¹ For similar work see Marincowitz, J., ‘Rural production and labour in the Western Cape, 1838–1888, with special reference to the wheat growing districts’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1985).Google Scholar I am grateful to Colin Bundy, Nigel Worden and Clifton Crais for help and encouragement. Archival references below are to the Cape Archives.

² See Hobsbawm, E. J., Captain Swing (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Hay, D., Linebaugh, P., Rule, J. G., Thompson, E. P. and Winslow, C. (eds.), Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1975);Google ScholarRudé, G., Criminal and Victim (Oxford, 1985).Google Scholar

³ Crummey, D. (ed.), Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa (London, 1986);Google Scholar also Cohen, S., ‘Bandits, rebels or criminals: African history and western criminology’ (review article), Africa, LVI, 4 (1986), 468–483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ Mabin, A., ‘The making of colonial capitalism: intensification and expansion in the economic geography of the Cape Colony, South Africa, 1854–1899– (Ph.D. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1984), 28, 117.Google ScholarPurkis, A., ‘The politics, capital and labour of railway building in the Cape Colony, 1870–1885’ (Ph.D. thesis, Oxford University, 1978).Google Scholar

⁵ Rayner, M., ‘Wine and slaves: the failure of an export economy and the ending of slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa, 1806–1834’ (Ph.D. thesis, Duke University, 1986).Google Scholar

⁶ Onselen, C. van, ‘Randlords and rotgut’ in Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886–1914 (Harlow and Johannesburg, 1982), 48.Google Scholar

⁷ For a discussion of mission stations and their position in the Western Cape economy see Marincowitz, ‘Rural production’. Much needs to be written on the effects of transformations in the colonial economy on gender relations and family structure. See my forthcoming Ph.D. thesis on marriage and the family in the western Cape in the nineteenth century (Ohio State University).

⁸ Vagrancy acts and squatting legislation were among the legal means invoked to maintain farmers' access to labour after emancipation: see Marincowitz, ‘Rural production’, and Crais, C., ‘The making of the colonial order: white supremacy and African resistance in the Eastern Cape, 1770–1850‘ (Ph.D. thesis, The John Hopkins University, 1988).Google Scholar Former masters in other colonial slave societies used very similar tactics in their desire to uphold the status quo. See Foner, E., Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy (Baton Rouge and London, 1983)Google Scholar for a comparative discussion of how the former masters secured their continued domination in the Caribbean and the United States.

⁹ In the early 1870s day wages on the farms ranged between is. and 3s. with rations, while the public works paid from 3s. to 4s. also with food. In the 1880s when farm labourers were receiving 2s. 6d. to 3s. per day, dock workers were being paid 45. In 1890 J. P. Eksteen, a leading Paarl farmer, quoted daily wages of i s. 6d., in comparison to the wages offered on the railways which ranged from 3s. to 6s. Cape Printed Papers (CPP) Blue Book 1879, table 7; Magisterial Records, Stellenbosch District (i/STB) 2/54 case 101, 27 May 1874. CPP A12-'90, Report of the Select Committee on the Labour Question, 9, 26.

¹⁰ i/STB 2/63 case 32, 15 Mar. 1895.

¹¹ This figure is based on a broad consensus of opinion of people (both farmers and labourers) giving evidence to the 1893 Labour Commission. More specific data were not discovered. CPP G3-'93, Labour Commission 1893, vol. 1.

¹² CPP A12-'90, Report on Labour Question, ii.

¹³ Brass, T., ‘Free and unfree labour in Puerto Rico during the nineteenth century’, J. Latin American Studies, XVIII (1986), 188.Google Scholar

¹⁴ A farmer complained that ‘it is obvious that the servant is striving not to be under his master, but over him, in fact to be in the place of the master’. CPP G3-'94, Labour Commission 1893, 288.

¹⁵ Zuid Afrikaan, 28 July 1890.

