What was The Great Trek? 

As an Afrikaner, I appreciate the attention to detail you used for all your pronunciations and colloquialisms. Please consider doing Namibia?

Baie dankie vir die akkurate video. This Part of our history is largely unkown and ignored in South Africa today.

Oh, I'd love to see a video about Boer tactics! The history of South-Africa during the colonization and the Great Trek is incredibly gripping. It's the history of 3 great empires colliding with each other in the unknown. The Dutch and British find themselves in a unexplored corner of Africa, ignorant of it's challenges and native people. While the Zulu are forced to face a new enemy with weapons they've never seen before. With their military expansion now thwarted, I'd imagine that it must've had quite the cultural impact on the Zulu. Suddenly they find themselves to be on the losing side of their culture of conquest and war. *TL;DR* 3 great empires - each with their own goal, thrown in the same place, good times.

Oh btw. The voortrekkers didn't use winchester repeaters they used "voorlaaiers" that were a type of musket.

9:07 if anyone doesn't get the reference there: Bok Van Blerk is a famous Afrikaner singer who created several Afrikaner/Boer nationalist songs and got extremely famous with them, and he pretty much became THE Afrikaner folk singer. However, he is considered an EVIL RACIST by the ANC gubmint in South Africa.

As a South African I actually did learn quite a lot in primary school about this part of history and you are covering it very accurately. Although I am not Afrikaans (More of a British and Austrian decent) I love the history of this country. Please keep up the good work, you're filling a very important place in history for us!

I find it interesting how the Boers resemble american cowboys and pioneers

I feel very lucky when I see these historical videos about the videos. My family went to Nieuw Netherlands in 1627 with the Dutch West India Company and didn't have to deal with so much hardship. The only inconvenience was the English robbing the colony 1664 and imposing English customs and laws like a tax to support the Anglican Church. Two ancestors moved to New Jersey where the laws didn't apply and bought land from the Leni Lenape Indians one buying 5000 acres to open a saw mill and the other buying land for farming. They were both Huguenots. One was Stuyvesant's adjutant and the other a magistrate. The Dutch ancestors were barrel makers They all disappeared from history except in genealogies. The three of them were married to three sisters. One pair are also Teddy and Eleanor Roosevelt's ancestors, another is Edward Hoppers and the third sister was married to Jan Aertsen van der Bilt. There was a developed language spoken called Jersey Dutch which is now pretty much extinct. It's spoken only by Ramapo Indians who are intermixed with Dutch and African genes. It's mixed with Dutch, English and the Ramapo language. I'm amazed at how the Afrikaners kept their language alive all this time. Dutch descendants are pretty much just Americans now and many don't even know they have Dutch ancestry. What doesn't help is that so many of the names have changed because English speakers couldn't pronounce them or spell t hem.

I like how there's room for both Boer and Zulu monuments at the same battlefield. With all the baggage South Africa has gone through it gives one the belief that there's room for hope.

I love the Afrikaans dialog you added. Gave me a laugh!

I'm a South African and I watched this video. Good job, you summed it up quite well. I even appreciate the pronunciations of the Afrikaans words.

I do think that just packing everything and leaving it all behind must have been a very tough decision to make, but it had to be done. Unfortunately it looks like the Boer might have to make that very same decision in the not so distant future.

Wel gedaan Hilbert! Thank you very much for making this video and for doing it so well. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you from South Africa - Afrikaner

Goodness, I didn’t realize just how close English and Dutch were until I heard this guys Dutch and how good his English was, amazing videos btw! :)

I am very interested in South African history. Read a lot about it and throughly enjoy your work, love the way your dates, numbers etc correspond with what i have read. Great work. keep going.

Great video! I find it interesting since my dad is from South Africa (English South African) , he loves the history of the South Africa, he would be very interested in these videos. Again, thanks for the great video! You got yourself a new fan.

