PC: Boer Republics against Dutch Cape Colony?

Would've the Boer Republics still been established had the Dutch remained?

  • Yes

    Votes: 15 26.8%

  • No

    Votes: 41 73.2%
  • Total voters
    56

NuclearVacuum

Let's assume that for what ever reason (not important now), the Dutch keep the Cape Colony. My question is: would have the Great Trek still taken place? Would have the Boer Republics still been established?

I have heard arguments for both 'yes' and 'no' being made on this site. Both arguments were:

- Yes = Continued Dutch control would have been more centralized by Europe that the British had done OTL. The Boers would still wish to be on their own, and still trek.

- No = Continued Dutch control would have been favored by the Boers, so no trek would have happened.

While both arguments are vague, I haven't been able to see a consensus on this topic.

Any thoughts?
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
Possibly they would Trek but would be viewed as an extended protectorate of the Dutch, rather than self-governing republics? After all, in the USA with the great movement Westwards, the people still belonged to the same state, they just set up new communities, new local governments etc

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Iserlohn

Probably not. The Dutch definitely weren't big on settler colonies so a state-sponsored expedition into the interior is very unlike. At most the Dutch would expand into Natal, but the area of Transvaal and the Oranje Freestate will probably not be settled by Dutch settlers/Boers. After all the Cape is profitable enough and the north of today's South Africa only turned out to be valuable in OTL when the already present Boers discovered diamonds and gold.

EDIT: I also imagine the Dutch to be a bit more comfortable for the Boers. One thing I could imagine in case of the Boers being unhappy with Amsterdam's administration that the majority of the Cape Colony becomes a dominion-type thing with the Cape itself remaining under direct Dutch control.
 
Baconheimer

Baconheimer

I assumed the Boers were Dutch who were dissatisfied with the British, although I am sure there would be some like that under Dutch Administration, I dont think they would form seperate republics.
 

Czar Kaizer

Banned
All those have said that the boers would feel more comfortable under dutch rule don't know much about dutch rule in south africa. Even when the Dutch ruled the colony the Boers mistrusted all forms of authority, most of frontier boers were a law unto themselves and simply ignored rules and laws which did not favour them. It must understood that the boers did not trek because they hated the british in general, they were quite happy with the british at first until they started giving non whites rights.
The boers hated the fact that the british allowed slaves to testify in court and take their masters to court for beating them, the principle of equality before the law angered the boers, the aboltion of slavery was the final straw and thatwas when they decided they had had enough.

Therefore assuming that the dutch government would abolish slavery you are bound to get a trek anyway as the boers would not accept a government which would even consider the nomonial equality of non white before the law.
 

clifton

Slavery in the Dutch empire will last longer. otl: Slavery was abolished in 1863. The Dutch goverment saved up the money earned from the Dutch East Indies too compensate the Slave owners of the Suriname and Dutch Antilles. But now adding South African slaves, slavery would last longer than 1863.

(Also otl: In 1795, the heavily taxed Boers of the frontier districts, who received no protection against the Africans, expelled the officials of the Dutch East India Company, and established independent governments at Swellendam and at Graaff-Reinet.) There will be Boer Republics, maybe smaller and weaker than otl but there likely be boer republics.

The Dutch goverment did sponsord Dutch settlers in Suriname. But the Colonial Suriname goverment had no real interest in it. So the promised houses, cattle,the cleared ground etc. wasn't deliverd. So it was more or less a failure. From the original 200 dutch settlers from 1845 it did grown to a population of 4000 which 1000 still remaining in Suriname. If we assume that the Cape Colonial goverment is more willingly to help the settlers than Suriname more Settlers projects could be established.

It could also have interesting effects in the Dutch Province of Drenthe. In the 19th century the Dutch goverment establish settlements to populate the province. If the Dutch goverment is more concentrated to colonising South Africa, Drenthe will be less populated than otl(which otl is already low populated:rolleyes:)

The Dutch as you see had colonising projects but with the lack of settlers colonies, the failure of the Suriname, and the settlements of Drenthe made it not well known.
 
