In 1770, while expanding eastwards the whites ran across Bantu tribes for the first time by the coast of the Great Fish river. The Dutch East Indian Company held just a nominal authority over these colonials, whose population was rapidly increasing. They were rather far away from Cape Colony and already developing their own language, the Afrikaans. When the Low Countries became a satellite French state, the British troops attacked the colony, which was definitely incorporated to the British Empire in 1814. The colonial authorities appealed to British citizens and tried to turn the Boers or Afrikaans into British. Many British people were encouraged to leave Cape Colony by the fact that slavery had been abolished. Six thousand Boers began theGreat Trek? the general exodus of the Cape Colony Boers that took place from 1835 to 1843 - extending white settlement beyond the Cape's borders to the northeast. They went together with their families, carts and black slaves. They were dissatisfied with the liberal policy of the British Government towards the natives and with their economic enterprise usurped by British settlers. They moved to the high veld, skirting the great concentrations of black farmers on the way by taking advantage of the areas disrupted during the mfecane. They set up three Boer republics: Natal (1840), Transvaal (1848) and the Orange Free State (1854), forming a rude government to be beyond British control. Some centuries before, the Zulu king Shaka had carried out several wars to exterminate the black population that had dispersed if not eliminated the previous ones. This fact favoured the establishment of the Boer colonists. In attempting to exercise authorit, the Boers clashed with the Griquas, who claimed protection from the Colony, with which they were allied by treaty. The British governor, Sir P. Maitland, intervened in 1845, helping the Griquas with troops and defeating the Boers at Zwart Koppies.