¹⁶ See author's interview with Koos de Waal of Happy Vale, 25 Feb. 1986: ‘They were fond of their ou-baas [‘old boss’] and outna [‘old mistress’ or ‘grandmother’]. They loved us. We had six labourers, they were in my grandfather's time too. They always called him ou-seer [‘old sir’]. Now they come with all this bloody nonsense’. See also Bradford, H., A Taste of Freedom (New Haven and London, 1987), 41–9.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Crais, ‘Colonial order’, for an innovative discussion of how the ordering of space helped structure interaction in the rural world of the Eastern Cape; see also Isaac, R., The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 (Chapel Hill, 1982).Google Scholar

¹⁸ ‘The sharing of cooked food… is a public statement of inclusion in a single moral and social community among whose members there is trust. Yet at the same time individual community members remain cautious about the safety of such intimate bonds.’ Goody, E., Contexts of Kinship (Cambridge, 1973), 128Google Scholar, quoted in Medick, H. and Sabean, D. (eds.), Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship (Cambridge, 1984), 13.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Scully, P., ‘Alcohol and domination in rural Stellenbosch, South Africa, 1870–1900’ (paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, 11–1405 1988).Google Scholar

²⁰ For a discussion of the concept of herrschaft, see papers presented to the Third Round Table Conference of Anthropology and History: Herrschaft (Domination) as Social Practice, Hamburg, 1983.

²¹ Helen Bradford has explored labour relations on South African farms in the 1920s in a period and in areas where an explanation based on the legacy of slavery would be inappropriate. She concludes that the straitened economic position of the majority of farmers partly led them to resort to a system of labour relations which for many labour tenants was not dissimilar to serfdom: Bradford, Taste of Freedom, ch. i; see also Morris, M., ‘The development of capitalism in South Africa: class struggle in the countryside’, Economy and Society, V (1976), 292–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² For a discussion of the use of advances and tied rent see Scully, P., ‘The bouquet of freedom: social and economic relations in Stellenbosch District, c. 1870–1900’ (M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1987)Google Scholar, ch. 4; see also Marincowitz, ‘Rural production’.

²³ CPP A5-'72, Report of the Select Committee appointed to consider and report on the Masters and Servants Acts; Act 18 of 1873.

²⁴ Foner, Nothing but Freedom; Bundy, C., ‘The abolition of the Masters and Servants Act’, South African Labour Bulletin, 11, 1 (May–June 1975), 37–46.Google Scholar

²⁵ See the chapter on slave discipline in Worden, Nigel, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge, 1985);Google Scholar also the responses of farmers to the 1893 Labour Commission: CPP G3-'94.

²⁶ Most of the cases were prosecuted by farmers against their servants under the terms of the Masters and Servants Acts, but more serious cases pertaining to arson and theft were also tried before being referred to a higher court. Detailed records were kept with the accused's answers being transcribed and translated from the vernacular into formal English prose, often with rather bizarre results. Certainly one has to approach the material with a degree of caution.

²⁷ Douglas Hay has argued in the context of the transition of English society in the eighteenth century from the mercantile to the industrial era that ‘all men of property knew that judges, justices and juries had to be chosen from their ranks’: Hay, D., ‘Property, authority and the criminal law’ in Hay et al. (eds.), Albion's Fatal Tree, 17–64.Google Scholar See also Innes, J. and Styles, J., ‘The crime wave: recent writing on crime and criminal justice in eighteenth-century England’, J. British Studies, XXV, 4 (1986), 380–435CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a summary of the debate on the role of law and of criminalization in social control.

²⁸ Sachs, Albie, Justice in South Africa (London, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973), 51.Google Scholar

²⁹ E.g. G. Joubert, deacon of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1835, also landholder of 163 morgen, Cape of Good Hope Annual Register, Directory and Almanack, 1835, Quit Rent Register (QRR), 192, fo. 252; J. C. Faure, Field Cornet, Environs Stellenbosch, owned 250 morgen, Annual Register, 1855, QRR 192, fo. 236; also M. L. Neethling, owner of Oude Molen, Director of Stellenbosch District Bank, Member of the Legislative Council, Mayor of Stellenbosch, 1871–4, 1901–3.

³⁰ Hay, , ‘Property’, 48Google Scholar; see also his comments on the generality of the law: Ibid., 55–6.

