Large Trek

The Grand Trek is a political act expressing the desire of independence of the Boers of the Colonie of the Cape of South Africa. It concretizes in immense a Migration organized several thousands of farmers Boers of the colony of the Cape towards the interior of the grounds in the years 1835 - 1840. At the 20th century, this tour will occupy an important place in the Mythologie and the Nationalisme afrikaner. He will be seen like the central event of the history and the identity afrikaner, evoking the Hebrew Exode of Egypt.

Origin

In the years 1825 - 1835, explorers had furrowed the interior grounds in particular towards the Natal and had deferred the existence of grounds fertile and apparently vacuums or given up.

Counterirritated by the behavior of the British authorities and the abolition of the Slavery, of the thousands of Boers organized themselves to leave the colony of the Cape in order to carry out them towards inhospitable and dangerous territories while being able to rest only on themselves and on God . Boers wanted grounds to cultivate and refuse walk towards modernity that imposed the British to them, in particular the principle of the equality in right of the White and the Blacks.

This claim boer of emancipation is concretized by a proclamation published the January 22nd 1837 and written by Boer Piet Retief. In this proclamation, it expresses there the reasons which pushes it to want to found, out of the colony of the Cape, a free and independent community. Stating its objections against the authority British, unable according to him to provide least protection to the farmers and unjust to have émancipé the slaves without equitable compensations, it evokes a promised land for Boers and which would be intended for prosperity, the peace and the happiness of their children (those of Boers). A ground where they would be finally free, where them government would decide its own laws.

Great migration

The first organized groups of Voortrekkers leave the areas and cities of the Cape, of Graaff-Reinet, George and Grahamstown starting from 1835. Their heads, of the chiefs elected by their communautées like Andries Pretorius, Louis Trichardt, Hendrik Potgieter and Piet Retief.

Left on board their oxcarts towards unknown territories, the objective of Voortrekkers was there to create a republic independent to live free there with the manner of the Trekboers of the 18th century. In 5 years, of 1835 with 1840, nearly 15.000 Boers leave the colony of the Cape is a tenth of the population afrikaner.

However, the interior of the grounds was not empty inhabitants even if in the Années 1820 the armies of Shaka, king of the Zoulou S, had decimated or pushed with the exodus towards north several tens of thousands of tribes. The majority of the Boers pioneers lived bloody clashes with the Ndébélé S and especially the Zulus whereas others like Louis Trichardt, parties very in the north of the country, succumb to the Malaria.

With Native, the massacre of pioneers whose Piet Retief by the Zulus then the victory of Boers at the time of the Bataille Blood River leads to the creation of the republic of Natalia. After the annexation of the latter by the British in 1843, Boers turn over in Haut-Veld where they acquérirent sufficient grounds to form republics.

In 1852, the British recognized by the treaty Sand River the republic of South Africa (Transvaal) and 1854, the free State of Orange, putting a term at the epopee of Large Trek.

A political symbol

In 1938, the celebrations of the centenary of the battle Blood To rivet and Large Trek will link, mobilize and consolidate the afrikaners behind the nationalist theses. The first stone of the Voortrekker Monument with Pretoria will be posed. It will be finished for its inauguration in large pump by Daniel Malan in 1949, one year after the victory of the national Parti.

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