Came here for a review of some SA history. Ended up also having a good laugh !! "Bliksem", "no braaing after 10pm". As a South African that was pretty funny!! Thanks for the informative video !! You may have my like and subscription.

Such a great video! Extremely accurate and helps a lot.

I'm a Pretorius. I appriciate you sharing the long and proud history of the Afrikaaners

Amazing video. Well done! We really liked it.

Hey Hilbert, your videos are doing good man, keep up the good work.

Thanks for this video about the history of South Africa. It's very interesting to learn about what happened - and learn about what's happening today.

M8 youve nailed it, ten out of ten, outstanding!

A well of knowledge...loving the vids....im looking up more about this..interesting

Goede bondige uitleg van het geheel. Thumbs up man!

I'm trying to make a stamp exhibition covering the South African semi postal fund stamps, and this video has been really helpful to me for adding the history of the Voortrekkers, (most of the early stamps are gathering funds for the Voortrekker monument) thank you!

once again, great video I'm definitely subscribing now

I'm busy learning about South African's history in school so this video was very helpful.

Love your videos I am south African I SUBSCRIBEd because you make the best history videos I have ever seen + Piet Retief was my great great great grandfather something like that

Thank you for this, very well done!

Love this video mate!

Nice it's interesting learning about South African history My great aunt lives in Cape Town she moved other there from England in the 1960s.

History at it's best.. thank you for this video

Amazing... thanks for doing it. Ek het dit geniet.

History with a nice accent I could listen all day 👌

Loved this video. The "dialogue" you gave the Boers was really appropriate and funny. Have you been to South Africa?

loved it! and loved the multiple languages!

My thanks for a great video. Pragtige werk.

Thank u so much this will help me for my exams I honestly struggle with being intrested with this but this helped me ALOT owo

So interesting, thank you for this.

I love your videos - big fan here. However a few notes: the tsetse fly is a biting fly that carries a particular parasite that causes human sleeping sickness. It is not related to malaria. Sotho is pronounced "Sutu". Lesotho is pronounced "Lessutu".

Hope you've had a great weekend, I was looking forwardfor a video of those historical reenactments at Bamburgh ;) ! Hope you didn't ruin the camera

Afrikaans is the BEST language to swear with

Love your dialogue! Funny 😁

You sound British, but seem to know Dutch. What's the story there?

What's the peaceful background music at around 7:35?

Nice video! Your pronunciation is great!

As a mixed race Pacific Islander - EuroAmerican (yup, both European and American 😉😂), this is very fascinating history! Aloha 🤙🏼

You really have to cover the rise of the Orlams and Griquas ańd their treks north and east. Adam Koks migration II and settlement predates the Borer states, later Griqualand West and East is formed. The story about those who went north is also pretty interesting, where some re-assimilate into the khoe khoe and others found Rehoboth. The Catsrivier settlement is also something that deserves a little light.

Correction. Vlug kommando was called by this name retrospectively after the fled. The other Boers shamed them by calling them by this name. Thank you for the video!

Love your Animations

Could you do more videos on the Boers and the Cape Colony?

8:15 "Dad? Son?" Now that was very cute.

Is your first language English or Dutch? En welke talen spreekt u ook?

comment section is going to become a total fucking mess just you watch

Good video!

Just a correction. Cape Town (Kaapstad) isn't north of Table Bay, it's on it. The bay to the south you are referring to is called False Bay, so called because early seafarers coming from the east initially thought they had reached Table Bay

Thanks. If you go to the Voortrekker monument it has inside beautifully carved marble murals depicting the Groot Trek. Also in the middle is a stone that states "Ons vir jou Suid Afrika" - We for you, South Africa. On the 16th of December, the date of the Battle of Blood River, the sun shines perfectly on these words from a small hole in the roof. The 16th of December is a public holiday in South Africa, it has been relabeled "Day of Remembrance" to be more inclusive.

Always lovely to see a video about South African history. Your pronunciation of Afrikaans isn't bad either :p.