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clifton

This is the map of Cape Colony before the British took it over in 1795. Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet are more or less independent. It was after the British taken Capetown they took shortly after Swellendam en Graaff-Reinet.
Kapkolonie_1795.jpg
 

Janprimus

Partially it will depend on how centralized The Hague (though according to the Dutch constitution Amsterdam is the capital, The Hague is the seat of Government) will want to control it. Maybe The Hague has* a bit more 'credit' than London, but that won't be much. Another problem, which might arise, is wil it remain Dutch, if more natural resources are discovered, if so settlers from outside the Netherlands do not have to be a huge problem either.
Furthermore settlements in South Africa might be a greater (potential) success than Suriname or Drenthe could be.

(*= h is silient in my local dialect, ironically my surname starts with a (-n) h ;))
 
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clifton

Janprimus said:
Partially it will depend on how centralized The Hague (though according to the Dutch constitution Amsterdam is the capital, The Hague is the seat of Government) will want to control it. Maybe The Hague as a bit more 'credit' than London, but that won't be much. Another problem, which might arise, is wil it remain Dutch, if more natural resources are discovered, if so settlers from outside the Netherlands do not have to be a huge problem either.
Furthermore settlements in South Africa might be a greater (potential) success than Suriname or Drenthe could be.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

NuclearVacuum what's the setting of the Netherlands in this timeframe? is it that the napoleon wars never started or that the Dutch were able to retain Cape colony after 1815?
 

NuclearVacuum

clifton said:
Agreed.

NuclearVacuum what's the setting of the Netherlands in this timeframe? is it that the napoleon wars never started or that the Dutch were able to retain Cape colony after 1815?
Click to expand...

In the timeline I am working on, the Napoleonic Wars don't happen. The Dutch monarchy is still established (more or less) around the same time it did OTL (just under different means).

And for the record, my interest was in Transvaal and the OFS being the Boer Republics in question, not so much new ones made out of the Cape Colony.
 
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Ancientone

Banned
Iserlohn said:
Probably not. The Dutch definitely weren't big on settler colonies so a state-sponsored expedition into the interior is very unlike. At most the Dutch would expand into Natal, but the area of Transvaal and the Oranje Freestate will probably not be settled by Dutch settlers/Boers. After all the Cape is profitable enough and the north of today's South Africa only turned out to be valuable in OTL when the already present Boers discovered diamonds and gold.

EDIT: I also imagine the Dutch to be a bit more comfortable for the Boers. One thing I could imagine in case of the Boers being unhappy with Amsterdam's administration that the majority of the Cape Colony becomes a dominion-type thing with the Cape itself remaining under direct Dutch control.
Click to expand...

Gold was discovered at Barberton by Tom Maclachlan and on the Rand by George Harrison although the Boers had been sitting on top of it, oblivious, for 40 years . The Diamonds at Hopetown and Colesburg Koppie were identified by John O'Reilly and JJ Robinson 100 odd years after Boer occupation of the area. The local kids had been using rough diamonds as marbles. As one can guess, these discoverers were not very Afrikaans.

The Cape was not controlled, ruled or administered by "The Dutch". It was a private venture of the VOC ( Dutch East India Company) and the rulers were the Hereen XVII (Lords Seventeen) until 1796 when the Compangnie was nationalised after several defeats and territorial losses to the British East India Company and Royal Navy.
 

