Boers in East Africa: Ethnicity and Identity

The end of the Anglo-Boer War in May 1902 left the Boers (Afrikaners) defeated and bitter in a ravaged land. Poverty and disillusionment spurred many to leave the post-war British-administered South Africa. This book studies one group of emigres who trekked northward to German East Africa and British East Africa. The author relies heavily on primary sources written in both Dutch and Afrikaans to describe the experiences of the Boers in East Africa.

The literature dealing with the Afrikaners documents a people known for their independent insistence upon their language and culture, for their territorial sovereignty established in southern Africa, and for their characteristic religiosity and reliance on Old Testament-based Calvinism. Large numbers of Boers would not or could not adjust to living under an administration with whom they had been at war, and those who tried did not receive much support. As one eyewitness wrote, Not much was needed to stimulate the desire to trek. And so the Afrikaner Diaspora began.