White Africans of European ancestry refers to citizens or residents in Africa who can trace full or partial ancestry to Europe . They are distinguished from indigenous North African people who are sometimes identified as white but not European. In 1989, there were an estimated 4.6 million white people with European ancestry on the African continent .
161-818: Most are of Dutch , Portuguese , British , German and French origin; to a lesser extent, there are also those who descended from Belgians , Italians , Spaniards , Greeks , and Scandinavians . The majority once lived along the Mediterranean coast or in Southern Africa . The earliest permanent European communities in Africa during the Age of Discovery were formed at the Cape of Good Hope ; Luanda , in Angola ; São Tomé Island ; and Santiago , Cape Verde through
322-469: A 1970 inquiry, West Frisians identified themselves more with the Dutch than with East Frisians or North Frisians . A study in 1984 found that 39% of the inhabitants of Friesland considered themselves "primarily Frisian," although without precluding also being Dutch. A further 36 per cent claimed they were Dutch, but also Frisian, the remaining 25% saw themselves as only Dutch. A 2013 study showed that 45% of
483-677: A British push into the two Boer republics. The last stage of the war consisted of Boer guerrillas , termed "bitter-enders", who refused to lay down their arms and took several years to defeat. In early 1902, the Boers finally surrendered under the terms of the Treaty of Vereeniging , which annexed the Transvaal and Orange Free State into the Cape (forming the Union of South Africa ) in exchange for allowing
644-414: A British trust territory on Germany's defeat during World War I, London reaffirmed such grants as they existed. Few Afrikaners stayed beyond the eve of Tanzanian independence in 1961. With the retreat of European colonialism, Afrikaner communities outside South Africa and its immediate neighbours generally diminished in size and a significant number of colonists returned to their countries of origin during
805-614: A Dutch surname is never capitalised (e.g. V an d en Berg ). The first affix in a Dutch surname is only capitalised if it is not preceded by a first name, initial or other surname. For example Vincent v an Gogh , V. v an Gogh, mr. V an Gogh, V an Gogh and V. v an Gogh- v an d en Berg are all correct, but Vincent V an Gogh is wrong. Many surnames of Dutch diaspora (mainly in the English-speaking world and Francophonie ) are adapted, not only in pronunciation but also in spelling. For example, by merging and capitalising
966-614: A brief period during the 13th or 14th century it lay more towards the east, when various eastern towns and cities aligned themselves with the emerging Hanseatic League . The entire Northern Dutch cultural area is located in the Netherlands , its ethnically Dutch population is estimated to be just under 10,000,000. Northern Dutch culture has been less under French influence than the Southern Dutch culture area. Frisians, specifically West Frisians , are an ethnic group present in
1127-481: A congregation, Protestant-(influenced) values and customs are present. Generally, it can be said that the Northern Dutch are more pragmatic , favor a direct approach, and display a less-exuberant lifestyle when compared to Southerners. On a global scale, the Northern Dutch have formed the dominant vanguard of the Dutch language and culture since the fall of Antwerp , exemplified by the use of "Dutch" itself as
1288-846: A decisive defeat at the Battle of Blood River in February 1838. The voortrekkers eventually established several independent Boer republics deep in the southern African interior, the most prominent of which were the Natalia Republic , the Orange Free State , and the South African Republic (also known simply as the Transvaal ). British expansion of the Cape Colony into South Africa's interior followed
1449-516: A dialect still closely resembling Common Germanic . Following the end of the migration period in the West around 500, with large federations (such as the Franks , Vandals , Alamanni and Saxons ) settling the decaying Roman Empire , a series of monumental changes took place within these Germanic societies. Among the most important of these are their conversion from Germanic paganism to Christianity ,
1610-465: A difference in religious situations. Contemporary Dutch, according to a 2017 study conducted by Statistics Netherlands, are mostly irreligious with 51% of the population professing no religion. The largest Christian denomination with 24% are the Roman Catholics , followed by 15% Protestants . Furthermore, there are 5% Muslims and 6% others (among others Buddhists). People of Dutch ancestry in
1771-462: A first language, or slightly over 5% of the total population. In the mid to late 19th century and beforehand, South African trekboers found their way into Namibia (then South-West Africa) and established colonies. A significant number even penetrated as far north as Angola during the Dorsland Trek . The South-West became a German colony during the late 19th century, and with the onset of
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#17327654016771932-628: A grand scale, based on the assumption that this was a prerequisite to long-term development and economic growth. The concept lost popularity when it became clear that multinational corporations financed by overseas capital, coupled with cheap African labour, were far more productive and efficient at building export-oriented economies for the benefit of the metropolitan powers. During the Great Depression , locally owned, small-scale businesses managed by individual whites suffered immense losses attempting to compete with large commercial enterprises and
2093-536: A high marginal product of labor realized through the increasing number of enslaved people. Plantings of the Pará rubber tree ( Hevea brasiliensis ) are usually called plantations. Oil palm agriculture rapidly expands across wet tropical regions and is usually developed at a plantation scale. Fruit orchards are sometimes considered to be plantations. These include tobacco , sugarcane , pineapple , bell pepper , and cotton , especially in historical usage. Before
2254-508: A lack of natural regeneration. The tree species used in a plantation are also an important factor. Where non-native varieties or species are grown, few native faunas are adapted to exploit these, and further biodiversity loss occurs. However, even non-native tree species may serve as corridors for wildlife and act as a buffer for native forests, reducing edge effect . Once a plantation is established, managing it becomes an important environmental factor. The most critical aspect of management
2415-494: A large number of white foreign immigrants from countries such as United Kingdom and Zimbabwe have settled in the country. For example, by 2005, an estimated 212,000 British citizens were residing in South Africa. By 2011, this number may have grown to 500,000. Since 2003, the numbers of British immigrants coming to South Africa has risen by 50%. An estimated 20,000 British immigrants moved to South Africa in 2007. South Africa
2576-563: A lengthy and complex process. Though the majority of the defining characteristics (such as language, religion, architecture or cuisine) of the Dutch ethnic group have accumulated over the ages, it is difficult (if not impossible) to clearly pinpoint the exact emergence of the Dutch people. In the first centuries CE, the Germanic tribes formed tribal societies with no apparent form of autocracy (chiefs only being elected in times of war), had religious beliefs based on Germanic paganism and spoke
2737-461: A majority of Catholics. Linguistic (dialectal) differences (positioned along the Rhine/Meuse rivers) and to a lesser extent, historical economic development of both regions are also important elements in any dissimilarity. On a smaller scale cultural pluriformity can also be found; be it in local architecture or (perceived) character. This wide array of regional identities positioned within such
2898-541: A multiracial school system and any concessions to black Africans regarding land apportionment. With the ensuing Rhodesian Bush War and Zimbabwean independence under Prime Minister Robert Mugabe by 1980, over one-fifth of white Rhodesians, including most resident Afrikaners, emigrated from the country. During and following the Boer Wars some Afrikaners chose to leave South Africa. The first 700 Afrikaner colonists that migrated to British East Africa were supporters of
3059-594: A national level. This is partly caused by the popular stereotypes in the Netherlands as well as Flanders, which are mostly based on the "cultural extremes" of both Northern and Southern culture, including in religious identity. Though these stereotypes tend to ignore the transitional area formed by the Southern provinces of the Netherlands and most Northern reaches of Belgium, resulting in overgeneralisations. This self-perceived split between Flemings and Dutch, despite
