Boers ( BOORZ; Afrikaans: Boere; [ˈbuːrə]) are the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. From 1652 to 1795, the Dutch East India Company controlled the Dutch Cape Colony, which the United Kingdom incorporated into the British Empire in 1806. The name of the group is derived from Trekbœr then later "boer", which means "farmer" in Dutch and Afrikaans.
In addition, the term Boeren also applied to those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to colonise the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal (together known as the Boer Republics), and to a lesser extent Natal. They emigrated from the Cape to live beyond the reach of the British colonial administration, with their reasons for doing so primarily being the new Anglophone common law system being introduced into the Cape and the British abolition of slavery in 1833.
The term Afrikaners or Afrikaans people is generally used in modern-day South Africa for the white Afrikaans-speaking population of South Africa (the largest group of White South Africans) encompassing the descendants of both the Boers, and the Cape Dutch who did not embark on the Great Trek.
According to a genetic study, 4.7% of their DNA is of non-European origin. 1.3% being Khoisan, 1.7% from South Asia, slightly less than 1% from East Asia and 0.8% from East and West Africa.
The Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie; VOC) was formed in the Dutch Republic in 1602, and at this time the Dutch had entered the competition for the colonial and imperial trade of commerce in Southeast Asia. The end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 saw European soldiers and refugees widely dispersed across Europe. Immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland traveled to the Netherlands in the hope of finding employment with the VOC. During the same year, one of their ships was stranded in Table Bay near what would eventually become Cape Town, and the shipwrecked crew had to forage for themselves on shore for several months. They were so impressed with the natural resources of the country that on their return to the Dutch Republic, they presented to the VOC directors the advantages to be had for the Dutch Eastern trade from a properly provided for and fortified station at the Cape. In response, the VOC sent a Dutch expedition in 1652 led by Jan van Riebeek, who constructed a fort, laid out vegetable gardens at Table Bay, and took control over Cape Town, which he governed for a decade.
VOC favored the idea of freemen at the Cape and many workers of VOC requested to be discharged in order to become free burghers. As a result, Jan van Riebeek approved the notion on favorable conditions and earmarked two areas near the Liesbeek River for the purpose of agricultural development in 1657. The two areas allocated to the freemen were named Greenfield and Dutch Garden. These areas were separated by the Amstel (Liesbeek) River. The best nine applicants were selected to settle the land. The freemen (free burghers, as they were called thereafter) thus became subjects of VOC and were no longer considered servants.
In 1671, the Dutch first purchased land from the indigenous Khoikhoi beyond the limits of the fort built by Van Riebeek; this marked the beginnings of the Dutch Cape Colony. As the result of the investigations of a 1685 commissioner, the government worked to recruit a greater variety of immigrants to develop a stable community. They formed part of the class of vrijlieden, also known as vrijburgers ('free citizens'), former VOC employees who remained at the Cape after serving their contracts. A large number of vrijburgers became independent farmers and applied for grants of land, as well as loans of seed and tools, from VOC administration.
VOC authorities had been endeavouring to induce gardeners and small farmers to emigrate from Europe to South Africa, but with little success. They were only able to attract a few families through the promise of wealth, but the Cape had little to offer. In October 1670, however, the Chamber of Amsterdam announced that a few families were willing to leave for the Cape and Mauritius the following December. Among the new names of burghers at this time were Jacob and Dirk van Niekerk, Johannes van As, Francois Villion, Jacob Brouwer, Jan van Eden, Hermanus Potgieter, Albertus Gildenhuis, and Jacobus van den Berg.
During 1688–1689, the colony was greatly strengthened by the arrival of nearly two hundred French Huguenots, who were political refugees from the religious wars in France following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They joined colonies at Stellenbosch, Drakenstein, Franschhoek and Paarl. The Huguenots had a marked influence on the character of the colony, leading the VOC in 1701 to mandate that only Dutch be taught in schools. This resulted in the Huguenots assimilating by the middle of the 18th century, with a loss in the use and knowledge of French. The colony gradually spread eastwards, and by 1754 land as far as Algoa Bay was included in the colony.
At this time the European colonists numbered eight to ten thousand. They possessed numerous slaves, grew wheat in sufficient quantity to make it a commodity crop for export, and were famed for the good quality of their wines. But their chief wealth was in cattle. They enjoyed considerable prosperity.
Through the latter half of the 17th and the whole of the 18th century, troubles arose between the colonists and the government as the VOC administration was despotic. Its policies were not directed at development of the colony, but to profit the VOC. The VOC closed the colony against free immigration, kept the whole of the trade in its own hands, combined the administrative, legislative and judicial powers into one body, mandated the cultivation of certain crops, and demanded a large part of their produce as a kind of tax, among other exactions.
From time to time, indentured VOC servants were endowed with the right of freeburghers but the VOC retained the power to compel them to return into its service whenever they deemed it necessary. This right to force into servitude those who might incur the displeasure of the governor or other high officers was not only exercised with reference to the individuals themselves; it was claimed by the government to be applicable to their children as well.
The tyranny caused many to feel desperate and to flee from oppression, even before the 1700 trekking began. In 1780, Joachim van Plettenberg, the governor, proclaimed the Sneeuberge to be the northern boundary of the colony, expressing "the anxious hope that no more extension should take place, and with heavy penalties forbidding the rambling peasants to wander beyond". In 1789, so strong had feelings amongst the burghers become that delegates were sent from the Cape to interview the authorities at Amsterdam. After this deputation, some nominal reforms were granted.
It was largely to escape oppression that the farmers trekked farther and farther from the seat of government. VOC, to control the emigrants, established a magistracy at Swellendam in 1745 and another at Graaff Reinet in 1786. The Gamtoos River had been declared, c. 1740, the eastern frontier of the colony but it was soon passed. In 1780, however, the Dutch, to avoid collision with the Bantu peoples, agreed with them to make the Great Fish River the common boundary. In 1795 the heavily taxed burghers of the frontier districts, who were afforded no protection against the Bantus, expelled the VOC officials, and set up independent governments at Swellendam and Graaff Reinet.
The trekboers of the 19th century were the lineal descendants of the trekboers of the 18th century. The end of the 19th century saw a revival of the same tyrannical monopolist policy as that in the VOC government in the Transvaal. If the formula, "In all things political, purely despotic; in all things commercial, purely monopolist", was true of the VOC government in the 18th century, it was equally true of Kruger's government in the latter part of the 19th.