Constructing and Contesting Histories of Slavery at the Cape, South Africa
Constructing and Contesting Histories of Slavery at the Cape, South Africa
This chapter discusses slavery in South Africa. Chattel slavery existed in early colonial South Africa from the inception of the Dutch permanent settlement in 1658 until formal emancipation of slaves in the British empire in the 1830s. More than 80,000 slaves were imported from throughout the Indian Ocean world during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although in the time of apartheid this slave heritage was buried in the public consciousness, since the 1990s museums, historians, and archaeologists have unearthed and published a considerable historical record, endorsed by new heritage legislation which gives special value to sites of slavery. Slave history is taught in universities and schools. However, especially for those descended from slaves in the Western Cape region, the evocation of a slave past has been a vexed process, with slave heritage serving as both a resource and a weapon in contemporary identity struggles.
Keywords: chattel slavery, slave heritage, slaves, identity, Western Cape, Indian Ocean
British Academy Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.