3220-507: A natural forest is cleared for a planted forest, then a reduction in biodiversity and loss of habitat will likely result. In some cases, their establishment may involve draining wetlands to replace mixed hardwoods that formerly predominated with pine species. If a plantation is established on abandoned agricultural land or highly degraded land, it can increase both habitat and biodiversity. A planted forest can be profitably established on lands that will not support agriculture or suffer from
3381-522: A number of African states. During the Colonisation of Africa , European settlement patterns generally favoured territories with a substantial amount of land at least 910 metres (3,000 ft) above sea level, an annual rainfall of over 510 millimetres (20 in) but not exceeding 1,020 millimetres (40 in), and relative freedom from the Tsetse fly . In contrast to Western and Central Africa ,
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#17327654016773542-486: A parallel decline in public infrastructure, service delivery, and consequently, their own standards of living. On some occasions the granting of independence to African states under majority rule was influenced by the desire to preempt unilateral declarations of independence or secession attempts by white nationalists. Nevertheless, Rhodesia's white minority did succeed in issuing its own declaration of independence in 1965 and later retain power up until 1979. Less successful
3703-474: A relatively small area, has often been attributed to the fact that many of the current Dutch provinces were de facto independent states for much of their history, as well as the importance of local Dutch dialects (which often largely correspond with the provinces themselves) to the people who speak them. Northern Dutch culture is marked by Protestantism , especially Calvinism . Though today many do not adhere to Protestantism anymore, or are only nominally part of
3864-420: A series of retaliatory raids into the northern Transvaal which forced the Boers to evacuate Swartruggens . In 1853, Transvaal President Paul Kruger signed an armistice with Tswana chief Sechele I , ending the state of war and checking further Boer expansion into Botswana for decades. A notable voortrekker community was established inadvertently near Ghanzi in 1877. Ghanzi was settled by migrating Boers from
4025-546: A series of sound shifts. The Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law and Anglo-Frisian brightening resulted in certain early Germanic languages evolving into what are now English and West Frisian, while the Second Germanic sound shift resulted in what would become (High) German. Dutch underwent none of these sound changes and thus occupies a central position in the West Germanic languages group. Standard Dutch has
4186-532: A set of demands. The subsequently issued Great Privilege met many of these demands, which included that Dutch, not French, should be the administrative language in the Dutch-speaking provinces under Burgundian rule (i.e. Flanders, Brabant and Holland) and that the States-General had the right to hold meetings without the monarch's permission or presence. The overall tenor of the document (which
4347-447: A single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house , grow crops including cotton , cannabis , coffee , tea , cocoa , sugar cane , opium , sisal , oil seeds , oil palms , fruits, rubber trees and forest trees. Protectionist policies and natural comparative advantage have sometimes contributed to determining where plantations are located. In modern use,
4508-644: A sound inventory of thirteen vowels, six diphthongs and twenty-three consonants, of which the voiceless velar fricative ( hard ch ) is considered a well known sound, perceived as typical for the language. Other relatively well known features of the Dutch language and usage are the frequent use of digraphs like Oo , Ee , Uu and Aa , the ability to form long compounds and the use of slang, including profanity . The Dutch language has many dialects. These dialects are usually grouped into six main categories; Hollandic , West-Flemish / Zeelandic , East Flemish , Brabantic and Limburgish . The Dutch part of Low Saxon
4669-667: A tool of environmental restoration . Sugar plantations were highly valued in the Caribbean by the British and French colonists in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the use of sugar in Europe rose during this period. Sugarcane is still an important crop in Cuba. Sugar plantations also arose in countries such as Barbados and Cuba because of the natural endowments that they had. These natural endowments included soil conducive to growing sugar and
4830-474: A unified British policy. This policy had as its general aim the securing of a Cairo to Cape Town railway system, and colonising the upper highlands of East Africa and the whole of Southern Africa south of the Zambezi with British colonies in a manner akin to that of North America and Australasia . However, prioritization of British power around the globe in the years before World War I, initially reduced
4991-609: A universal franchise. Prior to 1994, the Afrikaner ruling party with the longest tenure in South Africa was the National Party , which was noted for introducing a strict system of racial segregation known as apartheid in 1948, and declaring the country a republic in 1961. The size of the Afrikaner population in South Africa was estimated at 2.5 million people in 1985. According to the country's 2011 census, there were about 2.7 million white South Africans who spoke Afrikaans as
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5152-541: A vegetable garden to resupply its passing ships, at the Cape. Under the direction of Jan van Riebeeck , a small Dutch party also constructed a fort known as the Castle of Good Hope . Van Riebeeck obtained permission to bring Dutch immigrants to the Cape, and resettle former company employees there as farmers. The colonists were known as "vrijlieden" , also denoted as vrijburgers (free citizens), to differentiate them from bonded VOC employees still serving on contracts. Since
5313-541: Is a West Germanic language spoken by around 29 million people. Old Frankish, a precursor of the Dutch standard language, was first attested around 500, in a Frankish legal text, the Lex salica , and has a written record of more than 1500 years, although the material before around 1200 is fragmentary and discontinuous. As a West Germanic language, Dutch is related to other languages in that group such as West Frisian , English and German . Many West Germanic dialects underwent
5474-522: Is also referred to by the colloquialism " below/above the great rivers " as the rivers Rhine and Meuse roughly form a natural boundary between the Northern Dutch (those Dutch living North of these rivers), and the Southern Dutch (those living South of them). The division is partially caused by (traditional) religious differences, with the North used to be predominantly Protestant and the South still having
5635-572: Is impossible to verify the number of white Africans of European ancestry, as a number of African nations do not publish census data on race or ethnic origin. In 1989, the Encyclopædia Britannica editorial team estimated the size of Africa's total white population of European descent at 4.6 million, with the vast majority residing in coastal regions of North Africa or in the Republic of South Africa. The white population of Zimbabwe
5796-580: Is in Namibia , at about 150,000 or 8%, while the second-largest European population numerically is in Angola with about 200,000 people but only comprising 1% of the population. Smaller European-descended populations exist in Madagascar , Morocco , Kenya , Senegal , Tunisia , Zambia , Zimbabwe and elsewhere. Although white minorities no longer hold exclusive political power, some continue to retain key positions in industry and commercial agriculture in
5957-422: Is often referred to with the terms autochtoon and allochtoon . These legal concepts refer to place of birth and citizenship rather than cultural background and do not coincide with the more fluid concepts of ethnicity used by cultural anthropologists. As did many European ethnicities during the 19th century, the Dutch also saw the emerging of various Greater Netherlands - and pan -movements seeking to unite
6118-493: Is ranked as the top destination of British retirees and pensioners in Africa. There was also a significant number of arrivals of white Zimbabweans of British ancestry, fleeing their home country in light of the economic, political problems which faced the country and persecution at the hands of the ZANU government. As well as recent arrivals, a significant number of white Zimbabweans of British descent emigrated to South Africa after
6279-553: Is sometimes also viewed as a dialect of Dutch as it falls in the area of the Dutch standard language. Of these dialects, Hollandic and Dutch Low Saxon are solely spoken by Northerners. Brabantic, East Flemish, West-Flemish / Zeelandic and Limburgish are cross border dialects in this respect. Lastly, the dialectal situation is characterised by the major distinction between 'Hard G' and 'Soft G' speaking areas (see also Dutch phonology ). Some linguists subdivide these into approximately 28 distinct dialects. Dutch immigrants also exported
