Editing Cape Dutch (section)

==History==
Following the establishment of the [[Dutch East India Company]]'s initial settlement at the [[Cape of Good Hope]] in 1652, it became home to a large population of {{lang|nl|vrijlieden}}, also known as [[Free Burghers in the Dutch Cape Colony|Free Burghers]] {{lang|nl|vrijburgers}} (free citizens).<ref name=Hunt1>{{cite book|last=Hunt|first=John|editor-last=Campbell|editor-first=Heather-Ann|title=Dutch South Africa: Early Settlers at the Cape, 1652-1708|date=2005|pages=13–35|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|location=Philadelphia|isbn=978-1904744955}}</ref> The earliest free burghers were Company employees who applied for grants of land and permission to retire in South Africa as independent farmers.<ref name=Hunt1/> Most were married Dutch citizens who committed to spend at least twenty years on the African continent.<ref name=Hunt1/> In exchange they received plots of thirteen and a half {{lang|nl|[[morgen]]|italics=no}} apiece, a twelve-year exemption from property taxes, and loans of seeds and agricultural implements.<ref name=Hunt1/><ref name=Lucas>{{cite book|last=Lucas|first=Gavin|title=An Archaeology of Colonial Identity: Power and Material Culture in the Dwars Valley, South Africa|date=2004|pages=29–33|publisher=Springer, Publishers|location=New York|isbn=978-0306485381}}</ref> Reflecting the multi-national character of the company's workforce and overseas settlements, smaller numbers of [[German people|German]] and French [[Huguenot]] immigrants were also allowed to settle in South Africa, and by 1691 over a quarter of the Cape's European population was not ethnically Dutch.<ref name="Britannica1933">Entry: Cape Colony. ''Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 4 Part 2: Brain to Casting''. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 1933. James Louis Garvin, editor.</ref> Nevertheless, there was a degree of [[cultural assimilation]] due to intermarriage, and the almost universal adoption of the Dutch language.<ref name=NHOSA>{{cite book|last1=Mbenga|first1=Bernard|last2=Giliomee|first2=Hermann|title=New History of South Africa|date=2007|pages=59–60|publisher=Tafelburg, Publishers|location=Cape Town|isbn=978-0624043591}}</ref> Cleavages were likelier to occur along socioeconomic rather than ethnic lines; broadly speaking, the Cape colonists were delineated into ''[[Boers]]'', poor farmers who settled directly on the frontier, and the more affluent, predominantly urbanised ''Cape Dutch''.<ref name=SSA>{{cite book|last1=Collins|first1=Robert|last2=Burns|first2=James|title=A History of Sub-Saharan Africa|date=2007|pages=288–293|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-1107628519}}</ref>

Differences between the Boers and the Cape Dutch increased as a result of the end of Dutch rule and the [[Great Trek]].<ref name=SSA/> The Netherlands formally ceded its South African colony to [[Great Britain]] around 1815.<ref name="Greaves">{{cite book|last= Greaves|first=Adrian|title=The Tribe that Washed its Spears: The Zulus at War|date=2 September 2014|location=Barnsley|publisher=Pen & Sword Military|edition=2013|pages= 36–55|isbn=978-1629145136}}</ref><ref name=Lloyd1>{{cite book|last=Lloyd|first=Trevor Owen|title=The British Empire, 1558-1995|date=1997|pages=201–206|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=978-0198731337}}</ref> While most of the Cape Dutch community accepted British rule and embraced the status of British subjects,<ref name="Gooch"/> the Boers remained fiercely independent and felt alienated by the new colonial administration.<ref name=Lloyd1/> This culminated in the Great Trek, a mass migration of between 12,000 and 15,000 Boers deep into South Africa's interior to escape British rule.<ref name=Laband>{{cite book|last=Laband|first=John|title=The Transvaal Rebellion: The First Boer War, 1880-1881|date=2005|pages=10–13|publisher=Routledge Books|location=Abingdon|isbn=978-0582772618}}</ref> Four-fifths of the Cape Colony's Dutch-speaking white population at the time did not participate in the trek.<ref name="Greaves"/> The [[Dutch Reformed Church]], to which most of the Cape Dutch and Boers belonged, explicitly refused to endorse the Great Trek as well.<ref name="Greaves"/>

