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35-681: The system had its origin in the Cape Northern Frontier during the second half of the 18th century, when settlers would capture native children, and force them to work as indentured labourers until adulthood. When Boer trekkers migrated into the Transvaal during the 1840s, they brought the inboekstelsel system with them. Inboekelinge children were captured during raids, or handed over as apprentices by their conquered parents in return for land or goods. In some cases they were sold by Boer settlers to other burghers, in what became known as

70-601: A Dutch pidgin , to its subsequent creolisation and use as "Kitchen Dutch" by slaves and serfs of the colonials, and its later use in Cape Islam by them when it first became a written language that used the Arabic letters . By the time of British rule after 1795, the sociopolitical foundations were firmly laid. In 1795, France occupied the Dutch Republic . This prompted Great Britain , at war with France, to occupy

105-467: A significant proportion of marriages were interracial, this is at least partially attributed to a lack of 'White' or 'Christian' women within the colony. What later became the racial division between 'White' and 'non-White' populations originally began as a division between Christian and non-Christian populations. The Geslags-registeers estimated that seven percent of the Afrikaner gene pool in 1807

140-429: A variety of Dutch which they called die taal (lit. 'the language'), which evolved into the modern-day dialect Eastern Border Afrikaans , also known as East Cape Afrikaans. The Afrikaans language as a whole generally originated from 17th- and 18th-century Dutch dialects. Over time it incorporated numerous words and expressions from French, German, Portuguese, Malay , Khoi , and later also English. Still, roughly 90% of

175-513: A vital link between the pool of animals in the interior and the providers of shipping provisions at the Cape. Trekboere were nomadic, living in their wagons and rarely remaining in one location for an extended period of time. A number of Trekboers settled in the eastern Cape, where their descendants became known as Grensboere (Border Farmers). Despite the VOC's attempts to prevent settler expansion beyond

210-604: The Dutch East Indies . The support station gradually became a settler community, the forebears of the Boers , and the Cape Dutch who collectively became modern-day Afrikaners . At the time of first European settlement in the Cape, the southwest of Africa was inhabited by Khoikhoi pastoralists and hunters. Disgruntled by the disruption of their seasonal visit to the area for which purpose they grazed their cattle at

245-714: The Dutch United East India Company not serving as a trading post, it proved an ideal retirement place for employees of the company. After several years of service in the company, an employee could lease a piece of land in the colony as a Vryburgher ('free citizen'), on which he had to cultivate crops that he had to sell to the United East India Company for a fixed price. As these farms were labour-intensive, Vryburghers imported slaves from Madagascar , Mozambique and Asia ( Dutch East Indies and Dutch Ceylon ), which rapidly increased

280-557: The Liesbeek River for farming purposes in 1657. The two areas which were allocated to the freemen, for agricultural purposes, were named Groeneveld and Dutch Garden. These areas were separated by the Amstel River (Liesbeek River). Nine of the best applicants were selected to use the land for agricultural purposes. The freemen or free burghers as they were afterwards termed, thus became subjects, and were no longer servants, of

315-837: The Xhosa to the east, and growing shortages of land, the Trekboers eventually went on the Great Trek . Numerous Trekboers settled down to become border farmers for a few generations and later voortrekkers . But many of the group continued well into the 19th century as an economic class of nomadic pastoralists. Many Trekboers crossed the Orange River decades before the Voortrekkers did. Voortrekkers often encountered Trekboers in Transorangia during their Great Trek of

350-523: The frontier wars ), as well as beyond the Northern open frontier war above the Great Escarpment. Some worked for the colonists, mostly as shepherds and herdsmen. The VOC favoured the idea of freemen at the Cape and many settlers requested to be discharged in order to become free burghers; as a result, Jan van Riebeeck approved the notion on favorable conditions and earmarked two areas near

385-539: The 1830s and 1840s. In 1815, a Trekboer/trader named Coenraad (Du) Buys (a surname of French Huguenot origin) was accused of cattle theft and fled from the British. He settled in the (western) Transvaal . He allegedly contracted polygamous marriages with hundreds of indigenous women, with his descendants' populating the town of Buysplaas in the Gourits River valley. He continued having numerous wives after leaving

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420-643: The Batavian Republic (which he would replace with a monarchy later that year). The British established their colony to control the Far East trade routes. In 1814 the Dutch government formally ceded sovereignty over the Cape to the British, under the terms of the Convention of London . The Dutch Cape Colony was divided into four districts. In 1797 their "recorded" populations were: During this period

