: 199īoer migrants were referred to as the Voortrekkers during the time of the Great Trek, several mass movements which occurred during the 1830s and 1840s. This caused further dissatisfaction among the Dutch settlers. The Dutch settlers disputed the requirement that they had to lodge their claims in Britain and objected that the value of the slaves was many times the allocated amount. Britain abolished slavery in 1834 and allocated the sum of 1,200,000 British pounds as recompense for the Dutch settlers' slaves. As the Bible, churches, schools and culture of many of the settlers were Dutch, this caused a lot of friction.

The British had proclaimed the English language as the only language of the Cape Colony and prohibited the use of the Dutch language. There were many reasons why the Boers left the Cape Colony among the initial reasons were the language laws.

Subsequently, a number of its Dutch-speaking inhabitants trekked inland, first in smaller numbers, then in groups as large as almost a hundred people, after 1834 even in groups of hundreds. The United Kingdom took over from the Netherlands as the colonial power at the Cape of Good Hope in 1806. The Free Burgher settlements gradually expanded towards the interior of South Africa.

By 1670, the VOC decided to grant additional land to the Free Burghers in order to increase grain production for the purpose of sustainability since grain had to be imported. Following an application process, the Free Burghers formed two groups, the first group named their settlement Harman's Colony and the second group named theirs Stephen's Colony. The Free Burghers established two colonies at the Liesbeeck River near Rondebosch in the Western Cape. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) first issued land to the Free Burghers in 1657. The republics came to an end after the Second Boer War of 1899–1902, which resulted in British annexation and later (in 1910) incorporation of their lands into the Union of South Africa.įlag used by the Voortrekkers during the Great Trek The republics did not provide for the separation of church and state, initially allowing only the Dutch Reformed Church, and later also other Protestant churches in the Calvinist tradition. Two of the Boer Republics achieved international recognition and complete independence: the South African Republic ( Dutch: Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, ZAR or Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. The founders – variously named Trekboers, Boers and Voortrekkers – settled mainly in the middle, northern, north-eastern and eastern parts of present-day South Africa. The Boer republics (sometimes also referred to as Boer states) were independent, self-governing republics formed (especially in the last half of the 19th century) by Dutch-speaking inhabitants of the Cape Colony and their descendants. Boer republics and Griqua states in Southern Africa, 19th century

Education in the boer republics pdf