July 6, 2024
The Immigration War No One Talks About
By
Mike Konrad
The present world we see today can be traced back to a war that is almost unknown in America, yet had it turned out differently — and it almost did — much of the world problems were see today might not exist.
The Dutch Boers (lit: farmers, also called Afrikaners) in South Africa fled inland, away from the Cape Colony, after the British took it over in 1814. They did not want to live under British rule.
The Dutch did not like the imposition of English language and culture. They resented the abolition of slavery. (Where have we heard that before?) But it was more than slavery.
The Boers were primarily the descendants of Dutch, Huguenot, and German Calvinists. In the 1830s, these Dutch farmers left the then-British Cape Colony and headed for the interior, where they would form the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republics.
This was called the Great Trek, and it became the stuff of legend. The arduous journey and settlement of the interior paralleled the American conquest of the West.
Great paintings were made; books were written about it.
The Boers were religiously conservative Calvinists. Their leaders carried bibles with them. Admittedly, some took it a bit too far — Paul Kruger misinterpreted the bible to conclude that the Earth is flat — but they were overall quite admirable.
But the British kept interfering with them. They could not let the Boers go free. The English tried to interfere with us, too. They impounded our sailors, a cause of the War of 1812. They tried to persuade the Republic of Texas not to join the Union. They tried to interfere in our Civil War.
Only the Boers were too few to fight back.
In 1881, the Boers won the
First Boer War, which secured their independence, though the British claimed they were still a vassal state. The British had expected the Boers to remain backward rubes, annoying, but mostly inconsequential. So to London, their “independence” was deemed a minor concession.
Only gold and diamonds were being found in the Boer Territory, and incredible amounts of wealth fell into the hands of the Boer — rather than the British, who wanted it for themselves.
