- Fox-Genovese , E. New Left Review , 133 ‘Placing Women's History in History’, (May-June 1982), 9ff.See also J. Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800 (London, 1981), and, for South African history, P. Scully, ‘Emancipation and Family in the Rural Western Cape, South Africa, c1830-1842’ (Paper presented to the UCT History Department Post-Graduate Seminar, Apr. 1992). A later version of Scully's paper is to appear in N. Worden and C. Crais, eds, Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in Nineteenth-Century South Africa (Johannesburg, forthcoming)
- Shell , R. “ Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope, 1680–1731 ” . (PhD thesis, Yale, 1986);N. Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge, 1985);R. Ross, Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa (London, 1983);J.C. Armstrong and N. Worden, ‘The Slaves, 1652–1834’, in R. Elphick and H. Giliomee, eds, The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 (Cape Town, 1989). Andrew Bank challenges this literature in terms of the nineteenth century, but accepts its validity for the eighteenth: A. Bank, ‘Slavery in Cape Town, 1806–1834’, (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1991), 102–7 and 108ff
- The demographic fact of increasingly balanced slave sex ratios is not disputed;what is at issue is its interpretation
- Armstrong and Worden, ‘The Slaves’, 147; Bank, ‘Slavery’, chapter 3 passim.
- Bank, ‘Slavery’, 114
- According to Robert Shell, who has apparently analysed slave transfers for the immediate pre-and post-ameliorative period, amelioration protected the slave family to the extent that it prevented the separation of mothers and daughters (Personal Communication, UCT History Department Post-Graduate Seminar, 20 Aug. 1992). In the present context it is necessary to distinguish between matrifocal and matrilocal families. I use the term matrifocal to identity families which consisted of mothers living with children, i.e., apart from the fathers, whereas matrilocal suggests that the father would be living at the mother's locale, which is not what I wish to infer
- This is in contrast to the great distances between rural slave holdings, although the evidence strongly suggests that rural isolation never atomized slaves in the way in which certain historians have suggested in their attempts to explain their inability to discover a distinctive slave culture (Armstrong and Worden, ‘The Slaves’, 147)
- Bank, ‘Slavery’, 113ff;R. Elphick and R. Shell, ‘Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, Settlers, Slaves and Free Blacks, 1652–1795’, in Elphick and Giliomee, eds, Shaping, 193
- Bank, ‘Slavery’, 65
- Shell, ‘Slavery’, 64; Armstrong and Worden, ‘The Slaves’, 147. See also P. van der Spuy, ‘Gender and Slavery: Towards a Feminist Revision’, South African Historical Journal, 25 (1991), 184–95
- Bank, ‘Slavery,’ chapter 3
- See, for instance, the experience of Pamela, slave of Willem van der Merwe, who slept in her master's bedroom but who defined herself as a wife of Galant, the slave who led the famous Bokkeveld rebellion of 1825. G.M. Theal, Records of the Cape Colony, vol. 20 (London, 1904), 250
- Shell has argued for the incorporation of slave women into the slaveholders' families on the grounds of their role as wet nurses: ‘Tender Ties: The Women of the Slave Society’ (Paper presented at the ‘Cape Slavery-and After’ Conference, University of Cape Town, Aug. 1989), 9ff
- Shell, ‘Slavery’, 75; A. Bank, ‘Slavery’, 109ff. See also R. Ross, ‘Oppression and Sexuality at the Cape of Good Hope’, Historical Reflections, 6 (1979), 422–3, 425
- Although much of the jargon of postmodern literary theory is extremely difficult to unpack for those of us newly discovering this genre, the term ‘subaltern’ is a useful substitute for the highly problematic ‘underclass’, which is inappropriate-hence the mandatory quotation marks-in the present context
- Bredekamp , H. C. ‘Die Khoisan en Vakterminologie na The Oxford History of South Africa: 'n Historiografiese Dilemma', with comments by Vernon February and Susie Newton King, South African Historical Journal, 25 (1991), 38–60. One of the problems is that South African historians have for too long directed their attention at one or other (legally defined) group, whereas social reality was constructed differently
