Great Trek

The Great Trek (Afrikaans: Die Groot Trek, Dutch: De Grote Trek) was a northward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyond the Cape's British colonial administration. The Great Trek resulted from the culmination of tensions between rural descendants of the Cape's original European settlers, known collectively as Boers, and the British. It was also reflective of an increasingly common trend among individual Boer communities to pursue an isolationist and semi-nomadic lifestyle away from the developing administrative complexities in Cape Town. Boers who took part in the Great Trek identified themselves as voortrekkers, meaning "pioneers" or "pathfinders" in Dutch and Afrikaans. The Great Trek led directly to the founding of several autonomous Boer republics, namely the South African Republic (also known simply as the Transvaal), the Orange Free State and the Natalia Republic. It also led to conflicts that resulted in the displacement of the Northern Ndebele people, and conflicts with the Zulu people that contributed to the decline and eventual collapse of the Zulu Kingdom.