6440-420: Is the rotation period. Plantations harvested on more extended rotation periods (30 years or more) can provide similar benefits to a naturally regenerated forest managed for wood production on a similar rotation. This is especially true if native species are used. In the case of exotic species, the habitat can be improved significantly if the impact is mitigated by measures such as leaving blocks of native species in
6601-649: Is today modern Botswana , mainly traders and ivory hunters from the Cape of Good Hope. By the mid nineteenth century, some of these itinerant Afrikaners had settled in Molepolole . In 1852, the Transvaal Boers organised a failed expedition against the Northern Tswana people which included several relatively large engagements such as the Battle of Dimawe . As a result of this raid, the Tswana launched
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6762-461: The Roelantslied and Van den vos Reynaerde (1200) were widely enjoyed. The various city guilds as well as the necessity of water boards (in charge of dikes, canals, etc.) in the Dutch delta and coastal regions resulted in an exceptionally high degree of communal organisation. It is also around this time, that ethnonyms such as Diets and Nederlands emerge. In the second half of
6923-646: The American Civil War . The mild temperate climate , plentiful rainfall, and fertile soils of the Southeastern United States allowed the flourishing of large plantations, where large numbers of enslaved Africans were held captive and forced to produce crops to create wealth for a white elite . When Newfoundland was colonized by England in 1610, the original colonists were called "planters", and their fishing rooms were known as "fishing plantations". These terms were used well into
7084-503: The Cold War and the abandonment of colonial possessions in the face of American and Soviet pressure, the vestigial remnants of Cecil Rhodes ' vision was abruptly ended, leaving British colonists in an exposed, isolated, and weak position. Black Nationalist guerrilla forces aided by Soviet expertise and weapons soon drove the colonists into a fortress mentality which led to the break-off of ties with perceived collaborationist governments in
7245-636: The Dorsland Trek who had lost their wagons and supplies in the central Kalahari, and were forced to seek sanctuary near the water source there. After the establishment of the Bechuanaland Protectorate in the 1880s, the British colonial authorities and the British South Africa Company (BSAC) designated several parts of the region as freehold farming areas, open to white farmers of any nationality. This induced hundreds of Boer migrants to resettle there. In 1894
7406-614: The Dutch Republic . The high degree of urbanisation characteristic of Dutch society was attained at a relatively early date. During the Republic the first series of large-scale Dutch migrations outside of Europe took place. The traditional arts and culture of the Dutch encompasses various forms of traditional music , dances , architectural styles and clothing, some of which are globally recognisable. Internationally, Dutch painters such as Rembrandt , Vermeer and Van Gogh are held in high regard. The predominant religion among
7567-594: The Dutch Revolt . The Dutch provinces, though fighting alone now, for the first time in their history found themselves fighting a common enemy. This, together with the growing number of Dutch intelligentsia and the Dutch Golden Age in which Dutch culture , as a whole, gained international prestige, consolidated the Dutch as an ethnic group. By the middle of the 16th century an overarching, 'national' (rather than 'ethnic') identity seemed in development in
7728-537: The Enkeldoorn farming areas. After 1907, an increasing number of dispossessed Boers arrived in what was then the British territory of Southern Rhodesia , seeking better economic opportunities. They soon found themselves discriminated against by the other Europeans, who expressed alarm at an "invasion" of "poor Dutch" and what they described as the "human wreckage of the Union". This aversion was condemned by elements in
7889-571: The European Union , and the Union of South American Nations (due to Suriname being a member). In South Africa and Namibia , Afrikaans is spoken, a daughter language of Dutch, which itself was an official language of South Africa until 1983. The Dutch, Flemish and Surinamese governments coordinate their language activities in the Nederlandse Taalunie (' Dutch Language Union '), an institution also responsible for governing
8050-571: The First World War a number of local Boers volunteered to serve with the imperial authorities against invading Allied troops. After that conflict left the territory under South African occupation, thousands of fresh Afrikaner migrants poured into the region to occupy available plots of prime stock-farming land and exploit untapped resources . Their government further encouraged new colonists by offering easy loans, necessary infrastructure, and more expropriated land to white newcomers. This policy
8211-881: The Frankish Empire of Charlemagne . However, the population make-up of the Frankish Empire, or even early Frankish kingdoms such as Neustria and Austrasia , was not dominated by Franks. Though the Frankish leaders controlled most of Western Europe, the Franks themselves were confined to the Northwestern part (i.e. the Rhineland , the Low Countries and Northern France ) of the Empire. Eventually,
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#17327654016778372-581: The Franks , themselves a union of multiple smaller tribes (many of them, such as the Batavi , Chauci , Chamavi and Chattuarii , were already living in the Low Countries prior to the forming of the Frankish confederation), began to incur the northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire . Eventually, in 358, the Salian Franks , one of the three main subdivisions among the Frankish alliance, settled
8533-556: The National Assembly . Aside from those engaged in ranching and farming, a small number of recent Afrikaner migrants have moved to Botswana in the postcolonial era to manage small businesses. As a group, Afrikaners formed 1.2% of Botswana's total population in 2009. While Afrikaners were always a small minority in Zimbabwe 's population, some did arrive with the early pioneer columns and permanently settled, especially in
8694-724: The Roman Empire , which produced large quantities of grain, wine, and olive oil for export. Plantation agriculture proliferated with the increase in international trade and the development of a worldwide economy that followed the expansion of European colonialism . Tree plantations, in the United States often called tree farms , are established for the commercial production of timber or tree products such as palm oil , coffee , or rubber . Teak and bamboo plantations in India have given good results and an alternative crop solution to farmers of central India, where conventional farming
8855-668: The Southern Netherlands . Apart from a brief reunification from 1815 until 1830, within the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (which included the Francophones / Walloons ) the Dutch have been separated from the "Flemings" to this day. The border between the Netherlands and Belgium is purely contingent, simply reflecting the 1648 cease-fire line. There is a perfect dialect continuum. The Dutch colonial empire ( Dutch : Het Nederlandse Koloniale Rijk ) comprised
9016-560: The Southern United States from the 17th into the 20th century. The complex included everything from the main residence down to the pens for livestock . Until the abolition of slavery , such plantations were generally self-sufficient settlements that relied on the forced labor of enslaved people. Plantations are an important aspect of the history of the Southern United States , particularly before
9177-464: The Union of South Africa in 1910. Due to the fact that the electorate was limited predominantly to white South Africans, Afrikaners–which composed over half the white population at the time–quickly achieved political ascendancy. Afrikaners occupied the top political positions in South African government from 1910 until 1994, when the country held its first multiracial elections under
9338-405: The Union of South Africa —had passed legislation reserving a fixed percentage of land for white ownership. This allowed colonists to legitimise their land seizures and began a process that had the ultimate consequence of commodifying land in colonial Africa. Land distribution thus emerged as an extremely contentious issue in those territories with large numbers of permanent European colonists. During
9499-633: The Union of Utrecht , which roughly corresponded to the Dutch-speaking part of the Spanish Netherlands, was unreachable. The Northern provinces were free, but during the 1580s the South was recaptured by Spain, and, despite various attempts, the armies of the Republic were unable to expel them. In 1648, the Peace of Münster , ending the Eighty Years' War , acknowledged the independence of the Dutch Republic , but maintained Spanish control of
9660-483: The United Kingdom and Commonwealth . The result was a series of conflicts which eventually led to a reduced presence of White Africans due to emigration and natural death. Hundreds of thousands of British-South Africans left the nation to start new lives abroad, settling in the United Kingdom, Australia , New Zealand , United States , Canada , and the Netherlands. In spite of the high emigration rates,
