founding of several autonomous Boer republics, namely the South African Republic (also known simply as the Transvaal), the Orange Free State, and the Natalia Republic. It was also responsible for the displacement of the Northern Ndebele people, and was one of several decisive factors influencing the decline and collapse of the Zulu Empire.

The Cape of Good Hope was first settled by Europeans under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company (also known by its Dutch initials VOC), which established a victualing station there in 1652 to provide its outward bound fleets with fresh provisions and a harbour of refuge during the long journey from Europe to Asia. In a few short decades, the Cape had become home to a large population of "vrijlieden", also denoted as "vrijburgers" (free citizens), former Company employees who remained in Dutch territories overseas after completing their contracts. Since the primary purpose of the Cape settlement at the time was to stock provisions for passing Dutch ships, the VOC offered grants of farmland to its employees under the condition they would cultivate grain for the Company warehouses, and released them from their contracts to save on their wages. Vrijburgers were granted tax exempt status for twelve years and loaned all the necessary seeds and farming implements they requested. They were married Dutch citizens, considered "of good character" by the Company, and had to commit to spending at least twenty years on the African continent. Reflecting the multi-national character of the VOC's workforce, some German soldiers and sailors were also considered for vrijburger status as well, and in 1688 the Dutch government sponsored the resettlement of over a hundred French Huguenot refugees at the Cape. As a result, by 1691 over a quarter of the colony's European population was not ethnically Dutch. Nevertheless, there was a degree of cultural assimilation due to intermarriage, and the almost universal adoption of the Dutch language. Cleavages were likelier to occur along social and economic lines; broadly speaking, the Cape colonists were delineated into Boers, poor farmers who settled directly on the frontier, and the more affluent, predominantly urbanised Cape Dutch.

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