The Great Trek

The Great Trek from Cape Colony across the Orange River into what was, at the time this book was published, Transvaal, the Orange Free State and Natal. The Transvaal province was divided into the provinces of Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and part of North West; the Orange Free State is now Free State; Natal now KwaZulu-Natal - I think i captured all that correctly...

Anyways, the Great Trek by these Afrikaner men and women, armed only with muskets and their faith trekked into the wild opposed by the two most powerful Bantu military empires of the time - the Matabele and the Zulu. There were many loses and successes in spite of the overwhelming odds. The book covers the period 1806 to 1854.

If I am honest, I lost track of the people, although their names are familiar as the common names of South Africans (mostly Springboks and local expats I work with) Potgieter, Retief, Smit, Pretorius, and many other less dominant figures.

As another reviewer points out, the author is sympathetic to the Trekboer, and perhaps over sympathetic in a modern context, but the descriptions of the location, the journey and the fighting are atmospheric and well written. There are various maps and a selection of photographs/drawings reproduced in black and white.

Overall, I am not sure I really know what this was about when I bought it back in 2020, and it is probably not a book of specific interest to me, but it did a good job of what it set out to do.

3 stars