Thoresby

I've thought about this a few times and my personal opinion is that explicit separate Boer states like the OTL probably won't happen, instead you'd see the continuation of the status quo with frontier settlements who run themselves but acknowledge a very, very theoretical fealty to the VOC continuing to push into the interior as population and opportunities present themselves.
But sooner or later The Hague or a surviving VOC is going to get bored of effective anarchy on the frontiers and the Boers aren't going to like it. Outside Cape Town they've been running their own affairs for a century and just like the American colonies they aren't going to react well to a "Motherland" most of them have never seen bossing them around and demanding taxes. Then it's going to go one of the two ways, either a USA/Boer states analogue forms or they get crushed. On one hand the Boers are much less numerous than the 13 colonies, on the other hand the Netherlands are weaker than Britain and the Boers are even more heavily armed and militarised than the American colonists.
 

clifton

NuclearVacuum said:
In the timeline I am working on, the Napoleonic Wars don't happen. The Dutch monarchy is still established (more or less) around the same time it did OTL (just under different means).

And for the record, my interest was in Transvaal and the OFS being the Boer Republics in question, not so much new ones made out of the Cape Colony.
Click to expand...

I suppose the VOC or the Dutch goverment after it aquired the Cape from the VOC could crush the rebels in Swelledam and Graaff-reinnet easily(atleast if they don't blunder it like they did in Liege:rolleyes:). Otl when they British took controle of Swelledam and Graaff-reinnet there was an dissifaction under the settlers in these two regions. A lot of the settlers in these regions did joined the Great trek. I suppose you need to make VOC/Dutch rule incompetend enough to aggravate the settlers (abolishment of slavery, direct rule, high taxes, equel rights etc) but at the same time they need to be able to extend there rule through the Cape.
 
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JonasResende

JonasResende

There were several reasons for the Great Trek:

1. Lack of pasturage within the British Cape Colony - i.e. up to the Xhosa frontier - the influx of the 1820 settlers made a big impact in the sense that suddenly there were a lot more people with a lot less land.

2.1 Loss of labor caused by the abolition of slavery. Suddenly you were left without workers for the farms if the slaves left.

2.2. or 3. Loss of capital. Britain only recompensed the Boers/Afrikaners/Dutch slave owners 30% of the purchase price of the slaves. And not only that, it took six months (with fair winds) from Cape Town to London, and six months back. So, in other words, you were stranded without either the labor that the slaves had previously provided or the money to employ labor while you waited for London to approve the payout. The treasurer didn't sit at the Castle in Cape Town, he sat in Whitehall. All payments had to be approved by him.

4. Religious issues. The Dutch governor/government had been relatively uninvolved as far as religion and freedom thereof was concerned. However, post 1806, religion was suddenly the domain of the governor/king. To give you an idea, the first Synod meeting of the South African Synod in 1824 the "algemene kerk sinode" - was made up of 11 Scots, 1 German, 1 Dutchman and 7 Afrikaners. This was one of the tenets of Piet Retief's manifesto: that freedom of conscience was desired.
Also, to give you an idea, a *Rev. Morgan from Somerset-East denounced it as a "wandering", *Rev. Taylor likened it to the "flight of Jonah" and *Rev. Robertson of Montagu said it was for "foolish reasons" that they acted, so the Synod of 1837 denounced it as "unbiblical" - and seemingly forgot the Exodus of Moses and the Israelites from Egypt.

*Notice anything about the surnames? Yup, they're all Scots telling the Dutch how to run their country.

5. Nationalism. The watchword of the 19th century, courtesy of Napoleon and his wars. The Afrikaners had become pretty used to doing their own thing without too much interference from the governor. Suddenly, in 1806, they got a British governor and it was no longer a case of laissez-faire. The British meddled (after a fashion) in a way the Dutch never had. Pre-1806 the Afrikaners could move around sort of wherever they damn well pleased, whereas now, post-1806 they were sort of tied down and restricted to "districts" - hence point 1 about lack of pasturage. So there was a desire for a lost freedom in it as well.

6. Equality. The abolition of slavery led to an awkward side-effect. Those same slaves that had been working for you a month before, were now your equal. Many Afrikaners were unable to handle this too well. Equality before the law was alright in theory, but all these freed slaves also led to an increase in for instance farm-attacks, robberies, rapes and murders. Before the abolition, if a slave did this, he was flogged with a sjambok and sent back to work - the pain from this being enough to persuade him it's a bad idea.