I love this video

Hoe weet jy so baie van ons musiek, boetman?

The Boer Republics are without a doubt the COOLEST FUCKING THING that ever happened it just blows my fucking mind

It rather lacks some details on the Batswana whom were found in the interior after the Boers crossed the orange they found them there though scattered they were already invaded by the Matebele under Mzilikazi who was a rebel general of Shaka and wanted a kingdom of his own. The Boers asked form king Moshoeshoe and king Moroka to be given a piece of land to live in peace and pray their God. They were alerted by the Batswana and Sotho people that they will Futher have land if they assist them with the Matebele invasion. They formed a stronger force with Barolong and Koran thus Mzilikazi was defeated. The voortrekkers then took all territories which had been Mzilikazis which include several tracks if land unoccupied. The Voortrekkers believed in owning land unlike the Batswana who moved from place to place depending on the climate and favorable grazing and farming land. The Batswana could not do this anymore and found themselves land less as the Voortrekkers now occupied their lands. Some young ones were used as cheap Labour called "die Orlam". This was to be the begging of land dispossessed Natives.

great video p.s. i love African history

Thank you. Love the afrikaans comments by your animations.

Good content

Good video Hilbert? What literature is it based on? :)

Your pronunciation for Dutch is wonderful. Are you Dutch?

Great video, a complex and tumultuous history of South Africa. The complexities continue to this day. However, the Sothos and the Zulus never faced off in battle. The Sothos were diplomatically savvy, that's how they got to keep their mountain Kingdom without much battle. The Boers did, however unsuccessfully, attack them a few times and push them from the current Bloemfontein to the mountain enclaves across Caledon river. The Sothos then asked for British protection against Boer attacks. The rest was history.

Amazing video, thanks allot for the correct pronouncements.

Nice...I just love Afrikaner history.You MUST make a 2nd anglo-boer war episode.You MUST mate,you are excellent.

Could you make a video about the futhark and how to read it?

Would love more Boer history

this is great being south african I loved this and could understand most of the translations but I couldn't understand everything said on screen but other than that lovely video

what is the full meaning of vlc

wow i did not know anything about south afrika this is so insane i thought nothing happened down there

The British south Africa company didn't exist until 1889 and never had any jurisdiction over any of the lands over the republic of South Africa only Rhodesia

Hey, great show you've got going here, very informational. Although, it really would not be hard learning how to pronounce the names of the cultures.

background music?

Didn’t hussites do something similar to those wagon circles?

Omg i nearly had a heart attack 6:16 😨 But thank you so much I have an exam and this helped alot

Nice video but I feel it is cut short, the boers have been trekking up to much recently and much further all the way into Angola in 1928.

