17 Constructing and Contesting Histories of Slavery at the Cape, South Africa (original) (raw)
Related papers
This article explores the local and intercontinental networks that underpinned the private trade in slaves and the transportation of the enslaved in the VOC seaborne empire during the eighteenth century. We rely on two sets of complementary VOC records, with their respective shortcomings, to reveal information about those who were involved in this trade as sellers, buyers and traded. Our focus is on the Cape of Good Hope as a node with a high demand for slaves, and Cochin from where slaves were traded and transported to all regions of the empire, including the Cape. It is apparent from these sources that high ranking VOC officials, the Company rank and file, free citizens and Asians under VOC jurisdiction partook in this lucrative trade. Analyses of regions of origin, age, gender, and caste are provided, giving the reader a rare glimpse into the identity of the enslaved.
The substitutability of slaves: Evidence from the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony
Economic History of Developing Regions, 2019
The substitutability of the economic institution of slave labour has often been assumed as a given. Apart from some capital investment to retrain slaves for a different task, essentially their labour could be substituted for any other form of labour. This paper questions that assumption by using a longitudinal study of the Graaff-Reinet district on the eastern frontier of South Africa's Cape Colony. We calculate the Hicksian elasticity of complementarity coefficients for each year of a 22-year combination of cross-sectional tax datasets (1805-1828) to test whether slave labour was substitutable for other forms of labour. We find that slave labour, indigenous labour and settler family labour were not substitutable over the period of the study. This lends credence to the finding that slave and family labour were two different inputs in agricultural production. Indigenous khoe labour and slave labour remain complements throughout the period of the study even when khoe labour becomes scarce after the frontier conflicts. We argue that the non-substitutability of slave labour was due to the settlers' need to acquire labourers with location-specific skills such as the indigenous khoe, and that slaves may have served a purpose other than as a source of unskilled labour, such as for artisan skills or for collateral.
Slaves and Free Blacks in VOC Cape Town, 1652–1795
2010
During the past three decades, historians of the Cape Colony during the period of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) rule have transformed our view of the role of slavery. Slavery has moved from an issue of marginal importance to one which is now considered central to the establishment and growth of a colonial society in South Africa. Most of this work, however, focused on the agrarian areas of the colony, and there has, until recently, been relatively little attempt to plumb the uniqueness of the experience of slaves and free blacks in VOC Cape Town. This topic deserves interest because of the cosmopolitan nature of the urban environment and its links with the wider world of the Indian Ocean. This article is a synthesis of the most important recent research on the experience of slaves and free blacks in Cape Town. It shows that although there is general agreement about the origins and development of slavery, its demographic nature and its economic significance, Cape historians have yet to fully utilise the available sources to trace the cultural and social history of urban slavery. This article indicates some of the areas – such as family history, the role of religion, material culture and the creation of meaning – which are in need of research, and suggests some of the sources and approaches which could be utilised.
Indian Ocean slaves in Cape Town, 1695-1807
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2016
Cape Town during the eighteenth century was an integral part of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) trading empire in the Indian Ocean, acting as a refreshment post, refitting harbour and market town for the rural hinterland. In the absence of a pliable indigenous population the mainstay of its labour force was slavery. Historians have long recognized the diverse regions of the Indian Ocean world from which slaves were obtained, but precise enumeration of the town’s enslaved population has been hampered by sources that combine the urban population with the rural hinterland. This paper uses new data obtained from household inventories to show how the main sources of Cape Town’s slave population shifted from South Asia in the early parts of the century, to Southeast Asia and then to the Southwest Indian Ocean and especially eastern Africa by the time of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The paper then argues that both the Indian and the African roots of Cape Town’s slave heritage have been obscured by the strong emphasis in popular perception and memory on ‘Malay’ slaves from Southeast Asia and analyses the political dynamics behind such a distortion.
Slaves as capital investment in the Dutch Cape Colony, 1652-1795
Working Papers, 2011
The Cape Colony of the eighteenth century was one of the most prosperous regions in the world. This paper shows that Cape farmers prospered, on average, because of the economies of scale and scope achieved through slavery. Slaves allowed farmers to specialise in agricultural products that were in high demand from the passing ships -notably, wheat, wine and meat -and the by-products from these products, such as tallow, skins, soap and candles. In exchange, farmers could import cheap manufactured products from Europe and the East. Secondly, the paper investigates why the relative affluence of the early settlers did not evolve into a high growth trajectory. The use of slaves as a substitute for wage labour or other capital investments allowed farmers to prosper, but it also resulted in severe inequality. It was this high inequality that drove the growthdebilitating institutions posited by . The immigration of Europeans was discouraged after 1717, and again during the middle of the century, while education was limited to the wealthy. Factor endowments interacted with institutions to create a highly unequal early South African society, with long-term development consequences.
Slavery & Abolition, 2016
This article explores the local and intercontinental networks that underpinned the private trade in slaves and the transportation of the enslaved in the VOC seaborne empire during the eighteenth century. We rely on two sets of complementary VOC records, with their respective shortcomings, to reveal information about those who were involved in this trade as sellers, buyers and traded. Our focus is on the Cape of Good Hope as a node with a high demand for slaves, and Cochin from where slaves were traded and transported to all regions of the empire, including the Cape. It is apparent from these sources that high ranking VOC officials, the Company rank and file, free citizens and Asians under VOC jurisdiction partook in this lucrative trade. Analyses of regions of origin, age, gender, and caste are provided, giving the reader a rare glimpse into the identity of the enslaved. Introduction: labour, coercion and mobility Throughout the Vereenigde Oostindische Company ('Dutch East India Company', VOC) empire, mobility and coercion were key elements in mobilizing labour and maintaining imperial order. 1 With the exception of the Cape of Good Hope, most attention has been devoted to the European workers, employed in wage labour relations in which sailors and soldiers were free to enter, but not free to leave before the end of their contract ranging between three and seven years. 2 Over several decades, a significant body of literature has excavated the work and lives of slaves, free Asians and free blacks at the Cape. 3 For other regions, the scale of such scholarship is more modest. Only recently are historians broadening their scope more systematically to include the thousands of Asians, Europeans and Eurasians working through systems of slavery, corvee and convict labour. 4 Several studies have pointed out the
Social Dynamics, 2018
Centuries before apartheid, South Africa was fundamentally shaped by 176 years of slavery, a period of racialised and gendered brutality that lasted from 1658 to 1834. Enslaved people were brought to the Cape by the Dutch East India Company from African and Asian territories around the Indian Ocean, and eventually came to constitute the majority of the population of the Colony. Françoise Vergès (2005) asserts that slavery in South Africa generated “processes of disposability” that transformed enslaved people and indigenous Africans, the majority of the population, into “surplus” and expendable objects. The scale of this expendability is difficult to discern today because of the invisibility of slavery in conceptions of the country’s history. In this article, I use the lens of “dirt” to render such “processes of disposability” visible. I do so by analysing two texts in which African bodies are portrayed as filthy, menacing and contaminating – the novel Unconfessed and a television advertisement titled “Papa Wag Vir Jou” (“Daddy’s Waiting for You”) – which I situate within a discussion of South Africa’s extraordinarily high rates of incarceration and sexual violence. I point to the seamless continuity in industrial levels of imprisonment employed by the colonial and the modern South African state. KEYWORDS: Slavery, South Africa, incarceration, Unconfessed, sexual slavery, disposability, colouredness, dirt