Just a little extra info to consider.
 

Parma

JonasResende said:
There were several reasons for the Great Trek:

1. Lack of pasturage within the British Cape Colony - i.e. up to the Xhosa frontier - the influx of the 1820 settlers made a big impact in the sense that suddenly there were a lot more people with a lot less land.


2.1 Loss of labor caused by the abolition of slavery. Suddenly you were left without workers for the farms if the slaves left.

2.2. or 3. Loss of capital. Britain only recompensed the Boers/Afrikaners/Dutch slave owners 30% of the purchase price of the slaves. And not only that, it took six months (with fair winds) from Cape Town to London, and six months back. So, in other words, you were stranded without either the labor that the slaves had previously provided or the money to employ labor while you waited for London to approve the payout. The treasurer didn't sit at the Castle in Cape Town, he sat in Whitehall. All payments had to be approved by him.

4. Religious issues. The Dutch governor/government had been relatively uninvolved as far as religion and freedom thereof was concerned. However, post 1806, religion was suddenly the domain of the governor/king. To give you an idea, the first Synod meeting of the South African Synod in 1824 the "algemene kerk sinode" - was made up of 11 Scots, 1 German, 1 Dutchman and 7 Afrikaners. This was one of the tenets of Piet Retief's manifesto: that freedom of conscience was desired.
Also, to give you an idea, a *Rev. Morgan from Somerset-East denounced it as a "wandering", *Rev. Taylor likened it to the "flight of Jonah" and *Rev. Robertson of Montagu said it was for "foolish reasons" that they acted, so the Synod of 1837 denounced it as "unbiblical" - and seemingly forgot the Exodus of Moses and the Israelites from Egypt.

*Notice anything about the surnames? Yup, they're all Scots telling the Dutch how to run their country.

5. Nationalism. The watchword of the 19th century, courtesy of Napoleon and his wars. The Afrikaners had become pretty used to doing their own thing without too much interference from the governor. Suddenly, in 1806, they got a British governor and it was no longer a case of laissez-faire. The British meddled (after a fashion) in a way the Dutch never had. Pre-1806 the Afrikaners could move around sort of wherever they damn well pleased, whereas now, post-1806 they were sort of tied down and restricted to "districts" - hence point 1 about lack of pasturage. So there was a desire for a lost freedom in it as well.

6. Equality. The abolition of slavery led to an awkward side-effect. Those same slaves that had been working for you a month before, were now your equal. Many Afrikaners were unable to handle this too well. Equality before the law was alright in theory, but all these freed slaves also led to an increase in for instance farm-attacks, robberies, rapes and murders. Before the abolition, if a slave did this, he was flogged with a sjambok and sent back to work - the pain from this being enough to persuade him it's a bad idea.

Just a little extra info to consider.
Click to expand...

Only point 1 remains and in a part point 5. Point 5 because most of its history the Cape colony was run by a public owned company who did not give anything about the interest of the colonist, now it is run by Governor with orders from a depratment from The Hague, which undoubtly will give conflicts and difference in opinions.

My conclusion is there will be only a limited Great Trek, a kind of "Bitter Einders" but only in search of pastrurage. This trek could increase if the green plains of the "Hoge veld" is reached.

One posibility of a larger Trek is an influx of Uitlanders, colonist from the Netherlands. Since the climate of Southern Africa is much more atractive than that of Suriname and the desperate economic situation of the Netherlands nearly the complete 19th century, it is possible.
 

abc123

Banned
Iserlohn said:
Probably not. I also imagine the Dutch to be a bit more comfortable for the Boers. One thing I could imagine in case of the Boers being unhappy with Amsterdam's administration that the majority of the Cape Colony becomes a dominion-type thing with the Cape itself remaining under direct Dutch control.
Click to expand...

This. ;);)
 
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