9821-452: The United States . The Low Countries were situated around the border of France and the Holy Roman Empire , forming a part of their respective peripheries and the various territories of which they consisted had become virtually autonomous by the 13th century. Under the Habsburgs , the Netherlands were organised into a single administrative unit, and in the 16th and 17th centuries the Northern Netherlands gained independence from Spain as
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#17327654016779982-578: The Xhosa chiefdoms ; the following year Dutch colonists violated the border and attacked the Xhosa, sparking the bloody Xhosa Wars . Disputes between German colonists and the Matumbi and Ngoni peoples contributed significantly to the Maji Maji Rebellion of 1905–07. During the same period, Colonial Kenya 's European residents were largely responsible for provoking a revolt by the Masai . White settlers wielded enormous influence over many colonial administrations; for example, they often occupied influential positions on elected legislatures and held most of
10143-447: The company store . In Brazil, a sugarcane plantation was termed an engenho ("engine"), and the 17th-century English usage for organized colonial production was "factory." Such colonial social and economic structures are discussed at Plantation economy . Sugar workers on plantations in Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean lived in company towns known as bateyes . Plantation complexes were common on agricultural plantations in
10304-422: The demonym for the country in which they form a majority; the Netherlands . Linguistically, Northerners speak any of the Hollandic , Zeelandic , and Dutch Low Saxon dialects natively, or are influenced by them when they speak the Standard form of Dutch. Economically and culturally, the traditional centre of the region have been the provinces of North and South Holland , or today; the Randstad , although for
10465-421: The 11th and 12th centuries, were instrumental in breaking down the already relatively loose local form of feudalism. As they became increasingly powerful, they used their economic strength to influence the politics of their nobility. During the early 14th century, beginning in and inspired by the County of Flanders, the cities in the Low Countries gained huge autonomy and generally dominated or greatly influenced
10626-444: The 14th century, the dukes of Burgundy gained a foothold in the Low Countries through the marriage in 1369 of Philip the Bold of Burgundy to the heiress of the Count of Flanders. This was followed by a series of marriages, wars, and inheritances among the other Dutch fiefs and around 1450 the most important fiefs were under Burgundian rule, while complete control was achieved after the end of the Guelders Wars in 1543, thereby unifying
10787-411: The 1950s, black Africans owned about 13.7% of the land in South Africa and a little under 33% of the land in Southern Rhodesia . An inevitable trend of this factor, exacerbated by high rates of population growth, was that large numbers of black farmers as well as their livestock began to be concentrated in increasingly overcrowded areas. Before 1914, colonial governments encouraged European settlement on
10948-428: The 19th and 20th centuries never really caught on in the Netherlands. The (re)definition of Dutch cultural identity has become a subject of public debate following the increasing influence of the European Union and the influx of non-Western immigrants in the post- World War II period. In this debate typically Dutch traditions have been put to the foreground. In sociological studies and governmental reports, ethnicity
11109-408: The African continent where its trading fleets could obtain fresh water and other supplies while en route to the Orient. Dutch ships began calling at the Cape of Good Hope as early as 1595, since the shoreline was not treacherous and fresh water could be easily obtained by landing parties without venturing too far inland. In 1651, the company built a storage facility and watering station, which included
11270-427: The African continent. Few of these expatriates came to immigrate permanently, and typically worked in the colonies for a short period before returning to Europe. This made them less embedded in the economy and social structure, less interested in influencing local politics, and less likely to form cohesive communities than the colonist populations elsewhere. In most of colonial Africa, Europeans accounted for under 1% of
11431-415: The BSAC made a concentrated attempt to recruit Boers from the Transvaal and Orange Free State to settle the area around Lake Ngami . This was an attempt to control the large numbers of wandering trekboers in both regions by diverting them into territory already under British control rather than risk them establishing new Boer republics further abroad. The British also hoped that a large Boer population along
11592-611: The Boer migration within the subsequent decades; in 1843 Britain annexed the Natalia Republic , and in 1877 it annexed the Transvaal . The Transvaal Boers subsequently went to war with the British in 1880, which became known as the First Boer War . The war was resolved with the Pretoria Convention , by which Great Britain restored independence to the Transvaal and withdrew from the territory. However, relations between
11753-509: The Boer republics and the British administration at the Cape remained poor, with the latter concerned that Boer independence was a lingering threat to the Cape's strategic security. In 1899, the Second Boer War broke out when the British rejected an ultimatum by the Transvaal to remove its military presence from the latter's borders. The first stages of the war consisted of several unsuccessful Boer sieges of British colonies, followed by
11914-484: The British during the various conflicts. This first wave settled in the fertile Rift Valley . The community founded the colony of Eldoret in 1903 and played an important part in establishing agriculture in the region. An additional 100 Afrikaners arrived in 1911. At the height of British rule in the colony, the population composed of several thousand Afrikaners farming 2,600 square kilometres (1,000 square miles) around Eldoret. The Mau Mau Rebellion sparked great panic among
12075-413: The British launched another invasion of the colony as a result of political developments in Europe and became permanent. Relations between the new colonial leadership and the Boers soon began to deteriorate when the British refused to subsidise the Cape Colony, insisting that it pay for itself by levying larger taxes on the white population. In addition to raising taxes, the British administration abolished
12236-467: The Dutch Standard language, for example in matters of orthography . The origins of the word Dutch go back to Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of all Germanic languages, * theudo (meaning "national/popular"); akin to Old Dutch dietsc , Old High German diutsch , Old English þeodisc and Gothic þiuda all meaning "(of) the common ( Germanic ) people". As the tribes among
12397-402: The Dutch is Christianity , encompassing both Catholicism and Protestantism . However, in contemporary times, the majority no longer adhere to a particular Christian denomination. Significant percentages of the Dutch are adherents of humanism , agnosticism , atheism or individual spirituality . As with all ethnic groups, the ethnogenesis of the Dutch (and their predecessors) has been
12558-504: The Dutch language. Dutch was spoken by some settlers in the United States as a native language from the arrival of the first permanent Dutch settlers in 1615, surviving in isolated ethnic pockets until about 1900, when it ceased to be spoken except by first generation Dutch immigrants. The Dutch language nevertheless had a significant impact on the region around New York . For example, the first language of U.S. president Martin Van Buren
12719-609: The Dutch people. However, the centralist policies of Burgundy in the 14th and 15th centuries, at first violently opposed by the cities of the Low Countries, had a profound impact and changed this. During Charles the Bold 's many wars, which were a major economic burden for the Burgundian Netherlands, tensions slowly increased. In 1477, the year of Charles' sudden death at Nancy , the Low Countries rebelled against their new liege, Mary of Burgundy , and presented her with
12880-404: The Dutch-speaking peoples across the continent, while trying to counteract Pan-Germanic tendencies. During the first half of the 20th century, there was a prolific surge in writings concerning the subject. One of its most active proponents was the historian Pieter Geyl , who wrote De Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche stam ('The History of the Dutch tribe/people') as well as numerous essays on
13041-631: The English language used (the contemporary form of) Dutch to refer to any or all of the Germanic speakers on the European mainland (e.g. the Dutch, the Frisians and the Germans). Gradually its meaning shifted to the Germanic people they had most contact with, both because of their geographical proximity, but also because of the rivalry in trade and overseas territories: the people from the Republic of
