The Great Treks

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer 

Great treks often become the foundational myths of ethnic, religious or political nationalism. The Israelites fleeing slavery in Egypt to enter the Promised Land is the prototype of this type of saga. 

But think also of Puritans crossing the Atlantic to found their theocracy in the New World in the 17^th century, or the Mormons, some two hundred years later, escaping persecution in the United States by moving to then-remote Utah.

Then there is the story of the Afrikaners leaving the Cape Colony in the mid-19^th century to found republics in the interior of South Africa. And, a more recent example, there is the Long March of the Chinese Communists in the 1930s to regroup and eventually take power in that country.

The exodus from slavery in Egypt is the formative event in creating a sense of Jewish nationhood. After 40 years wandering in the desert, the Israelites conquered Canaan, beginning in the late 2nd millennium BCE, and the Bible justified such an occupation by identifying Canaan with the Promised Land, promised to the Israelites by God.

The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in Massachusetts were a group of English people who came to America seeking religious freedom during the reign of King James I. At first they moved to Leiden, Holland, where they remained for about ten years.

In September 1620 the group sailed to the New World where they hoped to make a new life in America. In time their colony flourished and lead the way to establishing religious freedom and creating the foundations of the democracy Americans enjoy today.

In 1844, reeling from the murder of their founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, and facing continued mob violence, thousands of Latter-Day Saints (better known as Mormons) threw their support behind a new leader, Brigham Young.

Two years later, Young led the Mormons on their great trek westward to the Rocky Mountains, a rite of passage they saw as necessary in order to find their promised land.

They crossed into the Great Salt Lake Valley in July 1848. For the next two decades, wagon trains bearing thousands of Mormon immigrants followed Young’s westward trail. By 1896, when Utah was granted statehood, the church had more than 250,000 members.

The Great Trek was a movement of Dutch-speaking colonists into the interior of southern Africa in search of land where they could establish their own homeland, independent of British rule. 

Their determination became the single most important element in the folk memory of Afrikaner nationalism.

The Voortrekkers, with their strong Calvinist faith, hoped to restore their economic, cultural and political unity. The only way open to them was to leave the Cape Colony. 

In the decade following 1835, thousands migrated into the interior, organised in a number of trek parties under various leaders, eventually forming the Orange Free State and South African Republic.

The Long March of 1934-35 was the 10,000-kilometre trek of the Chinese communists, which resulted in the relocation of their revolutionary base from southeastern to northwestern China and in the emergence of Mao Zedong as the undisputed party leader. 

The heroism attributed to them inspired many young Chinese to join the Communist Party during the late 1930s and early 1940s.