Great Trek

(1863–1867)

   Often dated to 1837, the Great Trek was an overland migration over a number of years of Dutch-speaking Afrikaners, or Boers as they were then called, away from the British-controlled Cape Colony and into the interior of what is now South Africa. Boers traveled through the Eastern Cape north and east toward what became the Orange Free State, into the Transvaal, and some south again into Natal. Although some areas were relatively depopulated as a result of the African intertribal warfare known as the Mfecane, the Boers clashed with several black African tribes, most notably the Zulu at the battle of Blood River in 1838.

   The Great Trek was motivated by a desire for land and pasture, but also by opposition to the anglicizing influences brought to the Cape by the British, and specifically to the abolition of slavery and tentative moves toward racial equality in the British Empire. The Great Trek led to the founding of militantly independent Boer republics in the interior, the predecessors of those - the Transvaal and the Orange Free State - that went to war with Britain in 1879 and again in 1899. The Great Trek and its myths of survival in the face of great odds and native hostility became a foundational event in the historical consciousness of the Afrikaners, the eventual capital of South Africa being named Pretoria in honor of Andries Pretorius, their leader at Blood River.

   See also <>; <>; <>.

   FURTHER READING:

    Davenport, T.R.H. South Africa: A Modern History, Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1987;

    Etherington, Norman. The Great Treks: The Transformation of South Africa, 1815–1854. New York: Longman, 2001;

    Ransford, Oliver. The Great Trek. London: Murray, 1972.

   MARK F. PROUDMAN