13202-713: The Franks in Northern France were assimilated by the general Gallo-Roman population, and took over their dialects (which became French ), whereas the Franks in the Low Countries retained their language, which would evolve into Dutch. The current Dutch-French language border has (with the exception of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais in France and Brussels and the surrounding municipalities in Belgium) remained virtually identical ever since, and could be seen as marking
13363-419: The Germanic peoples began to differentiate its meaning began to change. The Anglo-Saxons of England for example gradually stopped referring to themselves as þeodisc and instead started to use Englisc , after their tribe. On the continent * theudo evolved into two meanings: Diets or Duuts meaning "Dutch (people)" (archaic) and Deutsch ( German , meaning "German (people)"). At first
13524-488: The Habsburg Netherlands, when inhabitants began to refer to it as their 'fatherland' and were beginning to be seen as a collective entity abroad; however, the persistence of language barriers, traditional strife between towns, and provincial particularism continued to form an impediment to more thorough unification. Following excessive taxation together with attempts at diminishing the traditional autonomy of
13685-508: The Netherlands and Belgium have a number of common characteristics, with a mostly shared language , some generally similar or identical customs , and with no clearly separate ancestral origin or origin myth . However, the popular perception of being a single group varies greatly, depending on subject matter, locality, and personal background. Generally, the Flemish will seldom identify themselves as being Dutch and vice versa, especially on
13846-727: The Netherlands were now part of the Habsburg lands. Further centralised policies of the Habsburgs (like their Burgundian predecessors) again met with resistance, but, peaking with the formation of the collateral councils of 1531 and the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 creating the Seventeen Provinces , were still implemented. The rule of Philip II of Spain sought even further centralist reforms, which, accompanied by religious dictates and excessive taxation, resulted in
14007-516: The Netherlands, an oft-used adage used for indicating this cultural boundary is the phrase boven/onder de rivieren (Dutch: above/below the rivers), in which 'the rivers' refer to the Rhine and the Meuse . Southern Dutch culture has been influenced more by French culture, as opposed to the Northern Dutch culture area. Within the field of ethnography , it is argued that the Dutch-speaking populations of
14168-557: The Netherlands, the Dutch. In the Dutch language , the Dutch refer to themselves as Nederlanders . Nederlanders derives from the Dutch word Neder , a cognate of English Nether both meaning " low ", and " near the sea " (same meaning in both English and Dutch), a reference to the geographical texture of the Dutch homeland; the western portion of the North European Plain . Although not as old as Diets ,
14329-927: The South African press, which charged that "the settlement of Afrikaners in Rhodesia is being emphatically worked against". During World War I, the Maritz Rebellion in South Africa caused consternation among Rhodesian authorities, prompting them to conclude that their colony's Afrikaner inhabitants could not be relied upon against the German Empire . In the following decades a sharp cleavage continued to divide Afrikaners from their English-speaking countrymen, reflecting entrenched divisions in class and culture. The former generally earned lower incomes, and never advanced far in capital, education, and influence. They were also considered to be Rhodesia's single most conservative white community, almost unanimously opposing
14490-668: The United States and South Africa are generally more religious than their European counterparts; for example, the numerous Dutch communities of western Michigan remain strongholds of the Reformed Church in America and the Christian Reformed Church , both descendants of the Dutch Reformed Church . One cultural division within Dutch culture is that between the formerly Protestant North and
14651-542: The VOC had been forced to declare bankruptcy and the Dutch government assumed direct responsibility for the Cape in 1794. After Napoleon 's occupation of the Netherlands during the Flanders Campaign , Great Britain captured the Cape Colony to prevent France from laying claim to its strategic harbour. Although the Dutch authorities were permitted to administer the Cape again for a brief interlude between 1803 and 1806,
14812-421: The administrative policies of their respective metropolitan countries. Some lost their sense of identification with Europe and created their own nationalist movements, namely in South Africa and Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe ). Permanent white residents were regarded as an increasing liability by colonial administrations as they sought to dominate their adopted African homelands. They were also likely to involve
14973-565: The affixes and main parts of the surnames (e.g. A. van der Bilt becomes A . Vanderbilt ). Dutch names can differ greatly in spelling. The surname Baks , for example is also recorded as Backs , Bacxs , Bax , Bakx , Baxs , Bacx , Backx , Bakxs and Baxcs . Though written differently, pronunciation remains identical. Dialectal variety also commonly occurs, with De Smet and De Smit both meaning Smith for example. There are several main types of surnames in Dutch: Prior to
15134-443: The area's Southern lands as foederati ; Roman allies in charge of border defense. Linguistically Old Frankish gradually evolved into Old Dutch , which was first attested in the 6th century, whereas religiously the Franks (beginning with the upper class ) converted to Christianity from around 500 to 700. On a political level, the Frankish warlords abandoned tribalism and founded a number of kingdoms, eventually culminating in
15295-423: The arrival of Christianity, the ancestors of the Dutch adhered to a form of Germanic paganism augmented with various Celtic elements . At the start of the 6th century, the first ( Hiberno-Scottish ) missionaries arrived. They were later replaced by Anglo-Saxon missionaries , who eventually succeeded in converting most of the inhabitants by the 8th century. Since then, Christianity has been the dominant religion in
15456-492: The arrival of a number of Boer exiles from Angola, who had departed that territory due to disputes with the Portuguese colonial government there. Most of the Boers were engaged in cattle ranching, using the vast, unpopulated lands around Ghanzi as a massive range to drive their herds. For a number of years, one of Botswana's most prominent white politicians was Christian de Graaff , who represented Ghanzi's southern district in
15617-628: The burgher senate, the only Dutch-era form of government at the Cape. It also took measures to bring the Boer population under control by establishing new courts and judiciaries along the frontier. Boer resentment of the British peaked in 1834, when the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was passed, outlawing slavery throughout the British Empire. All 35,000 enslaved people registered with the Cape governor were to be freed and given rights on par with other citizens, although in most cases
15778-406: The cities and estates in the Low Countries, followed by the religious oppression after being transferred to Habsburg Spain , the Dutch revolted, in what would become the Eighty Years' War . For the first time in their history, the Dutch established their independence from foreign rule. However, during the war it became apparent that the goal of liberating all the provinces and cities that had signed
15939-466: The colonial authorities, which devoted more public funding to their education and technical training. For example, in Tanganyika , the colonial authorities were estimated to have allocated up to twenty-six times more funding per year for white schools than black schools. In most of colonial Africa, local whites sought employment with foreign companies, often in technical or managerial positions, or with
16100-446: The colony became localised in their loyalties and national identity and regarded the colonial government with a mixture of apathy and suspicion. In the early 1700s, this emerging class of people began identifying as Afrikaners , rather than Dutch subjects, after their adopted homeland. Afrikaners who settled directly on the colony's frontiers were also known collectively as Boers , to describe their agricultural way of life. In 1769,
16261-506: The common language, may be compared to how Austrians do not consider themselves to be Germans , despite the similarities they share with southern Germans such as Bavarians . In both cases, the Catholic Austrians and Flemish do not see themselves as sharing the fundamentally Protestant-based identities of their northern counterparts. Plantation Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting
