Cape Dutch, also commonly known as Cape Afrikaners, were a historic socioeconomic class of Afrikaners who lived in the Western Cape during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The terms have been evoked to describe an affluent, educated section of the Cape Colony's Afrikaner population which did not participate in the Great Trek or the subsequent founding of the Boer republics. Today, the Cape Dutch are credited with helping shape and promote a unique Afrikaner cultural identity through their formation of civic associations such as the Afrikaner Bond, and promotion of the Afrikaans language.
Christoffel Brand, proponent for a Cape Dutch ethnic consciousness
Front page of an issue of the Afrikaanse Patriot
Afrikaners are a Southern African ethnic group descended from predominantly Dutch settlers first arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. Until 1994, they dominated South Africa's politics as well as the country's commercial agricultural sector.
Painting of the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck
Trekboers making camp, an 1804 painting by Samuel Daniell.
Weenen massacre: Zulus killed hundreds of Boer colonists (1838)
Boer guerrillas during the Second Boer War