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Afrikaners are descended mostly from white Calvinist settlers and refugees who occupied the Cape of Good Hope during the period of administration ( 1652Events April 6 Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck establishes a resupply camp for the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope, and founded Cape Town. May 18 Rhode Island passes the first law in North America making slavery illegal. May 29 First Anglo- 1795Events January 16 French occupy Utrecht, Netherlands. January 20 French troops enter Amsterdam and later proclaim Batavian Republic. January 23 Dutch fleet freezes in Issel Meer. February 7 The 11th Amendment to the United States Constitution is passed.) by the Dutch East India CompanyThe Dutch East India Company Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC in Dutch, literally "United East Indies Company") was established on March 20, 1602, when the government of the Netherlands granted it a monopoly to carry out Dutch colonial activities (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC) and the subsequent period of British rule.
The term Afrikaner encompasses disparate communities of white Afrikaans speakers. Originally it distinguished those Dutch speakers who saw themselves as local, i.e. "African", from those who still primarily identified with Europe; it was later used to distinguish between Afrikaans speakers and English speakers among the white population. Its earliest use dates from 1707Events March 26 Act of Union with Scotland becomes law, making the separate Kingdoms of England and Scotland into one country, the Kingdom of Great Britain. April 25 Allied army is defeated by borbonic army at Almansa ( Spain) in the War of the Spanish Su but was not widely used until after the Anglo-Boer War of the early 20th century19th century 20th century 21st century more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901- 2000 in the sense of the Gre. Prior to then, the various white Afrikaans speaking communities were known under different names. A significant amount were known as Boers (farmers). The semi-nomadic/migrating farmers of the eastern frontier were known as Trekboers. Those who lived in the western Cape & did not trek eastward were known as the Cape DutchThe term Cape Dutch was used to describe the Dutch, French, German, and other European descended inhabitants of the Western Cape who from the 17th century into the 19th century who remained loyal subjects of European (first Dutch then later British) power. The isolated pioneers from the eastern cape frontier who trekked / migrated into the interior en masse in a series of migrations later known as the Great Trek were known as Voortrekkers. Though a small number of VoortrekkersThe Voortrekker Monument built in 1949''. The Voortrekkers ( Afrikaans for pioneers literally "those who move ahead") were white Afrikaner farmers, then known as Boers, who in the 1830s and 1840s emigrated in what is called the Great Trek from the British came from the western Cape as well.
In the 1830sEvents and Trends Dutch-speaking farmers known as Voortrekkers emigrate northwards from the Cape Colony. Croquet invented in Ireland Railroad construction begins in earnest in the United States. World Leaders Emperor Francis II ( Austria) Emperor Ferdinan and 1840s an estimated 12,000 Voortrekkers penetrated the future Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal provinces to put themselves beyond the reach of British authority, in order to escape relentless border wars, British colonialism and its Anglicization polices, as well as to ease pressure on an overcrowding frontier where land was becoming scarce. While some historians claim that these series of migrations, later known as the Great Trek, was caused because the Boers did not agree with the British restrictions on slavery, most Trekboers did not own slaves, unlike the Cape Dutch; their more affluent cousins in the western Cape who did not trek eastward and migrate or participate in the Great Trek. The vast majority of Voortrekkers were Trekboers from the eastern Cape who engaged in pastoralism. Nevertheless, the British promulgation of Ordinance 50 in 1828, which guaranteed equal rights before the law to all "free persons of color", was indeed a factor in Boer discontent, as is well documented by numerous contemporary sources; the various republics founded by the Voortrekkers while prohibiting slavery itself would all enshrine inequality by race into their constitutions.
The Great Trek was mainly the result of the "bursting of the dam" of pent up population migration and population pressures, as Trekboer migrations eastward had come to a virtual stop for at least three decades (though some Trekboers did migrate beyond the Orange River prior to the Great Trek). During the Great Trek they fought with the Zulus (after Voortrekker leaders Piet Retief and Gerhard Maritz, along with almost half of their followers, were killed by Dingaan and his warriors after initially signing a land treaty with them), who at the time occupied the areas the Boers were trekking into.
The Boers established independent states in what is now South Africa: the Natalia Republic, the Transvaal Republic (the South African Republic) and the Orange Free State. The English wish to extend their colonial empire to the Boer areas led to the two Boer Wars of 1880- 1881 and 1899- 1902, which ended with the inclusion of the Boer areas in the British colonies. Following the British annexation of the Boer republics, the creation of the Union of South Africa ( 1910) went some way towards blurring the division between British settler and Afrikaner. The black majority, however, was excluded from equal participation in the affairs of the State and country, except for the states which were self governed (Qwaqwa, Zululand, Ciskei, Transkei, Venda, Bophutswana) until 1994, owing first to the British colonial policies and then later to the Afrikaner political leadership's policy of apartheid, (the Afrikaans word for "aparthood" or "separation"), particularly under the National Party from 1948.
In recent years there has been encouragement from some Afrikaners to encourage the mixed race " coloured" population of South Africa, most of whom speak Afrikaans as their first language, to consider themselves Afrikaners. This has seen some success despite the history of exclusion under Apartheid.
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