16422-477: The continent. An exodus of colonists accompanied independence in most African nations. Over half the Portuguese Mozambican population, which numbered about 200,000 in 1975, departed en masse because of discriminatory economic policies directed against them. In Zimbabwe, recent white exodus was spurred by an aggressive land reform programme introduced by late President Robert Mugabe in 2000 and
16583-580: The continent; between these two extremes, disease and the tropical climate precluded most permanent European settlement until the late nineteenth century. The discovery of valuable resources in Africa's interior and the introduction of quinine as a cure for malaria altered this longstanding trend, and a new wave of European colonists arrived on the continent between 1890 and 1918. Most European colonists granted land in African colonies cultivated cereal crops or raised cattle , which were far more popular among
16744-499: The current CBS definition (both parents born in the Netherlands), resulting in an estimated 16,000,000 Dutch people, or by the sum of all people worldwide with both full and partial Dutch ancestry , which would result in a number around 33,000,000. Approximate distribution of native Dutch speakers worldwide. People of (partial) Dutch ancestry outside the Netherlands. Dutch is the main language spoken by most Dutch people. It
16905-619: The decades which followed the Second World War. Although there were small British colonies along the West African coast from the 18th century onwards, mostly consisting of trading posts and castles, British colonisation of Africa began in earnest only at the end of the 18th century, in the Cape of Good Hope . It gained momentum following British annexation of the Cape from the Dutch East India Company, and
17066-523: The emergence of a new political system, centered on kings, and a continuing process of emerging mutual unintelligibility of their various dialects. The general situation described above is applicable to most if not all modern European ethnic groups with origins among the Germanic tribes , such as the Frisians, Germans, English and the Nordic (Scandinavian) peoples. In the Low Countries, this phase began when
17227-779: The emerging states. Consequently, some African governments have made a concerted attempt to retain sizable white communities in the interests of preserving their capital and much-needed technical skills. A few colonies had no permanent white populations at all, and in such cases the European powers preferred to construct forts and trading posts rather than large settlements accordingly. Transient administrators and soldiers were posted there initially as deterrents to rival governments attempting to effectuate treaties concerning land and other resources with local African populations. Their numbers were sometimes bolstered by civilian expatriates employed as missionaries, public servants, or employees of large transnational companies with headquarters located aside
17388-696: The end of the Dutch Revolt, it became clear the Habsburgs were unable to reconquer the North, while the North's military was too weak to conquer the South, which, under the influence of the Counter-Reformation , had started to develop a political and cultural identity of its own. The Southern Dutch, including Dutch Brabant and Limburg, remained Catholic or returned to Catholicism. The Dutch dialects spoken by this group are Brabantic , Kleverlandish , Limburgish and East and West Flemish . In
17549-503: The entire Nazi occupation, the Germans denied any assistance to Greater Dutch ethnic nationalism , and, by decree of Hitler himself, actively opposed it. The 1970s marked the beginning of formal cultural and linguistic cooperation between Belgium (Flanders) and the Netherlands on an international scale. The total number of Dutch can be defined in roughly two ways. By taking the total of all people with full Dutch ancestry, according to
17710-408: The establishment of European colonies in Africa, and a slow abandonment in the overall British ruling and common classes for a separate European identity, large colonial appendages of European separatist supporters of continued colonial rule were well entrenched in South Africa, Rhodesia, and Kenya. In keeping with the general trend toward non-European rule evident throughout most of the globe during
17871-475: The fertile uplands (often called the " White Highlands ") of British East Africa (in Kenya). Most of these colonies were not planned by the British government, with many colonial officials concluding they upset the balance of power in the region and left the long-established British interests vulnerable. Cecil Rhodes utilized his wealth and connections towards organizing this ad hoc movement and colonisation into
18032-420: The fiefs of the Low Countries under one ruler. This process marked a new episode in the development of the Dutch ethnic group, as now political unity started to emerge, consolidating the strengthened cultural and linguistic unity. Despite their growing linguistic and cultural unity, and (in the case of Flanders , Brabant and Holland ) economic similarities, there was still little sense of political unity among
18193-458: The former Boer republics some form of political autonomy and granting financial assistance to aid in postwar reconstruction. The postwar years saw the dramatic rise of Afrikaner nationalism , as many of the former Boer military leaders turned to politics and came to dominate the legislatures of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. An Afrikaner party was also elected for the first time in the Cape Colony in 1908. Afrikaner politicians heavily promoted
18354-400: The frontiers of Bechuaneland would serve as a potential buffer to German colonial expansionism from the west. From 1898 until the early 1900s, a small but steady stream of Boers began trekking towards Lake Ngami from South Africa, with the vast majority concentrating around the previously established Afrikaans-speaking community at Ghanzi. In 1928, the size of Ghanzi's population was bolstered by
18515-557: The funds to travel there. The abolition of slavery, along with Boer grievances over taxation and the perceived Anglicisation of the Cape judiciary, triggered the Great Trek : an eastward migration of 15,000 Boers determined to escape British rule by homesteading beyond the Cape Colony's frontiers. The Great Trek brought the migrating Boers, known as voortrekkers , into direct conflict with the Zulu Empire , upon which they inflicted
18676-472: The furthest pale of gallicisation among the Franks. A dialect continuum remaining with more eastern Germanic populations, a distinct identity in relation to these only gradually developed, largely based on socio-economic and political factors. Large parts of the present Netherlands have populations using Saxon and Frisian dialects. The medieval cities of the Low Countries, especially those of Flanders, Brabant and Holland, which experienced major growth during
18837-487: The government in conflict with Africans, which required expensive military campaigns and inextricably damaged relations between the latter and the metropolitan powers. This was a common trend throughout African colonies from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. In the Dutch Cape Colony for instance, governor Joachim van Plettenberg demarcated the territory's boundaries around 1778 with approval from
18998-685: The immigrants rather than managing the tropical plantations aimed at producing export-oriented crops such as rubber and palm oil . A direct consequence of this preference was that the territories with a rainfall exceeding 1020 mm developed strong plantation-based economies but produced almost no food beyond what was cultivated by small-scale indigenous producers; drier territories with large white farming communities became more self-sufficient in food production. The latter often resulted in sharp friction between European colonists and black African tribes as they competed for land. By 1960, at least seven British , French , and Belgian colonies —in addition to
19159-712: The independence of Zimbabwe in 1980. The greatest white British populations in South Africa are in the KwaZulu-Natal province and in cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town . Dutch people The Dutch ( Dutch : Nederlanders ) are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands . They share a common ancestry and culture and speak the Dutch language . Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Aruba , Suriname , Guyana , Curaçao , Argentina , Brazil , Canada , Australia , South Africa , New Zealand and
19320-438: The indigenous peoples rather than the progressively independent colonist populations. In direct opposition to the growing tide of African nationalism, whites of European descent in colonies such as Algeria began to forge new nationalist identities of their own. Attitudes towards rapid decolonisation among individual white African communities were hardened by fears of irresponsible or incompetent postcolonial governments, coupled to
19481-411: The introduction of Portuguese and Dutch traders or military personnel. Other groups of white settlers arrived in newly established French, German, Belgian, and British settlements in Africa over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Before regional decolonisation , whites of European ancestry may have numbered up to 6 million persons at their peak and were represented in every part of