Many Cape Dutch regarded the subsequent founding of the [[Boer republics]] with suspicion, as they perceived the cause of Boer republican nationalism to be retrogressive.<ref name=Dubow/> Nevertheless, the Cape Dutch went on to develop their own nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century, which initially promoted cooperation and political alliances with the British.<ref name=Dubow/> This policy began to dissolve after 1895, when local political leaders sought to distance themselves from Britain's imperial agenda and what they perceived as unwanted interference by English capitalists such as [[Cecil Rhodes]] in the legal and constitutional traditions of the colony.<ref name=Dubow/> Popular affectation for British imperial traditions, culture, and patriotism among the Cape Dutch was rapidly replaced by a more exclusive commitment to a greater [[Afrikaner nationalism]].<ref name=Marsh>{{cite book|last=Marsh|first=Peter|title=Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics|date=1994|pages=318–484, 587|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven, London|isbn=978-0300058017}}</ref> For his part Rhodes regarded the growth of pan-Afrikaner nationalism as an imminent threat, since a political union between the Boers and Cape Dutch would threaten British primacy in South Africa.<ref name=Marsh/> He helped perpetuate preexisting rivalries between the two groups to circumvent this possibility.<ref name=Marsh/>

The outbreak of hostilities between the British government and the Boer republics during the [[Second Boer War]] deeply split Cape Dutch society.<ref name=Marsh/> Boer victories intensified patriotic pan-Afrikaner sentiments among the Cape Dutch.<ref name=Marsh/> While many fought on the side of the British,<ref name="Gooch"/> an unknown number also defected to the Boer republics.<ref name=Marsh/> As the Cape Dutch controlled over half the colonial legislature in the Cape Colony at the time, the perceived proliferation of pro-Boer sentiments led to unsuccessful attempts by Governor [[Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner|Lord Milner]] to [[disenfranchise]] them.<ref name=Marsh/> Milner believed that most Cape Dutch secretly supported the Boer cause, and sought to ensure the local English-speaking population achieved political dominance through excessive [[gerrymandering]].<ref name=Marsh/> Many of the troops among the enlisted and officer ranks in the British Army shared Milner's suspicions, with one soldier writing a letter explicitly detailing the British soldiers' animosity towards Afrikaners at large: "The Cape Dutch and Boers are a dirty treacherous lot and as soon as the Transvaal is subdued and the beggars trek farther out of our way the better. We do hate them down here like poison."<ref name=Miller>{{cite book|last1=Miller|first1=Stephen M.|title=Volunteers on the Veld: Britain's Citizen-soldiers and the South African War, 1899–1902|date=2007|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|location=Norman|isbn=9780806138640|page=131|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9jZEtTfeyigC}}</ref> Relatively few returning Cape Dutch fighters were disenfranchised as a result of joining the Boer war effort.<ref name=Marsh/>

Prior to the Second Boer War, the narrow principles of Boer republicanism and the political alignment many Cape Dutch still held with the British Empire undercut any hopes for pan-Afrikaner unity.<ref name="Afrikanerdom">{{cite book |first=T. D. |last=Moodie |title=The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid and the Afrikaner Civil Religion |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_UTNhTscJ9m4C |pages=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_UTNhTscJ9m4C/page/n56 39]–51 |year=1975 |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=0-520-03943-2 }}</ref>  However, following the dismantling of the Boer republics, the exodus of many impoverished Boers to the cities, and the subsequent establishment of the [[Union of South Africa]], the Cape Dutch and Boers increasingly formed a unified political bloc and socioeconomic differences between the two groups gradually diminished.<ref name="Afrikanerdom"/> The single most decisive factor in encouraging Cape Dutch and Boer unity in the postwar period appears to have been the preservation and promotion of the [[Afrikaans]] language.<ref name="Afrikanerdom"/>