Program Information

In the 1830s with their way of life under challenge, South Africans of Dutch ancestry migrated away from the Cape Colony in the Great Trek.

A Moment in Time is a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Created to excite and enlighten the public about the past, its relevance to the present and its impact on the future, A Moment In Time is a captivating historical narrative that is currently broadcast worldwide.

Transcript

Lead: In the 1830s with their way of life under challenge, South Africans of Dutch ancestry migrated away from the Cape Colony in the Great Trek.

Intro: A Moment In Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: When the British took control of the Cape of Good Hope in the early 1800s, they instituted changes increasingly considered unacceptable by white frontier settlers of mostly Dutch ancestry who called themselves Afrikaners. Disputes over the treatment of native black and mixed race Africans, many of whom the Afrikaners held as slaves, the new charges for land which theretofore had been free, and the inability or unwillingness of the British to provide the Dutch security from attack by natives from across the colony's frontier intensified the Afrikaner desire to get away from the colony and live on their own.

In 1834 that desire began to take concrete form. Word spread in the frontier districts that the time had come to get away. Lasting in various stages from 1835 to 1850, the so-called Great Trek is one of the most important events of South African History. The migration took a generally northeastern direction in two thrusts: inland across the Orange and Vaal rivers into the heartland and a second stream breaking off from the first to settle for a time the coastal region known as Natal.

With some similarities to the movement of settlers to the western United States at about the same, the Dutch families, with little central coordination, placed their household goods in what looked like Conestoga wagons, gathered their many offspring and their slaves and moved out.

British colonial officials who did not wish to have hostile forces growing on their northern border opposed this migration. The Afrikaners were also opposed by native African nations, such as the Zulu, who claimed the land on which the whites wished to settle. Next time: tragic negotiations.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Virginia Standards