19642-455: The language or inhabitants of the Frisian part of the country. Historically the whole Dutch North Seacoast was known as Frisia. The Southern Dutch sphere generally consists of the areas in which the population was traditionally Catholic. During the early Middle Ages up until the Dutch Revolt , the Southern regions were more powerful, as well as more culturally and economically developed. At
19803-539: The low wages typically paid to plantation workers are the basis of plantation profitability in some areas. In more recent times, overt slavery has been replaced by para-slavery or slavery-in-kind , including the sharecropping system , and even that has been severely reduced. At its most extreme, workers are in " debt bondage ": they must work to pay off a debt at such punitive interest rates that it may never be paid off. Others work unreasonably long hours and are paid subsistence wages that (in practice) may only be spent in
19964-483: The lower costs of black labour (South Africa being the sole exception to the rule, as its white businesses and labour were heavily subsidised by the state). Unlike other former colonies such as those in the Americas and Australia , Europeans and their descendants on the African continent never outnumbered the indigenous people; nevertheless, they found ways to consolidate power and exert a disproportionate influence on
20125-416: The milder, drier climates of Northern , Eastern , and Southern Africa thus attracted substantial numbers of permanent European immigrants. A modest annual rainfall of under 1020 mm was considered especially suitable for the temperate farming activities to which many were accustomed. Therefore, the first parts of Africa to be populated by Europeans were located at the northern and southern extremities of
20286-460: The north of the Netherlands, mainly concentrated in the province of Friesland . Culturally, modern Frisians and the (Northern) Dutch are rather similar; the main and generally most important difference being that Frisians speak West Frisian, one of the three sub-branches of the Frisian languages , alongside Dutch, and they find this to be a defining part of their identity as Frisians. According to
20447-527: The northward migration of Boers was met by a southward migration of Xhosa , a Bantu people which laid claim to the Cape region north of the Great Fish River . This triggered a series of bloody frontier conflicts which raged until 1879, known as the Xhosa Wars . Both the Boers and Xhosa organised raiding parties that frequently crossed the river and stole livestock from the other group. Meanwhile,
20608-552: The nowadays Catholic South, which encompasses various cultural differences between the Northern Dutch on one side and the Southern Dutch on the other. This subject has historically received attention from historians, notably Pieter Geyl (1887–1966) and Carel Gerretson (1884–1958). The historical pluriformity of the Dutch cultural landscape has given rise to several theories aimed at both identifying and explaining cultural divergences between different regions. One theory, proposed by A.J. Wichers in 1965, sees differences in mentality between
20769-629: The overseas territories and trading posts controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies (mainly the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch United East India Company ) and subsequently by the Dutch Republic (1581–1795), and by the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1815. Many Dutch people ( Nederlanders ) will object to being called Hollanders as a national denominator on much
20930-445: The parallel collapse of that country's economy. In Burundi , the local white population was blatantly expelled via a decree issued by the post-colonial government upon independence. The African country with the largest population of European descendants both numerically and proportionally is South Africa , where white South Africans number 4.3 million people (9% of the population). The second-largest European population proportionally
21091-597: The plantation or retaining corridors of natural forest. In Brazil, similar measures are required by government regulation. Plantation owners extensively used enslaved Africans to work on early plantations (such as tobacco, rice, cotton, hemp, and sugar plantations) in the American colonies and the United States, throughout the Caribbean, the Americas, and in European-occupied areas of Africa. In modern times,
21252-530: The population of Friesland saw themselves as "primarily Frisian", again without precluding the possibility of also identifying as Dutch. Frisians are not disambiguated from the Dutch people in Dutch official statistics . In the Netherlands itself "West-Frisian" refers to the Hollandic dialect, with a Frisian substrate, spoken in the northern part of the province of North-Holland known as West-Friesland, as well as "West-Frisians" referring to its speakers, not to
21413-574: The population, except for the colonies in Northern and Southern Africa, which had the highest proportion of European colonists. There are 4.5 million white South Africans. Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Namibia all have white communities numbering in the tens of thousands, and thousands more are scattered among Angola, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Congo, Senegal, Gabon, and beyond. Many hold onto their British, Portuguese, German, French or Italian citizenships, but most have been on this continent all their lives. It
21574-419: The primary purpose of the Cape colony at the time was to stock provisions for passing Dutch ships, the VOC offered grants of farmland to the vrijburgers on the condition they would cultivate crops for company warehouses. The vrijburgers were granted tax-exempt status for twelve years and loaned all the necessary seeds and farming implements they requested. The VOC initially had strict requirements which
21735-417: The prospective vrijburgers had to fulfill: they were to be married Dutch citizens, of good character, and had to undertake to spend twenty years at the Cape. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, however, many foreigners were amongst those who boarded ships in the Netherlands to settle in the Dutch sphere. As a result, by 1691 a third of the vrijburger population of the fledgling colony
21896-472: The public service. The exception were those colonies with large white farming populations, such as Kenya and Southern Rhodesia. The white residents there were likelier to form their own business communities and invest heavily in the economies of their adopted homelands. The advent of global decolonisation ushered in a radical change of perspectives towards European settlement in Africa. Metropolitan governments began to place more emphasis on their relations with
22057-623: The rebellion and make the Low Countries a Catholic region once more. The Protestants in the southern Low Countries fled North en masse . Most of the Dutch Protestants were now concentrated in the free Dutch provinces north of the river Rhine , while the Catholic Dutch were situated in the Spanish-occupied or -dominated South. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Protestantism did not spread South, resulting in
22218-585: The region. In the early 16th century, the Protestant Reformation began to form and soon spread in the Westhoek and the County of Flanders, where secret open-air sermons were held, called hagenpreken (' hedgerow orations ') in Dutch. The ruler of the Dutch regions, Philip II of Spain , felt it was his duty to fight Protestantism and, after the wave of iconoclasm , sent troops to crush
22379-436: The resources appropriated toward colonisation. World War I and the Great Depression and the general decline of British and European birthrates further hobbled the expected colonist numbers. Nonetheless, thousands of colonists arrived each year during the decades preceding World War II, mostly in South Africa, where the birthrates of British Africans increased suddenly. Despite a general change in British policy against supporting
22540-528: The rise of cotton in the American South, indigo and rice were also sometimes called plantation crops. Probably the most critical factor a plantation has on the local environment is the site where the plantation is established. In Brazil, coffee plantations would use slash-and-burn agriculture, tearing down rainforests and planting coffee trees that depleted the nutrients in soil. Once the soil had been sapped, growers would move on to another place. If
22701-529: The same grounds as many Welsh or Scots would object to being called English instead of British , as the Holland region only comprises two of the twelve provinces, and 40% of the Dutch citizens. The same holds for the country being referred to as Holland instead of The Netherlands . In January 2020, the Dutch government officially dropped its support of the word Holland for the whole country. The ideologies associated with (Romantic) Nationalism of
