Slavery Emancipation And Colonial Rule In South Africa

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa examines the rural Cape Colony from the earliest days of Dutch colonial rule in the mid-seventeenth century to the outbreak of the South African War in 1899. For slaves and slave owners alike, incorporation into the British Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century brought fruits that were bittersweet. The gentry had initially done well by accepting British rule, but were ultimately faced with the legislated ending of servile labor. To slaves and Khoisan servants, British rule brought freedom, but a freedom that remained limited. The gentry accomplished this feat only with great difficulty. Increasingly, their dominance of the countryside was threatened by English-speaking merchants and money-lenders, a challenge that stimulated early Afrikaner nationalism. The alliances that ensured nineteenth-century colonial stability all but fell apart as the descendants of slaves and Khoisan turned on their erstwhile masters during the South African War of 1899-1902.

This book brings together a series of new case studies, some by young scholars, others by widely published authors. All are based on original research and designed to enhance our understanding of the process of the abolition of slavery in Africa at the grass-roots level. Part of the studies are on new areas of interest such as the German colonies and the Algerian Sahara. Others throw new light on questions already debated, such as emancipation of the Gold Coast. Some focus on the impact of abolition on particular groups of slaves, such as the royal slaves in Nigeria and concubines in Morocco. Among the themes considered is the role of slaves in their own emancipation, the short and long-term results of abolition, the role of the League of Nations, and the vestiges of slavery in Africa today.

The author of this study argues that the ending of slavery in South Africa's Cape Colony initiated an era of exceptional struggle about cultural categories and sensibilities. Far more than simply abolishing bonded labour, British slave emancipation reconfigured the relations between men and women, and individual and society. It was precisely because emancipation implied that slaves would be free to live as they pleased that claims regarding the legitimacy of specific family, labour, gender and sexual relations became central to the struggle by various colonial groups to shape post-emancipation society. The author postulates that for government officials the linkage between political economy to questions of cultural reproduction became a crucial component of the construction of colonial society.

This is the first comprehensive assessment of the end of slavery in Africa. Editors Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, with the distinguished contributors to the volume, establish an agenda for the social history of the early colonial period--hen the end of slavery was one of the most significant historical and cultural processes. The End of Slavery in Africa is a sequel to Slavery in Africa, edited by Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff and published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1977. The contributors explore the historical experiences of slaves, masters, and colonials as they all confronted the end of slavery in fifteen sub-Saharan African societies. The essays demonstrate that it is impossible to generalize about whether the end of slavery was a relatively mild and nondisruptive process or whether it marked a significant change in the social and economic organization of a given society. There was no common pattern and no uniform consequence of the end of slavery. The results of this wide-ranging inquiry will be of lasting value to Africanists and a variety of social and economic historians.

A history of slavery during the 19th and 20th centuries in three former French colonies.

This study examines the complex history of slavery in East Africa, focusing on the area that came under German colonial rule. In contrast to the policy pursued at the time by other colonial powers in Africa, the German authorities did not legally abolish slavery in their colonial territories. However, despite government efforts to keep the institution of slavery alive, it significantly declined in Tanganyika in the period concerned. This book highlights the crucial role played by the slaves in the process of emancipation. The book is divided into three parts. The first explores the rise of slavery in Tanganyika in the second half of the nineteenth century when the region became more fully integrated into the world economy. This is followed by an analysis of German colonial policy. The authorities believed that abolition should be avoided at all costs since it would undermine the power and prosperity of the local slave owning elites whose effective collaboration was thought to be indispensable to the functioning of colonial rule. The final part recounts how slaves by their own initiative brought the 'evil institution' to an end. This comprised both highly disruptive moments of wholesale flight and, depending on the possibility of escape and individual circumstances, more subtle changes in servile relationships. North America: Ohio U PressBR>

This book examines the social transformation wrought by the abolition of slavery in 1834 in South Africa's Cape Colony. It pays particular attention to the effects of socioeconomic and cultural changes in the way both freed slaves and dominant whites adjusted to the new world. It compares South Africa's relatively peaceful transition from a slave to a non-slave society to the bloody experience of the US South after abolition, analyzing rape hysteria in both places as well as the significance of changing concepts of honor in the Cape. Finally, the book examines the early development of South Africa's particular brand of racism, arguing that abolition, not slavery itself, was a causative factor; although racist attitudes were largely absent while slavery persisted, they grew incrementally but steadily after abolition, driven primarily by whites' need for secure, exploitable labor.

What was it like to be a slave in colonial South Africa? What difference did freedom make? John Edwin Mason presents complex answers after delving into the slaves' experience within the slaveholding patriarchal household, primarily during the period from1820 to 1850.