- Ross , R. “ The Age of Marriage of White South Africans, 1700–1951 ” . African Historical Demography, vol. II (Proceedings of a Seminar held in the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, 24 and 25 April 1981);L. Guelke and R. Shell, ‘The Rise of a Colonial Landed Gentry: The Distribution of Landed Property in the Cape Colony 1657–1731’ (Paper presented at the Centre for African Studies Africa Seminar, University of Cape Town, 31 Mar. 1982, pp. 9ff). Opgaaf figures suggest that, although settler ‘adult’ sex ratios were constantly lower than those of ‘adult’ slaves (as defined in the opgaaf categories, the age of adulthood differing for slave and free), settler men outnumbered women throughout the eighteenth century, by a ratio of approximately two to one circa 1700 to three to two at the end of the century. See Shell, ‘Tender Ties’, 2–4
- J. Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society;Shell, ‘Tender Ties’, 15
- Shell, ‘Slavery’, 75–6. Emphasis added. The preceding sentences are based on sexist assumptions concerning female productivity, which are not empirically based. Hilary Beckles has overthrown the historical theory that men were more productive than women as labourers in the British West Indies;the problem in the present context, then, is why slaveholders at the Cape did not make the same economically rational choice as their contemporaries (H. Beckles, Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados (London, 1989)). There is also an illogical leap in Shell's argument from an ostensibly rational decision taken by both burghers and VOC officials to import slave men, to a statement concerning the inability of burgher slaves to sublimate their sex drive;he does not explain why the government slaves did not commit the kinds of behaviour listed
- P. van der Spuy, ‘Women and Crime: The Involvement of Women in Violent Crime as Processed by the Institutions of Justice in Cape Town 1860–1879’ (BA Hons thesis, University of Cape Town, 1990), introduction
- Bank, ‘Slavery’, chapter 3
- The apparent futility in searching for the specifically slave family is underlined by Bank's thesis;there appears to be confusion concerning where to draw the line between slave and underclass family. Bank tends to use the term ‘slave family’ when discussing a family in which at least one member is a slave. At the same time that he emphasizes the possibilities of double-parent families, he draws the contradictory conclusion that ‘apart from assuming an increasingly stable form, … the Cape slave family was characteristically female-headed’ (p. 117). For further discussion of this issue see P. van der Spuy, ‘Slave Women and the Family in Cape Town after the Abolition of the Slave Trade’ (Paper presented at the Cape Town History Workshop, University of Cape Town, 11–12 Nov. 1991, pp. 10–11)
- Flandrin , J-L. 1979 . Families in Farmer Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality Cambridge (See also R. Wall, ed., Family Forms in Historic Europe (Cambridge, 1983), 7 and P. Laslett, Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972), 24
- Scully , P. “ Private and Public Worlds of Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Africa, c 1830–1842 ” . (Unpublished Paper, University of Michigan, 1991), 2
- Shell , R. “ Tender Ties ” .
- See below, n. 83
- See below. The evidence of vertical ties clearly suggests eighteenth century family formation
- Pam Scully likewise rejects this notion: ‘I conceptualize the family as a site of struggle, rather than idealizing the family as a haven from, or alternative to harsh social and economic relations’ (‘Emancipation’, 1). However, she tends to define this struggle in terms of contests between the families of freed slaves and former slaveholders in the context of the post-emancipation Cape, and in terms of this tension tends to construe the subaltern family as precisely such a haven. Hence she ends the paper with the statement that ‘on the day of emancipation Booy Floris, a member of Pacaltsdorp Mission Station, collected his wife, two daughters, and their eight children from their former master and brought them home’ (ibid., 17). It is important to note that ‘affective’ is not synonymous with exclusively positive emotions: see Bank's remark that ‘above all, it [the slave family] was a means of creating an intimate and partially autonomous world, which could offer shelter from the brutality of bondage’ (Bank, ‘Slavery’, 107)
- Scully, ‘Emancipation’, 1, citing Jeffrey Weeks's comment that families tend to be seen as ‘discrete historical object[s], usually a biological reality which society acts upon’
- This phrase is Scully's, who defines the family as ‘a set of choices and relationships which exists in relation to other dictates such as economic context, ideas of personal liberty, and the particular gender systems with which notions of family articulate’ (ibid.)
