Boers

boors, South African colonists of Dutch descent. The word is Dutch, akin to boor, meaning a peasant or husbandman. The Boers began the colonization of South Africa in 1650, at a time when the Dutch were the leading maritime power in Europe. During the oppressive wars with Louis XIV, there were serious thoughts of abandoning Holland for Cape Colony.

The history of the Boers is one of peculiar injustice. They settled at Cape Colony as the Puritans settled in New England, and at about the same time, and for a similar purpose. They desired to be let alone and to build up a church in their own way. In 1795, during the wars of the French Revolution, the English took possession of the colony. It was formally ceded to England in 1815. The colonists moved northward from time to time with their slaves and flocks, carrying on an incessant conflict with treacherous natives, whom they exterminated or reduced to slavery, and with the lions who soon learned to prefer domestic animals to the beasts of the chase. The Boers became excellent marksmen and skillful hunters. As fast as they rendered a tract of country desirable, the English followed them up, and the Boers trekked farther northward to find a new place of residence. In this way, Cape Colony, Natal, and the Orange Free State, were settled, improved, and given over wholly or in part to the British.

The Boers made their last stand in the Transvaal, where, by treaty with Great Britain, they were accorded a sort of independence; but the discovery of valuable diamond mines in their vicinity proved their undoing. British adventurers rushed in; the godless doings that usually center about such places shocked the frugal, ignorant, and narrow, but hospitable Calvinists, and difficulties arose which culminated in the Boer War with Great Britain in 1899. Under President Kruger and Generals Botha and De Wet, the Boers made a gallant fight, costing the British millions of dollars and thousands of men. The result was a foregone conclusion. The Boer territories are now a part of the British Empire, with a large degree of self-government. The Boers can trek no farther. In time, no doubt, they will become loyal British subjects, but their history does not make pleasant reading.