The Great Trek

68 Pages·1972·14.002 MB·English

by  A. L. Harington

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KEfGAN OOKSHOP
SOUTHA FRIC4 60II SPECIALISTS
101 Nlain Road, Rondebosch
THE ARCHIVE SERIES
General Editors: C. P. Hill and G. H. Iiell
e rea r e
arin ton
Senior Lecturer in History,
University of South Africa, I'retoriu, South Afr ic
Edward Arnold
© A. L. Haringson rgb
First published x9ya
by Edvcard Arnold (Publishers) Ltd.,
ag Hill Stmet, London, vvxx gxx.
ISBN o yxgx xyag x
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication rosy be reproduced, stored in a
retrievalsystem, or transcnitted in any form or by any cneans, electronic, mechsnicai.
photocopying, recording or otherwise, vcithout the prior permission of Edward Arnold
9 ubhshers) Ltd.
~ ARCHIVE SERIES
at present eostuise thefo~ titfeee
Disraeli and Conservatism by Robin Grinter.
Lenin and the Russian Revolutions by F. W. Stscey.
British Ixnperialism in the late x9th Century by I R. Gardiner and J. K Davidson.
The Liberals and the Welfare Stateb y R. D. H. ~.
Mussohni and the Fascist Ersb y Desmond Gregory.
Hider aad the Rise of the Nasisb y D. M. PMlips.
Britain ancl Russia ftcnn the Crnnean to the Second World War by F. W Stscey.
The General Strike, xcta6b y C. L. Mowst.
The Rise of the Labour Party in Great Britainb y G. R. Scxuth.
Bismarck ancl the Unification of Germany by Anthony Hewison.
British Trade Unionism,rgb-x9xOb y Lloyd Evans.
Stalin and the ~ g of Modern Russia by F. W. Stacey.
Joseph Chamberlaint Democrat, Unionist and Imperialistb y Robin Grinter.
Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolutionb y G. R, A. Withers.
Chma Ill Revollctlon x91 x g9b y Myra Roper,
The Reform of the Lordsb y R. D. H. Seaman.
J. M. Keynesb y I G. Bxandon.
The Emancipation of Women in Great Britain by 3largamt James.
The Great Trek by A. L. Harington.
The Origins of the Anglo-Boer Warb y S. B. Spiel'
Further titlesa re in preparation.
Pristedin Great Britain by
Con 8' 5'yncun I td., London, Readwg usd Euhenhusc
eneral Preface
Today it is widely and strongly felt to be right to introduce college
and school students of history to the raw materials of the subject.
The aim of the Archive Series is to provide booklets of primary
source material on historical topics, in a form suitable for students
at various levels, including, for example, G.C.E. '0 Level' candi-
dates and Sixth Forms in Britain, their equivalents in Australia and
elsewhere in the English speaking world, college of education
students and others. Each topic has been selected for its interest
and importance. The material ranges widely: extracts from news-
papers, letters, speeches, diaries, treaties, novels, statutes, and auto-
biographies are all represented.
Teachers, we imagine, will find the booklets useful in various
ways: as a means to enrich a syllabus, as a supplement to text-
books, as the basis for elementary investigation of sources them-
selves, as illustrations of policies or attitudes, or merely as an
occasional change from the normal routine. The series has a
uniform format for ease of reference, but the author of each
booklet has adopted his own plan of approach. We hope that
the series will stimulate interest and increase understanding.
C. P. H.
G. H. F.
cknowledg ments
Detailed sourcfeosr e ach extract are given at the end of the bool'
The Eront Cover shows a reproduction of the Retief-Dingaan treaty
of 4th February, r838. The original disappeared at the time of the
Anglo — Boer war. TheB ack Cover shows part of a page from the
minutes of the Republic of Natalia, 6th September, »39
Both are reproduced by permission of The Transvaai Arctu«s,
Pretoria.
The inside front cover shows a contemporary portrait of Andries
Pretorius shortly after the battle of Blood River, where he was
wounded in thaer m, and isr eproduced by permission of Th«ape
Archives, Cape Town.
The insidbeac k cover shows a contemporary printo f a Boer hunting
camp in the Karroo, and is reproduced by permission of The
Transvaal Archives, Pretoria.
ontents
Introduction
The Boers: a Nation in the Making
a. The Coming of the British; as Rulers(xSo6) and as
Settlers(x8ao)
3. The Causes of the Trek, and the British Attitude to it
4. The Trekkers and the Zulus in Natal 30
g. De Repgbliek ¹talia and the British
6. The Highveld Republics
Sources of Extracts
Intro uction
South Africa is sometimes described as a 'new country', which is
hardly correct, for permanent European settlement was begun at
the Cape by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, only a
generation after the Pilgrim Fathers had sailed for North America.
Though there are some obvious similarities the subsequent his-
tory of the two areas has been essentially difFerent.
The Cape Colony, which became South Africa, was conceived
as a refreshment station, being apparently fertile and, when the
planetary wind system, ocean currents and international politics
had been taken into consideration, the most suitable landfall
between the Texel and Batavia for the ships of the Dutch East
India Company. So, in April, i65z, a party commanded. by Jan
van Riebeeck, landed on the shore of Table Bay, where they were
to build a fort and a hospital, plant vegetables and rear sheep and
cattle. Within 6ve years the Seventeen(directors of the Company),
though generally hostile to colonization, had decided to grant land
to 'Free Burghers', whose pursuit of private profit would, it was
hoped, make them more productive than were unenthusiastic
soldiers and other employees of the Company. The period of
settlement which began in x6g with the establishment of nine
smallholders along the Liesbeek River, in what is now a Cape