- Unfortunately there are no slave narratives for the Cape
- These records are housed in the State Archives, Cape Town: Records of the Slave Office (SO), Court of Justice (CJ), Cape Supreme Court (CSC), and the archives of Cape Town (1/CT)
- P. van der Spuy, forthcoming MA thesis, University of Cape Town, chapter 4
- The vast majority of ‘hints’ refer to such relationships. There is less evidence of both spouses being slaves, although this may be a result of the dysfunction which allowed slave family relationships to appear in official records in the first place
- This was the only apparent economic function of such families. Bank, ‘Slavery’, chapter 5. See SO 12/11, Mar. to Apr-1831, No. 87 and 132; SO 12/4, 512, 8 Nov. 1826. For slave men, an important function of such a relationship would be the increased social space it permitted, particularly if the couple cohabited. Bank, ‘Slavery’, 54ff
- Ibid.
- There were three sets of ameliorative legislation: Lord Charles Somerset's proclamation of 18 Apr. 1823, Ordinance 19 of 1826 and the Order-in-Council of 2 Feb. 1830. This paper focuses on the 1823 and 1826 regulations
- Such contracts are normally traceable when they broke down. See the many complaints in SO 4/4
- Ross , R. “ Oppression ” . 425 – 6 . :'… the use of the terms “marriage”, “husband” and “wife” is rather loose. The legal position … with regard to slave marriages is highly unclear, but it does not seem that slaves ever availed themselves of the right to marry, if they had it, even though a fairly large number of them, especially among the Company slaves, were baptized Christians.' An undated return bearing the ambiguous title ‘Return of the Number of Marriages Legally Solemnized between Slaves, Free Blacks or Coloured Persons since the 1st of January 1808 …’ (SO 12/11) revealed that 45 marriages involving former slaves had been registered for the colony excepting the Cape District between 1808 and 1823, i.e., the ‘Slaves’ of the title referred to former slaves
- It is important to note that there were no earlier ameliorative measures at the Cape as there were in the British West Indies in the 1780s in anticipation of the abolition of the slave trade. In other words, there was no culture of better treatment for pregnant slave women, and the active encouragement of slave reproduction by fostering nuclear family life. Individual slaveholders certainly took the initiative, such as Martin Melck (Armstrong and Worden, ‘The Slaves’, 145.)
- Moreover, this makes paternity extremely difficult to trace
- Theal, Records, vol. 9 (London, 1901), 150. ‘Statement of the Laws of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope’, 1813, article 25
- Proclamation, 18 Apr. 1823. Article 7: ‘After the celebration of marriages, it is forbidden for the Parties to be sold separately;or the Children of such marriages, without the Parents (or the Survivor of them) until such Children shall have attained the age of ten years, except under a decree of the Court of Justice.’ Although this appeared to protect slave marriages, in fact it was impracticable because most slave spouses did not belong to one slave holder
- By this I mean while they were enslaved. I have not traced the marital behaviour of freed slaves, but cf. note 40 above
- SO 8/31, Marriage Register
- SO 3/1-13, 3/20a. Half-yearly reports of the Guardian of slaves. Not all reports are complete for the whole colony, which is why the figures provided are approximate. Isabel Edwards stated that ‘[t]he institution of marriage was intended to prevent … separation of husbands and wives, but this reform proved abortive for during the years 1827 and 1830 only four marriages were reported for the whole of the Cape Colony’: I. Edwards, Towards Emancipation: A Study in South African Slavery (Cardiff, 1942), 115
- Slave marriages cannot be traced via the usual route of the marriage court, because a different procedure was followed for slaves. See n. 49 below
- Article 6: The consent, in writing, of the Proprietor … transmitted to the Clergyman through the Local Authority, shall supercede the necessity of being asked in the Church, or appearing before the Matrimonial Court, to legalize the marriages of slaves …'
- Towards Emancipation , 97 98 Edwards
- The marriage ceremony had to take place in a Christian church and the only legal marriage officers were Christian ministers. Sir David Baird's Proclamation of 26 Apr. 1806. Theal, Records, vol. 5 (London, 1900), 407
- Articles 8 and 9
