Voortrekker

The Voortrekker , painting by GS Smithard and JS Skelton, 1909

The Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria

Voortrekker flag

Voortrekker ( Afrikaans / Dutch "Pioneer") are the Boer inhabitants of the Cape region who emigrated in a large trek towards the northeast after the British annexation of the Cape Colony in 1835 .

history

The triggers of the trek included the official ban on slavery by the British, which deprived many Boers of the Cape Colony of their livelihoods, as well as the abolition of Dutch as the official language and Dutch and Afrikaans as the language of justice, although most Boers did not speak English. From 1835 to 1841 around 12,000 Boers migrated inland to look for new farmland. This popular hike was known as the Great Trek and the Boers involved as Voortrekker. The Voortrekker founded the Boer Republics ( Transvaal , Orange Free State , Natalia and some other smaller states) in the northeast of what is now South Africa .

The Jerusalemgangers

In a group of Voortrekkers led by Johan Adam Enslin, the resistance against the British oppressors combined with the Calvinist conviction that they belong to a people chosen by God, leading to the decision to move across Africa to Jerusalem . But more than half of the "Jerusalemgangers" ("Jerusalemgoers"), including Enslin himself, succumbed to malaria in 1852 . Then the Jerusalemgangers dispersed. Her story is the background of the novel Jerusalemgangers by Antjie Krog .

Afterlife

The South African youth organization Voortrekkers was named after these historical pioneers .

Until around 1880 the word trekker was used instead of Voortrekker .

literature

• Bernhard Voigt: Die Vorrecker , Ludwig Voggenreiter Verlag, Potsdam 1934.

Web links

Commons : Voortrekker  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ German: History of the British and Boers in the Cape Colony
2. ↑ Oliver Ransford: The Great Trek. Readers Union, 1972, ISBN 0719526256 , pp. 10-18.
3. ↑ Christoph Marx : In the sign of the ox wagon: the radical Afrikaaner nationalism in South Africa and the history of the Ossewabrandwag. LIT, Münster 1998, ISBN 3825839079 , p. 1. Excerpts from books.google.de
4. ^ History of the Boers , Britannica, accessed January 10, 2018
5. ↑ Excerpt regarding the current number of Voortrekkers, from the book: Voortrekkerstamouers 1835–1845, by Jan C. Visagie online
6. ^ Hendrik Bosman: The "Jerusalemgangers" as an Illustration of Resistance against the British Empire and Nineteenth Century Biblical Interpretation in Southern Africa . In: Carly Crouch, Jonathan Stökl (Ed.): In the Name of God. The Bible in the Colonial Discourse of Empire (= Biblical Interpretation Series , Vol. 126). Brill, Leiden 2013, ISBN 978-900-425-8334 , pp. 151-168.
7. ^ The Battle of Blood River at liberationheritage.co.za ( memento February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 3, 2015