What could have been a very nice little potted history of the Great Trek is unfortunately married by a number of factual errors that make it unreliable as a source of reference. 1. The original Dutchl settlement at the Cape was not "50 miles north of Table Bay". It was right on the southern shore of Table Bay, where the City Centre of Cape Town now stands. The author may be confused with the fact that this location is approximately 50 miles north of the Cape Of Good Hope. 2. The British did not occupy The Cape in 1814. They occupied it the first time in 1795, and again in 1806. 1814 was the year the colony was formally ceded to the British by the Dutch, but by that time the British had already been occupying the colony, off and on, for about 15 years 3. In 1814, the Cape colony was ceded to the British government, not to the British South Africa Company. The BSAP was only founded three quarters of a century later, in 1889. and never administered the Cape Colony or any part of what is now South Africa. It was involved in the founding and administration of the Rhodesias (modern Zimbabwe and Zambia) 4 Unlike the terms "Cape Dutch", "Boer" & "Afrikaner", the term "Voortrekker" does not refer to a "racial Identity". The term (literally "fore-hauler" in Dutch/Afrikaans), means a pioneer, and was used as such. 5.As correctly stated both mosquitoes and tsetses (or "Tsetse Flies") were present in the "Low Veldt" (the Limpopo Valley and Delta) at the time of the Great Trek. (Even now they have not been totally eradicated in the area.). Mosquitoes were most prevalent in the delta area, while 5setses were more common further upstream, in the. northern reaches of the river. However, the awkward word order in the sentence gives the impression that Malaria is spread by the Tsetse, which is false. The vector for Malaria is the Anopheles Mosquito, while the Tsetse is the vector for animal diseases such as Tripanosomiasis, and it's human version "Sleeping Sickness" . While Malaria was more frequently fatal to humans than Sleeping Sickness, both were dangerous, and livestock diseases could immobiliser a Voortrekker party because they were reliant on livestock both for food and for transport (since they rode horses and carried their provisions and possessions in ox-wagons). 6. The Sotho are not "cousins of the Lesotho". The word "Sotho" or "Ba-Sotho" ("Basuto" ) refers to the people/tribe/ethnic group, while the word Lesotho refers to the place, formerly referred to in English as "Basutoland" 7. The Tugela is the name of a river, not a district. The land promised to the Voortrekkers by Dingane was the land south of the Tugela river. 8. The translation "Speed Commando" is rather a loose translation. The word "Vlug" in Afrikaans (and I think in Dutch) literally means "fly" or "flee", so "Flying Commando" would be a more accurate translation, though the intention is the same. (The meaning of the word Kommando, later Anglicised to "Commando" has changed with time. With the original meaning of a Command or Detachment, it was originally used in the Dutch Cape Colony in the latter half of the eighteenth century to mean an ad hoc group of armed horsemen similar to a "posse" in the USA. By the time of the Great Trek, it had come to mean a "militia", like the militias the Trekkers organized for their defence. Later, in the Boer War period at the end of the nineteenth century, these militias were organized into irregular forces or guerilla bands. The modern meaning, I.e. military "special forces" or a member of such a group, dates from about the First World War period. I am not an expert on South African history, so there may well be other mistakes I have not spotted, but the above should be sufficient to demonstrate that this video contains inaccuracies and should be treated with caution.

Why is "Bliksem" used a lot ?😂😂😂 In most of the Boer vidoes

Lol how did you find the Bok van Blerk song😂😂😂???

5:00 - Bible reading will be undertaken at an appropriate volume. Quite right...

Thank you appreciate 👍

Good piece... Correction though... Tzetse flies don't pass malaria...mosquitos do. The Tzetse flies pass trypanosomiasis... (sleeping sickness...) YP

Fascinating that a group as small as 6000 could achieve such great things. Love of Freedom can take you very far.

You should make videos teaching Dutch. I would love to learn that language

How did you get to the top of the search results?

Small nitpick Cape Town sits in Table Bay the bay you meant is your intro of the city is False Bay BTW love your work and breadth of it too

well done "Groot Trek" ....mooi man :)

Your pronunciation is spot on

What you said was not all true the Dutch did have a small unit of volunteers and medical unit fight on the side of the Boers. I had a relative among them. On a further note the Dutch also helped fund the railway in the Boer republics

Goe' gedaon mien jung :-) Je had nu Zuid Afrika, wanneer de vergeten kolonie van Nieuw Nederland (Nieuw Amsterdam, Staten Eiland ed.? Wall street; de straat van de verdedigings wallen, Brooklyn beter bekende als Breukelen, Harlem b.k.a. Haarlem)???? Je hebt mijn erkenning, waardering en respect voor je video.

I love your accent.

1843 Napier, who was the Cape Governor, and Moshoeshoe signed a treaty of friendship which drew boundaries around Moshoeshoe's territory. The Napier treaty recognised most of the territory that Moshoeshoe claimed. It included land occupied by the BaaRolong, the Taung, the Koranas , the Ba Tlokoa

R u inspired by knowledge and alternatehistoryhub?

Great video. One small thing: Sotho is pronounced "Soo too".