Editing Boers (section)

== Great Trek ==
{{Main|Great Trek}}

[[Image:Great Trek map full.png|thumb|upright=2|A map charting the routes of the largest trekking parties during the first wave of the Great Trek (1835–1840) along with key battles and events.]]
The Great Trek occurred between 1835 and the early 1840s. During that period some 12,000 to 14,000 Boers (including women and children), impatient with British rule, emigrated from Cape Colony into the great plains beyond the [[Orange River]], and across them again into [[Natalia Republic|Natal]] and the vastness of the [[Zoutspansberg]], in the northern part of the Transvaal. Those Trekboers who occupied the eastern Cape were semi-nomadic. A significant number in the eastern Cape frontier later became {{lang|af|Grensboere}} ('border farmers') who were the direct ancestors of the [[Voortrekkers]].

The Boers addressed several correspondence to the British Colonial Government before leaving the Cape Colony as reasons for their departure. [[Piet Retief]], one of the leaders of the Boers during the time, addressed a letter to the government on 22 January 1837 in [[Grahamstown]] stating that the Boers did not see any prospect for peace or happiness for their children in a country with such internal commotions. Retief further complained about the severe financial losses which they felt had resulted from the laws of the British administration. While there was financial compensation for the freeing of the people they had enslaved, the Boers found it to be inadequate. They also felt that the English church system was incompatible with the [[Dutch Reformed Church]]. By this time the Boers had already formed a separate code of laws in preparation for the great trek and were aware of the dangerous territory they were about to enter. Retief concluded his letter with "We quit this colony under the full assurance that the English Government has nothing more to require of us, and will allow us to govern ourselves without its interference in future".<ref>History of the Emigrant Boers in South Africa, 2nd ed, G.M. Theal, London 1888.</ref>