Town suburb, lasted a mere fifty years. Continuous friction and
one extremely serious dispute between the settlers and local
ofEcialdom... led to a momentous decision early in the eighteenth
century, whereby very nearly all European immigration was ended.
Imported slaves would sufBce for the colony's limited labour
requirements. The ultimate effect of this was to destroy any chance
whichthewestern Cape, at least, mighthavehadofbecoming'awhite
man's country', in any real sense of the phrase. More immedi-
ately it meant that about x65o colonists, about half of whom were
of Dutch descent, the remainder German and French, had been
practically marooned at the southern tip of Africa. The z,goo,ooo
Afrikaners of today are almost entirely descended from them.
In the early eighteenth century they were already divided,
vertically, not horizontally, into three classes: the merchants and
inn-keepers of De Cehapth,e wheat and wine farmers of the imme-
diate interior and, beyond this settled Mediterranean corner, the
6
IMRODUCTg)g
pastoralists of the open frontier. The latter, driven by their own
increasing numbers and a rigidly restricted market, and encouraged
by easy access to arid but seenungly unlimited land, had embarked
upon a steady expansiownh ich the Company could not prevent
but only follow, with futile proclamations and exhortations. It was
only in the x77o's, when the erstwhile re&eshment station had
acquireadva st,
sparsely populated, mostly semi-desert interior two-
thirds the size of France, that the outward movement of the fron-
tier was eventually checked. This occurred between the Sundays
and Bushman's Rivers, some goo miles to the east of Cape Town,
where the farmers encountered their first serious human obstacle,
the Xhosa. This was a Bantu tribe, an early Iron Age people,
whose culture was based on cattle, and who were far more advanced,
numerous and resilient than the Bushmen and Hottentots that the
white men had hitherto destroyed, driven out or subjugated.
Those same whites had long since ceased to be colonists and had
become Boers', aAnfr ican people, knowing no other home, with
their own (spoken) language, and a set of habits, beliefs and pre-
judices that had been shaped by the human and geographical
challenges they had experienced, in the solitude of their vast 6,ooo
acre ranches, on the infinitely vaster Karroo. Their one book, to
which they clung, was the Bible, to parts of which they paid
exaggerated attention; there, as in the precepts of their elementary
and only half-understood Calvinism, they found abundant rein-
forcement for their deeply rooted racial prejudices. None the less,
narrow and bigoted though they were it was their religion that had
prevented their degenerating into barbarism. Hospitable though
sometimes offensively curious, they were conservative to the core.
They regarded easy access to land and a minimum of governmental
control as essential parts of a free man's birthright. That happy
state of affairs was terminated by the meeting with the Xhosa and
the coming of the British, as rulers in x8o6, and as settlers in x8zo.
The character of colonial and especially &ontier life began to
change, and by the x83o's the Boers were considering a course
of action which was a natural outcome of their history and way
of life, a withdrawal beyond the reach of the government. Thta
retreat, from the British and from change, was the Great Trek, the
most significant event in the history of South A&ica to date, for
it was through it that the very attitudes which had led to it, and
which were enshrined in the constitutions of the Trekker repuMics,
were preserved in isolation on the High Veld, to dominate the
greater republic of the twentieth century.
1. The Boers: a Nation in the
Making
Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the
cattle farmers « the eastern and northern Cape, the future Voor-
trekkers, were being moulded by their environment, until they
became as much African as European,
~ cIercr>p«'<nf o <hs karroo hy an early nineteenth-century tra><lEer:
From what has been said of the Karroo by the writers who have
hitherto described it, the readers have been led to expec«n
immense level plain like the deserts of Asia or of South America;
but this is not the case. In the midst of this waste rise»me pretty
lofty slate hills.... There are large spaces which are perfect
plains... but these are intermixed with eminences which in other
parts would appear not inconsiderable. The soil throughout is a
sand mixed with clay. •
• •
Such a kind of soil is the product only of the ruins of nature, if I
may be allowed the expression, so that there is no where any
thick coat of it: in digging to a foot below the surface, we come to a
hard and impenetrable stone. From these and other concomitant
causes, the vegetation must, of necessity, at sii times be extremely
poor, and in suuuner, when the sun has dried the soil to the hard-
ness of brick, it ceases almost entirely. The ngescrnbryan+cngurn and
some other succulent plants. .. alone resist the destructive nature
of this inhospitable soil.
It is dificult for an European to form an idea of the hardships
that are to be encountered in a journey over such a dry plain
hottest season of the year. All vegetation seems utterly destroyed;
not a blade of grass, not a green leaf is any where to be seen; and the
soil, a sti8 loam, reflects back the heat of the sun with redoubled
force: a man may congratulate himself that being on horseback he is
raised some feet above it. Nor is any rest from these fatigues to be
thought of, since to stop where there is neither shade, water or
grass, would be only to increase the evil rather than to diminis»t.