- Article 9. This included Muslim women. See the discussion of Islam below
- The Protector of Slaves, George Rogers, voiced the opinion that it was in the slaves' best interests to be separated from their mothers at the age of ten, rather than sixteen. ‘It has been hitherto the practice to allow the Separation of Children from their Mothers at the age of Ten Years.-The New Order forbidding such separation until the completion of the 16th Year must prove very Emberassing [sic]-It will have been unknown when this Article was framed, that a female generally arrives at Womanhood in this climate, at about her 12th Year, and may have one or more children by the time she is 16. Childeren [sic] may safely, and very often most advantageously be separated on attaining their 10th Year. Many persons are desirous of purchasing clever, active children about that age, the Males for Mechanics, and the females as attendants on Ladies, Work Women etc. These so purchased are the most likely to become free persons eventually, as well as usefull [sic] Members of the community in their different callings, and it is a fact beyond all controversy, that Slave Childeren [sic] who remain with their Mothers to a later period than 10 years, are in no respect benefitted by it but far otherwise’ (SO 3/20a, ‘Observations of the Protector of Slaves for the Report between June and December 1830’)
- Bank, ‘Slavery’, 113ff
- Elphick and Shell, ‘Intergroup Relations’, 185ff
- SO 3/6, Report of the Guardian of Slaves, June to Dec 1830. The owner of the slave Isaac, of Worcester, refused to grant permission for Isaac and his Khoi ‘wife’. His mistress had thrown her off the property about fifteen months previously. The two had cohabited ‘for many years’ and had five children
- SO 3/1,-13, 20a
- This point is explained below
- Craton , M. Journal of Interdisciplinary History , 10 Historians of the British West Indies have stressed the bias of the source material in overstating the importance of the matrifocal family., ‘Changing Patterns of Slave Families in the British West Indies’, 1 (Summer 1979), 1–35; Beckles, Natural Rebels, 116. Precisely the same limitations apply to Cape slavery. In a methodological sense comparative analysis with the British West Indies is useful, despite different demographic patterns (van der Spuy, ‘Gender and Slavery’)
- SO 12/9, Manumissions, Oct. to Nov. 1832, No. 329. This case also suggests that naming practices were an important method of ‘staking a claim’ to a familial relationship. See also SO 12/10, 2 Sep. 1834: Manumission of Jawaldien, born 22 July 1834. The baby was freed as a free gift on the condition that the father, Dolli, undertook ‘to take care of the said child and provide it with the necessaries of life until He shall have attained his 16 year [sic]’
- Beckles, Natural Rebels, 135ff
- Bleumer , D. J. and Leibbrandt , H. C. V. 1900 . Precis of the Archives of the Cape of Good Hope Vol. 1 , 118 Cape Town and London The case of vol., p.: Having been caught in the act of sleeping with a slave woman, and therefore charged with adultery, ‘he was accordingly deprived of his burgher and military offices and prerogatives, and declared unfit ever again to fill any of them’
- Beckles, Natural Rebels, 135
- See, for example, J.V. Bickford-Smith, ‘Commerce, Class and Ethnicity in Cape Town, 1875 to 1902” (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1988) and M. Adhikari, “The Sons of Ham”: Slavery and the Making of Coloured Identity’ (Paper presented at the ‘Cape Slavery-and After’ Conference, University of Cape Town, 10–11 Aug. 1989)
- Bank, ‘Slavery’, chapter 5; SO 12/11 297: Syda, aged 18 months, was purchased by her father Sarodien. Other examples include SO 12/4 531, 23 Dec 1826; SO 6.32 Folio 5
- SO 3/1, Manumissions, 1826
- Botha , CG. 1962 . Collected Works, vol. II: History of Law, Medicine and Place Names in the Cape of Good Hope 113 Cape Town Shell could not find the relevant law in the Plakaat Boeken, but stated that it was profoundly influential at the Cape. However, he also stated that ‘few women slaves availed themselves of this legal point’. (R. Shell, Tender Ties', 23 and n. 80. In the era of the Guardian of Slaves in the nineteenth century, many slave women demanded their freedom or the freedom of their children in terms of these laws. According to C.G. Botha, the law was that ‘[c]hildren begotten by a Christian master of his slaves could not be sold but had to be emancipated at their father's death, whether his estate was solvent or not. If the master were not a Christian such children were only emancipated provided his estate was solvent at the time of his death.’ Statutes of India, Title Slaves, article 8. ()