455-595: The Batavian Republic, led the British to hand the Cape Colony over to the Batavian Republic in 1803, under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens . In 1806, the Cape, now nominally controlled by the Batavian Republic, was occupied again by the British after their victory in the Battle of Blaauwberg . The peace between Britain and Napoleonic France had broken after one year, while Napoleon had been strengthening his influence on

490-481: The administration of Cape Colony, increased the level of government oversight the Trekboers were subject to. Tensions between the Trekboers and the British colonial administration would culminate in the Slachter's Nek Rebellion of 1815, which was rapidly suppressed and the leaders of the rebellion executed. Eventually, due to a combination of dissatisfaction with the British administration, constant frontier wars with

525-482: The authoritarian rule of the company (telling farmers what to grow for what price, controlling immigration , and monopolising trade), some farmers tried to escape the rule of the company by moving further inland. The company, in an effort to control these migrants, established a magistracy at Swellendam in 1745 and another at Graaff Reinet in 1786, and declared the Gamtoos River as the eastern frontier of

560-550: The colony as a re-supply and layover port for vessels of the VOC trading with Asia. The Cape came under VOC rule from 1652 to 1795 and from 1803 to 1806 was ruled by the Batavian Republic . Much to the dismay of the shareholders of the VOC, who focused primarily on making profits from the Asian trade, the colony rapidly expanded into a settler colony in the years after its founding. As the only permanent settlement of

595-611: The colony back to the Dutch on 1 March 1803, but as the Batavian Republic had since nationalized the United East India Company (1796), the colony came under the direct rule of The Hague. Dutch control did not last long, however, as the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars (18 May 1803) invalidated the Peace of Amiens. In January 1806, the British occupied the colony for a second time after the Battle of Blaauwberg at present-day Bloubergstrand . The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 confirmed

630-659: The colony, only to see the Trekboers cross it soon afterwards. In order to keep out Cape native pastoralists, organised increasingly under the resisting, rising house of Xhosa, the VOC agreed in 1780 to make the Great Fish River the boundary of the colony. In 1795, after the Battle of Muizenberg in present-day Cape Town , the British occupied the colony. Under the terms of the Peace of Amiens of 1802, Britain ceded

665-468: The colony. Descendants of his second series of marriages still live in the small town of Buysdorp, near the mission station of Mara, 20 km to the west of Louis Trichardt in the modern Limpopo province. Buys eventually disappeared while traveling along the Limpopo River . By the late 17th century, both the Trekboers and the Voortrekkers were collectively called Boers . The Trekboers spoke

700-535: The company. After the first settlers spread out around the Company station, nomadic European livestock farmers, or Trekboeren, moved more widely afield, leaving the richer, but limited, farming lands of the coast for the drier interior tableland. There they contested still wider groups of Khoe-speaking cattle herders for the best grazing lands. The Cape society in this period was thus a diverse one. The emergence of Afrikaans reflects this diversity, from its roots as

735-403: The foot of Table Mountain only to find European settlers occupying and farming the land, leading to the first Khoi-Dutch War as part of a series of Khoikhoi–Dutch Wars . After the war, the natives ceded the land to the settlers in 1660. During a visit in 1672, the high-ranking Commissioner Arnout van Overbeke made a formal purchase of the Cape territory, although already ceded in 1660, his reason

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770-589: The frontiers of the Dutch Cape Colony in Southern Africa . The Trekboers began migrating into the interior from the areas surrounding what is now Cape Town , such as Paarl (settled from 1688), Stellenbosch (founded in 1679), and Franschhoek (settled from 1688), during the late 17th century and throughout the 18th century. The Trekboers were seminomadic pastoralists , subsistence farmers who began trekking both northwards and eastwards into

805-589: The interior to find better pastures/farmlands for their livestock to graze, as well as to escape the autocratic rule of the Dutch East India Company (or VOC), which administered the Cape . They believed the VOC was tainted with corruption and not concerned with the interests of the free burghers , the social class of most of the Trekboers. Trekboers also traded with indigenous people. This meant their herds were of hardy local stock. They formed

