What was The Great Trek?

the great Tre or in Africans was a large-scale movement of dutch-speaking settlers whose ancestors had migrated to the Cape of Good Hope from the 17th century thousands perhaps even a tenth of the cape's white population packed all their belongings into wagons and pushed them into the interior between 1835 and 1840 now before I go on I'd like to cover some of the context if you want to skip ahead to when I actually start talking about the great trk then check the description for the time on the 6th of April 1652 the Dutch East India companies yanan reeg founded the City of Cape Town named capot 50 Mi to the north of table Bay Cape Town was used by VOC Merchants as a was station for Dutch ships both going to and returning from the Dutch East Indies as time went on more and more retired VOC members began settling around the city some of whom worked on the land as farmers and would become known by the Dutch word bu which means farmer in 1814 when the Netherlands was part of the French Empire under Napoleon the cape colony was invaded by the British Army and it passed to the jurisdiction of the British South Africa company the older Dutch population and the new migrants from Britain didn't get along well and the Dutch complained that the British weren't doing enough when their farms and families were being attacked by the local NOA tribe they were horrified when slavery was abolished and their Farm hands were taken away without compensation by the British authorities the situation reached Bo point when the British outlawed Dutch as an administrative language in the meantime there was not only the grandchildren of Dutch colonists living on the farms outside the city but also French hugos immigrants and refugees from the German states and mixed race people with European African and Asian ancestors before long these groups Amalgamated under the new racial identity of the fourth recer speaking some form of Dutch which would later develop into Africans their disdain for British rule was what B binded them together many of them were humble farmers who earned their living through small crop cultivation and cattle rearing on their plas the Africans word for Farm some of these became known as treur literally meaning sort of wandering farmers in Dutch even before the British occupation of the cape in 1814 they had attempted to escape the administration of the Dutch East India Company to start an independent bu Republic further in land it must have been a very difficult decision for The Bu to decide whether or not to pack all their belongings into a covered wagon and leave their old life behind indeed most people of Dutch descent in the cape stayed where they were the way into the interior was filled with dangers that the bus would have to overcome on the journey the two great rivers of South Africa the Orange River and the Val meandered across the landscape and was strewn directly across the forth recker's path on the other side lay the Kalahari in the Northwest and in the Northeast were the MOs mosquito infested swamps of the limpo River delta the Limpopo lies on the southern extent of the T Fly belt meaning if someone is bitten there they're liable to catch malaria even before the fourth recers could worry about these dangers they would have to Traverse the mountain range called the Great escarment the lay of the land wasn't the only thing standing between the forers and their goal the mountains the Plains and the coast of Africa were full of hostile African tribes who would stop at nothing to keep the whites out of their lands the BS were already familiar with the Warriors of the CLA who had raided their farmsteads on the Eastern cap for several years the warlike Zulus were Infamous because unlike the other tribes of the South they slaughtered women and children along with the men the Zulus lived inland from the eastern coast to the south of where the swazis of swasiland called home the soo and their cousins the leoo For Whom the modern country is named lived further into the interior then de or matab were a breakaway Zulu tribe who had carved out a kingdom for themselves in the country now called Zimbabwe or Zimbabwe probably in English Dutch pronunciation the period of great unrest between 1815 and the start of the great Trek was a time of incessant war and horror for the Africans of the southeast in the Zulu language it is known as the mufan the crushing in the language of the soo it is called the scattering the rise to power of the Zulu King Shaka and the Zulu Kingdom at the start of the 19th century led to the deaths of between 1 to 5 million Africans thanks to this genocide and the enormous tide of refugees fleeing the advancing Zulu impes much of the Southwest was under populated by the time the for recers of the cape Colony were searching for a new Homeland In 1832 the first buor Scouts went into the interior to inspect the region that was then called natal after they returned and reported the land to be empty and fruitful the first wagon trains began rumbling northwards one of these led by Peter ttif came in contact with the Zulu King dingan in 1838 where they agreed that he would seed the region of duela if the four tus returned cattle stolen by another African tribe when this was done P returned to the Zulu King's cral to sign the treaty but instead he and his entire party were slaughtered dingan his impes Zulu regiments attacked