- Theal, Records, vol. 9, pp. 146 ft ‘Statement of the Laws …’, 1813, articles 21 and 22 stated that ‘[t]he same is to be observed with respect to mothers who have children by free persons not Christian, in case that the estate of the master, who is the father of the child, be found solvent, but otherwise not’
- Dooling , W. “ Slaves, Slaveowners and Amelioration in Graaff-Reinet, 1823–1830 ” . (BA Hons thesis, University of Cape Town, 1989)
- Of course there were complaints in this regard too, but again most of these complaints were not covered by the letter of the law. Amelioration did not protect the rights of men and women to visit their spouses, which was a right claimed. It only protected the integrity of spousal relationships where both spouses were owned by one person
- SO 4/2 No. 92
- There are numerous examples, both for Cape Town and the rural districts: for example, SO 4/2 Nos 3, 29, 55, 59, 67, 75, 90,102, 111, 113
- See Bank, ‘Slavery’, 114 n. 47
- SO 4/2 No. 131, 5 Apr. 1828 and SO 5/1 pp. 356, 361, 363 and 364
- SO 4/2, No. 29. 14 Feb. 1826
- Despite the importance attached to the issue of sleeping space by a number of historians, the fact that relatively few women lived out means that most women slept within the confines of their owners' property. It is not particularly relevant in this regard whether they were actually sleeping in the master's house or in separate ‘apartments’, i.e., rooms;the point is that women were less likely than men to be able to live independently with their lovers, and this necessarily had implications for the mother-headed family. These women could not become fully integrated into the urban underclass in residential terms, and being unable to do so had to face the fact that many had to rear their children alone, until they reached the age at which they could be separated legally. Of course the mother did not have full control over her children's fate before then. Shell and Bank both cite Semple as evidence of opposing arguments, Shell's that slaves slept within the control of the masters, and Bank's that they did not. It is clear that there was no single standard living or sleeping arrangement. The point is that sleeping arrangements do not in themselves reveal much about attitudes. Bank, ‘Slavery’, 85–6, Shell, ‘The Family and Slavery at the Cape, 1680–1808’, in W.G. James and M. Simons, eds, The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape (Cape Town, 1989), 25ff
- A similar case of relatively long-term cohabitation between a slave and her master is that revealed in the complaint by Telemachus, slave of J.A. van Reenen (SO 4/2 No. 102; SO 5/1 PP. 176, 178, 180, 186, 193, 199, 203, 227–8). Telemachus' mother Sunting had lived with van Reenen for many years, producing five children. Although Telemachus knew that his mother had been promised ‘that he [van Reenen] would make her happy and manumit all the children which she might get if she would only consent to his entering in a familiar [i.e., familial] connexion with her’, he stressed that the children had always been well treated. Nevertheless, they had not been manumitted. Sunting's attitude towards her master is not revealed in the record, but no matter how familial she may have considered the relationship, she and her children never forgot the contract of freedom
- Bird , W. W. 1823 . State of the Cape of Good Hope in 1822 74 – 5 . London See also B. Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society 1650–1838 (London, 1990), chapter 2
- SO 4/2 No. 67, 20 Apr. 1827
- SO 4/2 No. 49, 8 Jan. 1827
- See Bank, who argued for the absence of such family forms:'… there are no indications that kinship structures extended vertically. References to “grandparents” or “grandchildren” are conspicuously absent from the historical record. … The impression of single-generation nuclear kinship ties reinforces the assessment that the Cape slave family in any stable sense only emerged in the final decades of Cape slavery' (‘Slavery’, 114). His rejection of the possibility of slave family formation in the eighteenth century blinds him to evidence of crucial vertical kinship bonds among slaves across many decades
- Petition dated 30 January 1811. Theal, Records, vol. 10 (London, 1902), 46. Clasina's family was traced from her birth in c. 1730 to that of her eighteenth grandchild in 1807: Ibid., pp. 4, 45ff
