The Dutch East India Company's introduction of the first slave into the region known as the Cape of Good Hope in 1653 established an institution whose legal status ended in 1838 but whose social and political reverberations are still felt today. Children of Bondage is the story of the social, cultural, and biological progeny of that slave society. Robert Shell examines the complex and highly stratified hierarchies that evolved in South Africa, and outlines how its multiracial system of slavery was distinct from the biracial system that arose in the New World. Shell argues that while frontier and class interests were significant factors in South Africa's history, these influences were secondary manifestations of a more universal force, namely, the family as the fundamental unit of subordination. He explores the history of oceanic and domestic slave trades, sexual and gender relations within the slave hierarchy, religious and ethnic identities among slaves, and the promises and realities of manumission. By viewing the institution of South African slavery from many levels he concludes, "Not only slaves were in bondage; in a profound sense, the owners were as well."
Author(s): Robert C.H. Shell
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press (U. Pr. of New England)
Year: 1994
Language: English
Pages: 560
City: Hanover, New Hampshire
Includes bibliographical references (pages 453-479) and index
Introduction -- The Introduction of Slavery and Serfdom -- The Cape Slave Trade and Creolization -- The Effects of the Oceanic Slave Trade -- The Sale and Transfer of Human Beings -- The Apportionment and Geographical Dispersion of Slaves -- An Urban Plantation -- The Management of Involuntary Labor -- The Everyday Language of the Household -- The Vernacular World the Slaves Made -- Women and the Slave Household -- From Dordt to the Trek -- Manumission and the Cape Household -- Slavery, the Authoritarian Cape Family and Recursive Identities