the other parties following pet at blr and vayan during the attacks 414 recer men 56 women and 185 children were murdered but also around 300 black Basu and kooi Africans who had come along as servants those who took part in the great Trek were a rather diverse Bunch none of whom were spared by the Zulus sometime after the Zulu attacks on Peter's groups a few hundred for trekers sent out a FL Commando an armed group of Horsemen but they were defeated by the Zulus at the Battle of iten FL Commando is an Africans compound of the words flu meaning fast and Commando which is where the Modern English use of the word also comes from from following it being Borrowed by the British after they fought against the buers in The Bu Wars the English use of the word Tre or Tre is an arduous Journey also comes from Africans returning to 1838 the four recers of other nearby parties were anxious to avenge their fallen comrades and push deeper into Tulu territory when the first covered wagons crossed the Buffalo River a scout brought news of a large Zulu Army that would soon be upon them the fourth record Comm after whom the South African city of ptor is named gave the order to form a lagger a ring of covered wagons with the pioneers and cattle inside 20,000 Zulu warriors attacked the lagger for several hours but the four threers held them back and killed 3,000 of them so that the river was colored red with their blood the battle to this day is known as DL by BL meaning the Battle of blood River and has become an important event for Africana nationalism and the Africana identity the the fact that a few hundred for recers could hold out against 20,000 Zulu warriors without losing a single man woman or child seemed like nothing short of a miracle to The Bu who saw it as evidence that South Africa was indeed a land promised to them by God in the' 70s the South African government erected a monument on the battlefield in the same place where in 1839 the fourth Reus lager had stood later on a monument was also built for the Zulus who died which is now also associated with Zulu nationalism there is another monument in prator which is called the four trer Monument the first stones of the monument were Lain by the granddaughters of the four trer leaders Andre prus Peter thief and Henrik biter in 1937 after the battle of blood River the Zulu Kingdom erupted in a civil war when the current King's brother rebelled against him with the help of the for wers in the meantime the for wers founded an independent republic which they named the Natalia Republic after the British Port City of natal which is called Durban today although the bus finally had their autonomous Republic the Dutch Roots were still clear to see in the colors and composition of their new flag despite this the long arm of the British Empire seemed to be reaching northwards once more which is why the bus of Natalia were all too happy to accept the offer of protection by a Dutch Merchant in 1842 in reality the Netherlands hadn't been an important power on the world stage since the early 18th century and had no footholds in Africa from where they could support the bus against the British when British troops invaded Natalia in 1842 no help came from the Netherlands the bus fought a small battle at cona although few casualties fell on either side and the British capture of Natalia continued unhindered and they renamed the territory to the colony of natal the very reason for the fourth record's great Trek out of the cape colony had been to escape the iron grip of the British government but now they were once again subject to British laws the bu's reaction was the same as it had been then and the vast majority of Natalia's boers packed up and tracked Inland to found new republics between the orange and Val Rivers this Tre would also be full of hardship as they would have to cross the dra B meaning dragons mountains in Africans with their wagons however just as they had done in 1835 they reached their goal and the survivors of the great track founded the bu republics of the Ora frat the orange free state and the transal often also called South Africans Republic meaning the South African Republic all right everyone so this has been my little video on the great Trek and a little bit of background about the boers so if you found this video interesting then please do give it a thumbs up if you'd like to know anything else uh you have anything else to add any fun information that you think I'd be interested in then please do comment below let me know and I'll try and get back to you um also if you do like this kind of period in history I've recently been doing a lot of research on it then I think I'm going to make some more videos maybe some stuff about the uh bo Wars and some of the bo tactics which they employed then I'm probably going to make some stuff about that in the future so thanks very much for watching and don't forget to like comment and subscribble

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 151,669

Keywords: Boers, Boeren, South Africa, Zuid Afrika, Suid Afrika, History, Documentary, History Documentary, Historical Video, Boer War, First Boer War, Second Boer War, Boer War Battle, Boer War Documentary, Zulu, Zulus, Zulu Battle, Great Trek, The Great Trek, Afrikaans, Afrikaners, Battle of Blood RIver, South African History, Zulu War

Id: 028OjMGirj0

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2017