- Mary had been manumitted by her lover. Perhaps the experience of freedom encouraged her to seek the freedom of her family
- Theal, Records, vol. 10, p. 49
- Ibid. This was a prominent case, but there are many other examples of kinship ties extending across time;included in a list of fifteen slaves claiming their freedom from the estate of the late widow C.C. Schmidt was one Louisa van de Kaap with her seven children and one grandchild (SO 12/16). Other examples include SO 4/2 No.s 52, S3, and 80
- Cape Town Archives, Records of Proceedings in Criminal Cases, 1/CT 6/19
- SO 4/2 No. 52, 18 Jan. 1827
- Ross , R. Cape of Torments , 46 See, 50, 60ff
- This is essentially Bank's argument (‘Slavery’, chapter 3)
- Proclamation, 18 Apr. 1823, article 7
- SO 4/4 13 Oct. 1831. Silvia, aged 41, complained that she had been hired out and thereby separated from her children and her husband Job (who was also her master's slave), with whom she had cohabited for 23 years
- SO 4/2, No. 14, 24 Feb. 1829; SO 6/21, folio 280, slave register of William Hopper
- SO 5/1, Day Book, p. 530
- SO 6/21, folio 280: Philida was transferred on 25 June 1829 to a D.A. Disandt, and Azor on 7 July 1830 to a J.B. Ebden. Both new holdings were in Cape Town, so it is possible that Philida and Azor could still meet, although any desire to live together would have to be negotiated with their new owners. If they did marry, thier marriage would not have been protected by the law. There is no record of their marriage in the Cape Town Dutch Reformed, Anglican or Lutheran church records. This may have been the single marriage for 1829–30 reported by the Guardian (SO 3/20a, Confidential Report, 28 July 1830, Appendix f). No marriages were reported for the period June to December 1829
- The Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette, No. 1283, 13 Aug. 1830.'… His Majesty the King in Council has been graciously pleased to issue an Order “for consolidating the several Laws recently made for improving the Condition of the Slaves in His Majesty's Colonies of Trinidad, Berbice, Demrara, St. Lucia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Mauritius”, dated … the 2nd Day of February, 1830.' … The relevant articles are no. 37–41 and particularly 46:'… it shall not be lawful … to seize or take in execution, or sell any Slave separate and apart from any other Slave to whom he or she may bear the relation of husband or wife, or the relation of parent or child, or to whom he or she shall be reputed to bear any of these relations … but … all Slaves being the property of the same person or persons, and bearing to each other any such relation, or reputed relation, as aforesaid, shall be sold together, and in one and the same lot, and to the same person or persons;and if any Slave shall be seized or sold in contravention hereof, every such seizure, execution and sale, shall be, and the same is declared to be absolutely null and void, to all intents and purposes whatsoever, as far as respects any such Slave of Slaves.' Emphasis added. (See also article 48.)
- 1831 . Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope London Rev. Wright noted in his(that few slave partners belonged to the same slaveholder. His impression is supported by the paucity of records in the slave registers for the Cape District where a slave man and slave woman and her child/ren are sold or transferred together. One such case is that of Salomon, a labourer aged 25 in May 1820 when he and Salatie (27), a housemaid, were bought together and later in the same year sold together (SO 6/13)
- The Guardian was reconstituted as the Protector of Slaves in terms of the 1830 Order-in-Council
- It is possible that the ratio for adults is even higher. Elsewhere in the report, Bigge, representative of the Christian colonial state, noted that 372 Muslim slave children attended Muslim schools in Cape Town. If these children were male, which is suggested by photographic evidence, and if it may be assumed that there was a parity of numbers between the sexes, there must have been more than 744 Muslim slave children. Subtracting this figure from the total figure given in the text, there would have been approximately 474 adult men and 50 women. If the 372 Muslim children included girls, there would still have been at least three times as many adult men as women (Theal, Records, vol. 35, ‘Report upon the Slaves and State of Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope’ (London, 1905), 367ff.)