840-630: The law was not always observed in remote frontier districts. British attitudes towards the Inboekstelsel system were ambivalent. The British administration of Transvaal between 1877 and 1881 did not affect it. Historians like Elizabeth Eldredge and Fred Morton have argued that Inboekstelsel was a system of slavery. Although legal slavery was formerly abolished in the Cape colony in 1834, the inboekstelling system allowed white settlers to continue to practice forced labour. Dutch Cape Colony The Dutch Cape Colony ( Dutch : Kaapkolonie )

875-561: The number of inhabitants. After King Louis XIV of France issued the Edict of Fontainebleau in October 1685 (revoking the Edict of Nantes of 1598), thereby ending protection of the right of Huguenots in France to practise Protestant worship without persecution from the state, the colony attracted many Huguenot settlers , who eventually mixed with the general Vryburgher population. Due to

910-475: The school resulting in the baptisms of many slaves and indigenous residents. Conflicts with the settlers and the effects of smallpox decimated their numbers in 1713 and 1755, until gradually the breakdown of their society led them to be scattered and ethnically cleansed beyond the colonial frontiers: both beyond the Eastward-expanding frontier (to form eventually the future resisting population of

945-662: The slaves who had been rescued from a Portuguese slave ship and arrived at the Cape with the Amersfoort in 1658. Later on, the school was also attended by the children of the indigenes and the Free Burghers. The Dutch language was taught at schools as the main medium for commercial purposes, with the result that the indigenous people and even the French settlers found themselves speaking Dutch more than their native languages. The principles of Christianity were also introduced at

980-542: The territory that same year as a way to better control the seas on the way to India . The British sent a fleet of nine warships which anchored at Simon's Town and, following the defeat of the Dutch militia at the Battle of Muizenberg , took control of the territory. The United East India Company transferred its territories and claims to the Batavian Republic (the Dutch sister republic established by France) in 1798, then ceased to exist in 1799. Improving relations between Britain and Napoleonic France , and its vassal state

1015-652: The town of Graaff-Reinet (1795), and four months later, in Swellendam (17 June 1795). A few months later, the newly established Batavian Republic nationalised the VOC (1 March 1796); the Netherlands came under the sway of the new post-revolution French government . The British , who captured Cape Town in September 1795 in the course of the French Revolutionary Wars and took over

1050-570: The trade in "black ivory". In the Transvaal, the inboekelings numbered about 4,000 in 1866, nearly one for every ten settlers. In 1869 the synod of the Dutch Reformed Church adopted a resolution condemning the practice, but rescinded it two years later on the grounds that the system no longer existed. In the Transvaal, legislation required that males be released from indenture at the age of 25, while females were released at 21, but

1085-549: The transfer of sovereignty to Great Britain. Traders of the United East India Company ( VOC ), under the command of Jan van Riebeeck , were the first people to establish a European colony in South Africa. The Cape settlement was built by them in 1652 as a re-supply point and way-station for United East India Company vessels on their way back and forth between the Netherlands and Batavia (Jakarta) in

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1120-857: The western Cape, the frontier of the Colony remained open: the authorities in Cape Town lacked the means to police the Colony's borders. By the 1740s the Trekboers had entered the Little Karoo . By the 1760s they reached the deep interior of the Great Karoo . Due to the collapse of the VOC (which went bankrupt in 1800) and inspired by the French Revolution (1789) and the American Revolution , groups of Boers rebelled against VOC rule. They set up independent republics in

1155-400: Was a Dutch United East India Company (VOC) colony in Southern Africa , centered on the Cape of Good Hope , from where it derived its name. The original colony and the successive states that the colony was incorporated into occupied much of modern South Africa . Between 1652 and 1691, it was a Commandment, and between 1691 and 1795, a Governorate of the VOC. Jan van Riebeeck established

1190-493: Was non-White. The title of the founder of the Cape Colony, Jan van Riebeeck, was installed as "Commander of the Cape", a position he held from 1652 to 1662. During the tenure of Simon van der Stel , the colony was elevated to the rank of a governorate, hence he was promoted to the position of "Governor of the Cape". Trekboers The Trekboers ( / ˈ t r ɛ k b uː r s / Afrikaans : Trekboere ) were nomadic pastoralists descended from European colonists on

1225-515: Was to "prevent future disputes". The ability of the European settlers to produce food at the Cape initiated the decline of the nomadic lifestyle of the Khoi and Tuu speaking peoples since food was produced at a fixed location. Thus by 1672, the permanent indigenous residents living at the Cape had grown substantially. The first school to be built in South Africa by the settlers were for the sake of

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