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The Boers had cut their ties to Europe as they emerged from the Trekboer group. [24] The Boers possessed a distinct Protestant culture, and the majority of Boers and their descendants were members of a Reformed Church. The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk ('Dutch Reformed Church') was the national Church of the South African Republic (1852–1902).
Subsequently, a number of its Dutch-speaking inhabitants trekked inland, first in smaller numbers, then in groups as large as almost a hundred people, [2] after 1834 even in groups of hundreds. There were many reasons why the Boers left the Cape Colony; among the initial reasons were the language laws.
Only about a fifth of the colony's Dutch-speaking white population at the time participated in the Great Trek. [14] The Dutch Reformed Church, to which most of the Boers belonged, condemned the migration. [14] Despite their hostility towards the British, there were also Boers who chose to remain in the Cape of their own accord. [65]
Nevertheless, there was a degree of cultural assimilation through intermarriage, and the almost universal adoption of the Dutch language. [8] 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 ...
Where the Boers and their ideas had before gone largely unchallenged, European Southern Africa now had two language groups and two cultures. A pattern soon emerged whereby English-speakers became highly urbanised, and dominated politics, trade, finance, mining, and manufacturing, while the largely uneducated Boers remained on their farms.
One by increasing the English-speaking population of the Transvaal and the other by teaching the Boer children in English with very little Dutch used, followed by self-rule. The Transvaal Boers' political objectives were the restoration of self-rule in the colony and the political environment to be dominated by the Boers.
The Orange Free State (Dutch: Oranje Vrijstaat [oːˈrɑɲə ˈvrɛistaːt]; Afrikaans: Oranje-Vrystaat [uəˈraɲə ˈfrɛistɑːt]) was an independent Boer-ruled sovereign republic under British suzerainty in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, which ceased to exist after it was defeated and surrendered to the British Empire at the end of the Second Boer War in 1902.
From the Boer (meaning farmer in Dutch and Afrikaans) point of view, the Enlightenment had resulted in a foreign power ruling over them, imposing alien laws and alien languages, liberated their slaves without compensation, and put the interest of English-speakers over those of the Dutch-speakers. They were exposed to the Enlightenment, and it ...