Talk:Trekboers

I would like for there to be a map on this page showing the Trekboer migrating patterns into the expanding frontier.

Ron7 20:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Me too! Big Adamsky 20:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I think this article is basically flawed in that it confuses the Trekboers with Voortrekkers, the boers of the Great Trek. The Trekboers preceded the Great Trek by many years and were the semi-nomadic farmers who followed good pastures through the Karoo and Northern Cape - frequently moving over the Orange River. The Trekboer life style continued well into the 20th century.

The Dutch speakers (and they were not yet Afrikaans speakers) who lived in the Eastern Cape, and especially around Graaf Reinet, were not Trekboers. They were mainly established farmers (although some like Gerrit Maritz were town dwellers). The members of the Great Trek came from that stock.

I don't believe that Coenraad (Du) Buys should correctly be called a Trekboer either.

Well from the history that I am aware of the vast majority of Voortrekkers came from the descendents of semi nomadic Trekboer inhabitants of the Eastern Cape who had been settled in the region for some time due to the fact that a tribe to the east -which they first encountered in the 1770s- had stopped their past natural eastwards trekking patterns.

If the Voortrekkers are not the descendents of Trekboers: then who are they descended from? Did not the ancestors of the Voortrekkers trek into the eastern Cape as Trekboers decades earlier? Are you then saying that there were Boers who trekked into the eastern Cape who were in fact not Trekboers? If so then how did they differ from the Trekboers?

Furthermore: it is not entirely accurate to call them Dutch speakers as the language they spoke was already different from standard Dutch with strong German, Frisian, French & Malay influences. The fact of the matter is that most of the Boers of the time referred to the language they spoke as "die taal" (the language). It was certainly a form of proto Afrikaans.

I had thought that I was clear that not all of the Trekboers were Voortrekkers & that a number of Trekboers had crossed the Orange River long before the Voortrekkers did. It seems clear that the Voortrekkers -while no longer Trekboers themselves- were certainly descended from Trekboers in the past.

Ron7 16:06, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

There are a number of issues here!

1. The original Dutch settlers in the Eastern Cape might well have been trekboers, but I think that by the 1830s their descendants had become suffiently settled that the majority of them were established farmers - certainly not nomadic pastoralists. We are talking about different generations. Many of the Voortrekker leaders - Maritz, Potgieter, Uys, Pretorius - were respected and successful farmers and businessmen. (Retief would have liked people to think he was).

2. I agree that with you that their language had moved beyond "Dutch" as such, but it was still a long way from Afrikaans. I struggle to read Louis Trichard's diary. While I don't know the terminolgy "Eastern Border Afrikaans" (Oos Grens Afrikaans?) I am sure that it is an accurate one - but is it not anachronistic when referred to the 1830s?

3. My real problem is the confusion between Trekboers and Voortrekkers which I think is reinforced in the article. The trekboers were an economic class of nomadic pastoralists who existed before and after and independently of the voortrekkers. The voortrekkers were a specific group of emigrants (that is what they called themselves) that left the Eastern Cape during a fairly limited period and for reasons that (to them at least - we can argue) were very clear.

4. Coenrad Buys must have been a delightful character (not very respectable by anyone's standards!) He was a bit of everything, so perhaps "trekboer" can be applied to him. But his reasons for trekking away from the Cape had little to do with good pastures but a lot to do with escaping from the law.

Bill

I see the point you are making. When I wrote the article I was trying to point out the fact that the Voortrekkers were mainly descended from Trekboers, but I see that I have made too much of a direct link since by the 1830s inhabitants -at least the ancestors of the Voortrekkers- in the eastern Cape were no longer semi-nomadic & had become established farmers -with the exception of those who were still living the Trekboer life. Furthermore: it is also incorrect to call them Dutch settlers as they were also descended from numerous French, German & Belgian arrivals as well. As a matter of fact, by the time that the Boers had settled the eastern Cape: they were already a distinct & separate cultural group from the Dutch -even from those who had remained in the Western Cape.

In fact it has been estimated that the Dutch ancestors of the Boer / Afrikaners accounts for no more than 40 % of their origins. One source (linked below) has stated that as much as 24 % of their ancestors is of French Huguenot origin.

The following link notes the French influence & contribution.



The Contribution of the Huguenots in South Africa.  

Actually the language the Boers of the time spoke was already an early version of Afrikaans, just that it was not formally called that as most of the Boers referred to their language as simply the language -"die taal". While you might struggle to read Louis Trichard's diary I bet you would probably be able to understand his speech.

