BOERS, bo'Ors (Dutch boer, a peasant or husbandman), the name commonly applied to the South African colonists of Dutch descent. The Cape Colony was founded by the Dutch in 1652, and about 1687 the colony was increased by a number of French Huguenot settlers who were later absorbed in the Dutch population. The Dutch were at this period the leading mari time power of Europe, and their African col onies assumed great importance.• When Hol land was reduced to the last extremity by the invasion of Louis XIV serious thoughts were entertained of making the Cape Colony the final refuge of Dutch independence, but this crisis passed away with the advancing power of William. During the 18th century the colony was administered in the most despotic fashion by the Dutch East India Company, whose policy was to isolate it in order to have entire control of all trade, and the colonists, forced to strug gle against this oppression as well as against the natives and the wilderness, began to de velop a character of their own. The troubles in which the parent state was involved by Eu ropean wars now began also to affect them. The colony was taken possession of by the English in 1795, restored at the Peace of Amiens in 1802, taken again in 1806, and finally ceded to England in 1815. The last change was highly distasteful to the colonists. Natu rally distrustful of a foreign government, they had formed from their experience of the coun try and its inhabitants a policy and habits of their own, into which the newcomers could not be expected at once to enter. The Boers, more over, were strongly conservative, believing that they understood the situation better than any one else and they had acquired in their strug gles with the natives a reckless daring, which, added to the coolness and caution of the Dutch character, was likely to make them formidable opponents to any government which provoked their hostility.
The policy of the British governors was not always adapted to the circumstances, and the attempts of the British missionaries, encouraged by the colonial government, to convert and civ ilize the natives, excited the jealousy of the Boers, who thought their own interests com promised by the encouragement given to the converts. The government on various occa
sions sided with the Kaffirs against the Boers, which, whatever the merits of the sarticluar disputes, was not calculated to conciliate the latter. The emancipation of their slaves in 1834, and the cession to the Kaffirs in 1835 of a frontier district of neutral territory in the east, filled up the measure of provocation, and the Boers resolved to place themselves by emi gration beyond the British rule. What is known as the Great Trek started in 1835 and contin ued until 1840, during which time 7,000 Boers emigrated from Cape Colony. A first band of uvoortrekers° set out as early as 1833; some pushed as far north as the Zoutpausberg, near the Limpopo River; others proceeded to Dela goa Bay but died of hardship before they could form a settlement. Another band in 1835 set out for Natal, was attacked by the Matebele Kaffirs and obliged to fall back on the Modder River. After receiving reinforcements they again advanced and, settling in the Orange River district, formed a commonwealth under Peter Retief. Retief and a band of followers subse quently crossed the Drakensberg Mountains into Natal, but a number of them, including Retief, were treacherously murdered by the Zulu chief Dingana, who had given them permission to settle in the country. Those who escaped re ceived reinforcements, made alliance with the English settlers at Port Natal, and under the leadership of Pretorius broke the Zulu power at the battle of Blood River in 1838. Two years later Dingana was slain. The Boers founded Pietermaritzburg and made it the seat of their volksroad, but the British colonial government denied their right to form an independent com munity in this district.