Graaff-Reinet

Graaff-Reinet, in South Africa, administrative districts of the Cape of Good Hope under the rule of the Dutch East India Company. Established in 1743 and 1786, respectively, they became centres of a frontier independence movement in the 1790s. With the continuous expansion of colonial cattle…

…establishment of the district of Graaff-Reinet in 1785 hardly improved matters. The area of magisterial jurisdiction was vast and its inhabitants unruly. Before the century was over, minor cattle raids had escalated into two frontier wars, the prelude to a struggle that lasted almost 100 years; the trekboers only expanded…