by Nicole Ulrich, 2011
Framed
by an anarchist reading of Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker’s The
Many
Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of
the
Revolutionary
Atlantic (2000), this study examines the dynamic nature of colonial
and
class
rule in the eighteenth-century Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa,
and the
forms
of belonging and traditions of political protest developed by the
labouring poor.
This
study draws on archival material from national and international
repositories,
focusing
on government records, criminal court trials, and travellers’
accounts.
Colonial
rule, the under-class, and resistance in the Cape are located in a
global
context,
with special attention being paid to changes associated with the ‘Age
of
Revolution
and War’ and rise of the modern world. Breaking with the tendency
to
treat
different sections of the motley (many-hued) labouring poor in the
Cape as
discreet,
often racially defined, and nationally bounded population groups,
segmented
also
by legal status, this study provides a comprehensive study of labour
in the Cape
that
includes an examination of slaves, servants, sailors, and soldiers
recruited, or
imported
from, Asia, Europe, and other parts of Africa.
I
contest the established approaches to under-class resistance. In
place of a
socially
fragmented labouring poor, solely engaged in ‘informal’,
individualized, and
uncoordinated
resistance, this study reveals the spatially stretched and inclusive
connections
created by the labouring poor across gender, nation, race and status,
which
underpinned modes of protest that were confrontational, and often
collective, in
nature,
including desertion, insurrection, mutiny, strikes, and arson. In
spite of the
harsh
regime of class and colonial control developed under VOC rule, the
labouring
poor
forged notable class solidarities.
The
Cape Colony was influenced by two interrelated political processes
unleashed
by the Age of Revolution and War, including the global spread of
radical
political
ideas, and the modernisation and strengthening of the European
imperial
states.
The labouring poor in the Cape was also infected by and contributed
to a
radical
consciousness of freedom and rights, leading to the 1797 naval
mutinies, the
(1799-1803)
Servant Rebellion, and the 1808 Revolt. New political strategies and
6
identities
emerged, and under-class struggles contributed both to the decline of
the
VOC,
and to the adoption of reforms and a new ethos of governance that
altered
relations
between masters, the labouring poor, and the state.
This
study is critical of ‘new cultural history’, which entrenches an
economistic
understanding of class, and detaches the study of identities from
larger
social
structures and processes. To deepen our understanding of class, this
study
draws
on left critiques of Marxism, especially anarchist ideas, which
highlight the
links
between class and state-making, citizenship, and the law. This helps
contest the
often
false distinctions drawn between the ‘economic’ and ‘cultural’
elements of class
and
inequality. Click here to download this thesis in PDF.