There are a few things to remember here. Afrikaans did not become a written language until the late 19th century -namely through the Afrikaans language movement of Reverand S J Du Toit & Gideon Malherbe. Therefore the language of Trichard's diary as well as the writings of any other Afrikaans or Taal speaker would have been written in Dutch. Remember: even the names of the Boer Republics were written in Dutch at the time as Dutch had remained the official written language until Afrikaans started to get formal recognition beginning in 1875. Dutch was even used in church services, but the language of the people had been an informal version of Afrikaans since at least the 1700s.

Another thing to remember is that even Jan van Riebeeck had critisized the dialect of the early settlers -demonstrating that the language of the settlers had started to take shape from the beginning probably as a result of class distinctions & the Frisian influence -as the first language of a number of servants of the VOC who settled in the Cape was in fact Frisian.

The term Eastern Border Afrikaans as well as Eastern Frontier Afrikaans & even East Cape Afrikaans refers specifically to the language & dialect that was spoken by the Boers -mainly the Trekboers & their descendents- of the eastern Cape frontier. Those 3 aforementioned terms refer to the classification of the Afrikaans dialect spoken during the era of the Trekboers to the Voortrekkers & beyond ie: the inhabitants of the later Boer Republics. The inhabitants of the Western Cape spoke a dialect which has been classified as West Cape Afrikaans & the Griquas speak a dialect which has been classified as Orange River Afrikaans. Now it is doubtful that these dialect were referred to as such at the time when they first began to emerge, but they have been referred to as such in contemporary times as in order to trace the emergence of the 3 main dialects of the Afrikaans language which itself was not formally referred to as Afrikaans until 1875. The following are some excerpts pointing out the different dialects.

  From this, three main dialects emerged, Cape Afrikaans, Orange River Afrikaans and Eastern Border Afrikaans. The Cape dialect is mostly enfused with the language spoken by the Malay slaves who worked in the Cape and spoke a form of broken Portuguese, the Orange River dialect developed with the influence of Koi languages and dialects developed in the Namakwaland and Griqualand West regions and the Eastern Border Afrikaans evolved from the settlers who moved East towards Natal from the Cape.   

From: History of the Afrikaans language in South Africa.

  The Taal movement—Afrikaans.

- the main leaders in this movement were the Du Toit brothers in Paarl. Afrikaans (at the time almost always referred to as ‘die Taal’—the Language) was a spoken, not a written language. It was a simplified version of Dutch which probably had originated among the slaves and/or Khoikhoi servants. Because young children were raised mostly by nannies, this was the language most whites learned first. Over many generations, the Taal was usually the first language of young children. Dutch remained the official language of government and the Dutch Reformed Church and thus it had to be learned later. Dutch was the written language.  

From: Origins of Afrikaner Nationalism.

  Various authors (cf. Den Besten 1986:185) discern three distinct historical varieties in Afrikaans, namely Cape Afrikaans, Orange River Afrikaans and Eastern Frontier Afrikaans. The latter became the basis of the variety spoken by white trekkers who settled in the northern parts of the country from 1830 onwards and which was eventually accepted as Standard Afrikaans because of the preponderance of political and economic power, which eventually became concentrated in the north.  

From: Effects of attitudinal changes towards creolization in Afrikaans.



Another link referring to the 3 main dialects of Afrikaans. 

I mentioned Coenraad du Buys because he was the first known White inhabitant of the Transvaal (though he married a Xhosa) & I had assumed that he must have been a Trekboer despite his trouble with the law.

I agree entirely with point 3. I also see that I had wrote the article in such a way which appears to blur the distinctions between the Trekboer & the later Voortrekker.

I will attempt to rewrite portions of the article in order to be more clear about the distinctions.

Ron7 05:04, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your changes - I think the article is far clearer now.

Just a last criticism - and I suppose that it all depends on your view of historical causality - I would say that the trekboers were as much driven by economic necessity as by a desire to "escape the autocratic rule of the Dutch East India Company which administered the Cape". (This is not to deny that the company was not autocratic, but just to emphasise that grazing was scarce in the western cape!)

Similarly, it has long been my thesis that the reasons the voortrekkers themselves gave for the trek (such as in Retief's maifesto) were only part of the story (and were often driven by a desire for political self-justification rather than reality). There were as many "pull" factors as "push" factors in causing the trek. Potgieter and Uys particularly seem to have been driven by promises of rich and fertile farming country in the north. Heck, if I had a choice between farming in Graaf Reinet or Potchefstroom, I know which I would choose! But perhaps this discussion belongs under "Voortrekkers"?

Bill

I have edited the page and made some small corrections here and there. I also added a bit more on Buys - perhaps I will risk writing an article on him. Unfortunately I do not have access to "The First Transvaaler" which I think is the only real source on his life. Bill