Boers (i.e. peasants engaged in tillage), Dutch colonists of an independent republican temper, who in the 17th century squatted in S. Africa; gave themselves to agriculture and cattle-rearing; settled at length in the Transvaal in a self-governed community by themselves.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Boerhaave * Boëthius, Anicius Manlius Severinus