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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Any Jewelry, post: 2531178, member: 2844&quot;]Given the date, 1900, it would have been years after the period of the Dutch Cape Colony.</p><p>Since the Boers had been in South Africa for a long time, and also resisted any Dutch attempts to bring them into the colonial fold, I don&#039;t know if it would have come over from the Netherlands. If the doll was originally bought in the Netherlands, she would most likely have been German or French made.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Boers were a mix of conservative Protestant people from several European countries, mostly France and the Veluwe region of the Netherlands. Hence the many French names. They were looking for freedom, free from any kind of oppression, and they found it in the Dutch colony and further north. There they took up farming, often stealing cattle from the native Khoi. Boer means farmer. The Dutch supported them at first, as they needed a steady supply of food for their ships to Dutch East India.</p><p>Whatever the country of origin of their ancestors, the Boers spoke Afrikaans, a language related to Dutch, as did the Khoi, because it was the lingua franca in the colony. The present day Afrikaanders and Khoi still speak Afrikaans, as do many of the Muslims. That doesn&#039;t mean they had any relatives or other contacts in the Netherlands.</p><p><br /></p><p>While the Boer men fought a guerilla war against British encroachment, the women and children were taken from their homes and put in concentration camps. Many died of starvation and disease. So yes, the doll could have been left behind, a sad reminder of a once happy childhood.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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