22862-430: The senior administrative posts in the civil service. Due to the relative poverty of most black Africans, whites of European ancestry also controlled the capital for development and dominated the import and export trade as well as commercial agriculture. They often represented a disproportionate percentage of the skilled workforce due to much higher educational attainment. This was heightened by the discriminatory practices of
23023-481: The slavers could retain them as paid apprentices until 1838. Many Boers, especially those involved in grain and wine production, had enslaved people at the time, and the number of people they had enslaved correlated greatly to their production output. The British government offered preexisting slavers compensation for the freeing of enslaved people, but payment had to be claimed in person in London , and few Boers possessed
23184-556: The southeastern, or 'higher', and northwestern, or 'lower' regions within the Netherlands, and seeks to explain these by referring to the different degrees to which these areas were feudalised during the Middle Ages. Another, more recent cultural divide is that between the Randstad , the urban agglomeration in the West of the country, and the other provinces of the Netherlands. In Dutch, the cultural division between North and South
23345-561: The subject. During World War II, when both Belgium and the Netherlands fell to German occupation , fascist elements (such as the NSB and Verdinaso ) tried to convince the Nazis into combining the Netherlands and Flanders . The Germans however refused to do so, as this conflicted with their ultimate goal, the Neuordnung ('New Order') of creating a single pan-Germanic racial state. During
23506-537: The subsequent encouragement of migrating colonists in the Eastern Cape in an effort to consolidate the colony's eastern border. In the late 19th century, the discovery of gold and diamonds further encouraged colonisation of South Africa by the British. The search for gold drove expansion north into the Rhodesias (now Zimbabwe, Zambia , and Malawi ). Simultaneously, British colonists began expansion into
23667-704: The term Nederlands has been in continuous use since 1250. Dutch surnames (and surnames of Dutch origin) are generally easily recognisable. Many Dutch surnames feature a tussenvoegsel ( lit. ' between-joiner ' ), which is a family name affix positioned between a person's given name and the main part of their family name . The most common tussenvoegsels are van (e.g. A. van Gogh "from/of"), de / der / den / te / ter / ten (e.g. A. de Vries , "the"), het / ’t (e.g. A. ’t Hart , "the"), and van de / van der / van den (e.g. A. van den Berg , "from/of the"). These affixes are not merged, nor capitalised by default. The second affix in
23828-459: The term usually refers only to large-scale estates. Before about 1860, it was the usual term for a farm of any size in the southern parts of British North America , with, as Noah Webster noted, "farm" becoming the usual term from about Maryland northward. The enslavement of people was the norm in Maryland and states southward. The plantations there were forced-labor farms. The term "plantation"
23989-563: The underdeveloped Portuguese territory, joined by new Afrikaner migrants in 1893 and 1905. By 1928, however, the South African authorities arranged to have 300 such households repatriated to Outjo , where they settled comfortably into farming. The few Afrikaners who remained fled their homes during Angola's subsequent colonial and civil wars . In the early 20th century a number of Afrikaners trekked into German Tanganyika , where they were parceled land by colonial authorities then attempting to boost agricultural production. After Tanganyika became
24150-526: The use of Afrikaans , a language derived from the Middle Dutch dialect spoken by the colonial vrijburger population, as a fundamental part of Afrikaner identity and national consciousness. In 1908 and 1909, a constitutional convention was held for the establishment of a self-governing dominion which incorporated the old Boer republics into a unitary state with the Cape Colony and the Natal. This emerged as
24311-442: The various political affairs of the fief, including marriage succession. While the cities were of great political importance, they also formed catalysts for medieval Dutch culture. Trade flourished, population numbers increased dramatically, and (advanced) education was no longer limited to the clergy. Flanders, Brabant and Holland began to develop a common Dutch standard language . Dutch epic literature such as Elegast (1150),
24472-469: The white community in the country and much of the Afrikaner community left the country and mostly returned to South Africa. However some continued to farm in the region long after independence, and were very successful in doing so. There were originally around 2,000 Afrikaners in Angola, descendants of those who had survived Namibia's unforgiving Dorsland Trek. For fifty years they formed a distinct enclave in
24633-486: Was Dutch. Most of the Dutch immigrants of the 20th century quickly began to speak the language of their new country. For example, of the inhabitants of New Zealand, 0.7% say their home language is Dutch, despite the percentage of Dutch heritage being considerably higher. Dutch is currently an official language of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Netherlands, Aruba , Sint Maarten , and Curaçao ), Belgium, Suriname ,
24794-418: Was about 170,000 square kilometers; about six times the area of the Netherlands. The vast size of the colony made it almost impossible for the VOC to control the vrijburger population, and the colonists became increasingly independent. Attempts by the company administration to reassert its authority and regulate the vrijburgers' activities was met with resistance. Successive generations of colonists born in
24955-674: Was an attempted coup d'état by white Mozambicans in 1974, which was forcibly crushed by Portuguese troops. White rule in South Africa ended with the country's first non-racial elections in 1994 . A white flight phenomenon accompanied regional decolonisation and to a lesser extent, the termination of white minority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa. A considerable reverse exodus of former colonials returning to Western Europe occurred; because they had controlled key sectors of many African economies prior to independence, their abrupt departure often resulted in devastating economic repercussions for
25116-485: Was declared void by Mary's son and successor, Philip IV ) aimed for more autonomy for the counties and duchies, but nevertheless all the fiefs presented their demands together, rather than separately. This is evidence that by this time a sense of common interest was emerging among the provinces of the Netherlands. The document itself clearly distinguishes between the Dutch speaking and French speaking provinces. Following Mary's marriage to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor ,
25277-531: Was generally considered a success, as South-West Africa's white population more than doubled between 1913 and 1936. Current estimates for the Afrikaner population in Namibia range from 60,000 to 120,000; they continue to make up the majority of the country's white citizens. 45% of the best ranging and agricultural land is presently owned by Namibians of European background, mostly Afrikaner ranchers. As early as 1815, individual Afrikaners had begun to arrive in what
25438-578: Was much higher in the 1960s and 1970s (when the country was known as Rhodesia ); about 296,000 in 1975. This peak of around 8% of the population in 1975 dropped to possibly 120,000 in 1999, and had fallen to under 50,000 people by 2002. In the late sixteenth century, the Dutch East India Company (known more formally as the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie , or VOC) began routinely searching for sites on
25599-470: Was not ethnically Dutch. The heterogeneous European community included large numbers of German military recruits in the service of the VOC, as well as French Huguenot refugees driven into overseas exile by the Edict of Fontainebleau . As the size of the vrijburger population expanded, the colonists began expanding deeper into the interior of Southern Africa ; by 1800 the size of the fledgling Dutch Cape Colony
25760-401: Was used in most British colonies but very rarely in the United Kingdom itself in this sense. There it was used mainly for tree plantations , areas artificially planted with trees, whether purely for commercial forestry , or partly for ornamental effect in gardens and parks, when it might also cover plantings of garden shrubs. Among the earliest examples of plantations were the latifundia of
25921-627: Was widespread. But due to the rising input costs of agriculture, many farmers have done teak and bamboo plantations, which require very little water (only during the first two years). Teak and bamboo have legal protection from theft. Bamboo, once planted, gives output for 50 years till flowering occurs. Teak requires 20 years to grow to full maturity and fetch returns. These may be established for watershed or soil protection. They are established for erosion control, landslide stabilization, and windbreaks. Such plantations are established to foster native species and promote forest regeneration on degraded lands as
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