Slave Emancipation and Racial Attitudes in Nineteenth-Century South Africa

Examines the significance of the abolition of slavery in South Africa's Cape Colony in 1834 and the subsequent development of race relations.

R. L. Watson (Author)

9781107022003, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 February 2012

334 pages, 2 maps
23.4 x 15.9 x 2.5 cm, 0.6 kg

'A clear written study of a neglected area of history, it will provide teachers with an important point of comparison with the parallel development of racism in the West Indies.' Richard Brown, Historical Association Newsletter

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.

Introduction
Part I. THE FOUNDATIONS oF a RACIAL ORDER: 1. The passing of the slave system
2. Labor and the economy
Part II. CULTURAL AND POLITICAL FACTORS: 3. Missions
4. Respectability
5. The frontier
6. The trek
7. Plagues
Part III. RAPE, rACE, AND VIOLENCE: 8. Violence
9. Rape and other crimes
10. Honor
Part IV. A RACIAL ORDER: 11. Sediment at the bottom of the mind
12. An aristocracy of skin
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Ethnic studies [JFSL], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], African history [HBJH]