- For example, R. Shell, ‘The Establishment and Spread of Islam, at the Cape from the Beginning of Company Rule to 1838’ (BA Hons dissertation, University of Cape Town, 1974), 47
- The contemporary commentators may have exaggerated the extent of Muslim marriages as they were considered dangerous. These observers included Bigge and the Rev. Wright, who was ostracised by settler society because of his outspoken antislavery views (Bank, ‘Slavery’, 113–14; Shell, ‘Establishment’, 47; R.L. Watson, The Slave Question: Liberty and Property in South Africa (New England, 1990), 43ff.). Wright, being a Christian missionary, was also clearly biased against Islam
- Bigge, ‘Report’, 369
- Ibid.
- SO 6/9, 25; Cape Almanac 1817, 1830
- Somerset's ameliorative regulations of 1823 allowed for the establishment of such a society. In order for the Philanthropic Society to purchase children for manumission, the permission of the mother was required, and if old enough, the consent of the girl too. It went without saying that the consent of the owner was most important. SO 13/1; South African Public Library: Annual reports of the Cape of Good Hope Philanthropic Society;Watson, The Slave Question, chapter 4 passim.
- Beckles, Natural Rebels, 12
- SO 2/11, p. 8, 21 Aug. 1826
- The designations of women's occupations in the Slave Registers of the Slave Office reveal very little about the kinds of work women actually performed. In rural areas in particular, almost all women are labelled as ‘house maids’. This important methodological issue is reviewed in P. van der Spuy, ‘Gender and Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope’, forthcoming MA thesis
- Bank, ‘Slavery’, 49ff
- Ibid. , 49 noting that there was a ‘fundamental gender division between skilled and unskilled slave labour with the artisanal trades being strongly male-dominated’
- E.g., SO 4/2 no. 27, 14 Oct. 1826
- SO 4/2, 19 Dec. 1826
- For example, SO 4/4 No. 12, 21 Aug. 1826. Candace was hired out to her lover, William Spratt. Unfortunately Spratt was unable to pay the full price demanded in order to manumit her
- Cf. Bird, State of the Cape, 73; Bank, ‘Slavery’, 47
- Shell has argued that wet nurses were privileged slaves, in other words, deeply entangled in the slaveholding family (‘Tender Ties’, 8ff, and especially p. 10). Such privileged slaves would have minimal access to ‘social space’. However, the evidence for the nineteenth century suggests that wet nurses were no more privileged than their counterparts in Europe in this period. The Slave Registers for Cape Town reveal that, firstly, the term ‘wet nurse’ was not used, but ‘nursery maids’ and ‘nurses’ were regularly mortgaged, transferred and sold. See, for example, SO 6/13, folios 2, 27, 31, 37, 53, 54, 66. (Advertisements appeared from time to time in the press for the sale of wet nurses.) Nevertheless, as indicated in the text, the physical labour required of wet nurses necessarily limited their independence
- SO 13/1, Day Book of the Protector of Slaves: Bank Books
- A 1939 2/2/1, Archives of St George's Church, Cape Town, incorporating the records of the military chaplain. See, for example, 9 Jan. 1813, baptism of William, ‘illegitimate son of James Gunn Esq’ [93rd Regiment] and Eva van? Carwel, ‘Free Native’;also baptisms dated 16 June, 25 June, 29 July, 9 Oct. 1812, and 20 Mar. 1812, where the mother is definitely a former slave, named Mary of Bengal
- Bird, State of the Cape, 165–6
- Ibid., 75: ‘… no mistress in any decent rank of life ever dressed her female slave for prostitution, as has been lately stated, or would knowingly suffer a promiscuous intercourse to take place, even though the girl was sufficiently abandoned to permit it’
- SO 4/2, No. 9, 110, 111, 115. See also the manumissions listed in SO 12/3-4, 9–11 and 13
- For example, SO 13/1, ‘The Freeblack Francina of the Cape, for the purchase of her husband named David, slave…’
- For example, SO 4/2 No. 95
- SO 13/1, ‘Applications for Separation …’ and ‘Declaration Book for the use of the Philanthropic Society’, 1831–1832
- SO 13/1, No. 15, 5 Feb. 1833
- SO 13/1, Nos 13–20
- Ibid.
South African Historical Journal
Volume 27, 1992 - Issue 1