["Nations and Nationalism, Volume 27, Issue 4, Page 1198-1212, October 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis paper challenges the claim, as articulated by Norman Ehterington, that the so‐called Great Trek was not “an act of national self‐assertion by Boers in rebellion against British rule” (2001:258). Whilst affirming the scholarly consensus that the Trek was not an expression of Afrikaner nationalism, I argue that it marked the rise of Boer nationalism, which entailed the transformation of white Dutch‐speaking farmers on the eastern border of the British‐ruled Cape Colony into ethnic Boers. The latter identity began to crystallise when the former was mobilised politically by a boer/Boer elite who anticipated their loss of power as colonial authorities introduced inconvenient policy changes and “alien” ideologies. Since the mid‐1830s, as I demonstrate, an ethnic consciousness started to develop among the leaders of the frontier farmers along with the idea‐the nationalist idea‐of a trek to self‐governance. If not as nationalism, I ask, how is one to interpret this cause for self‐governance, driven as many similar causes have been by both material and ideational forces? And how is one to interpret the trekkers' preoccupation with democratic state formation (however compromised it was by racism) while on trek and their eventual creation of the Republic of Natalia?\n"]