³¹ See P. A. Myburgh, i/STB 2/45 case 187, 29 Aug. 1876; i/STB 2/54 case 260, 24 Jan. 1885.

³² i/STB 2/54 case 193, 13 July 1885; i/STB 2/68 case 37, 24 Jan. 1898.

³³ i /STB 2/64 case 305, 16 Dec. 1895; also i /STB 2/42, Statement by Hendrik Jooses to Resident Magistrate, 27 Mar. 1870, charging employer J. J. P. du Toit of Groote Zalze with assault; a/STB 2/54, case 95, 12 Mar. 1885; see i/STB 2/54, case 41, n.d.: Marie, a labourer, said he knew the law as well as P. Neethling, his employer at Jonkershoek.

³⁴ Cf. Innes, and Styles, , ‘Crime wave’, 400.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid., 390; Rudé, Criminal and Victim, 42. His tabulation for rural crimes shows that ‘labourers’ were responsible for 85 2 per cent of crimes.

³⁶ See Scott, J. C., Weapons of the Weak (New Haven and London, 1985), 265–9.Google Scholar For an illuminating discussion of theft under slavery, see Genovese, E., Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1976), 599–512.Google Scholar

³⁷ The cases of stealing in order to sell on the market seem to have peaked in the mid-1880s and then increased again in 1900. i/STB 2/54 summary trial 106, 18 Mar. 1885; i/STB 2/54 case 254, 26 Oct. 1885; i/STB 2/56 warrant 29, 23 Oct. 1886; i/STB 2/72 case 285, case 286, 31 May 1900. Beattie, J., ‘The pattern of crime in England, 1660–1800’, Past and Present, no. 62 (1974), 47–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, concludes that factors such as employment problems and wage decreases have an effect on crimes against property; cf. Rudé, , Criminal and Victim, 118.Google Scholar A systematic statistical survey of all the criminal records for the district would have to be done in order to verify this with any precision for Stellenbosch. Marincowitz, on the basis of published material for the Colony in the Statistical Registers, suggests that property crimes declined from the 1870s onwards; ‘Rural production’, 213. Archival material for Stellenbosch district does not show such a decline.

³⁸ i/STB 2/41 case 2654, 25 Nov. 1886; i/STB 2/41 case 2629, 30 Sept. 1868. Also i/STB2/41 case 2654, 24 Nov. 1868; i/STB 2/45 summary trial, 26 Apr. 1875; i/STB 2/54 case 248, 24 Sept. 1885; i/STB 2/54 case 34, 22 Jan. 1890; i/STB 2/59 case 96, 25 Mar. 1890; i/STB 2/68 case 192, 21 May 1898; Native Affairs 257, Assistant Magistrate, Somerset West, to Resident Magistrate, Stellenbosch, 23 Apr. 1899.

³⁹ Medick, and Sabean, , Interest and Emotion, 14.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ i/STB 2/42, case 3028, 9 June 1870; 2/45 summary trial, 26 Apr. 1875.

⁴¹ i/STB 2/44 n.d. 1874.

⁴² See also i/STB 2/48 case 41, 19 Feb. 1880.

⁴³ The Afrikaner Bond and the Zuid Afrikaansche Boere Berskermings Vereeniging competed during the 1870s for the support of Dutch-speaking farmers in the Cape. See Davenport, T. R. H., The Afrikaner Bond (Cape Town, 1966);Google ScholarGiliomee, H., ‘Western Cape farmers and the beginnings of Afrikaner nationalism, 1870–1915’, J. Southern Afr. Studies, XIV, 1 (10, 1987), 38–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁴ Zuid Afrikaan, 3 Feb. 1875. ln 1875, at the time of the first crisis of labour shortage faced by farmers in the late nineteenth century, a great fire occurred in Stellenbosch village; one person was killed and 47 buildings were burnt, causing about £15,000 worth of damage. This was a most disconcerting example of the tensions underpinning rural society, and Hofmeyr, in his capacity as editor of the Zuid Afrikaan, recommended the death sentence for arson. CO 3245 Resident Magistrate to Colonial Secretary, 15 Jan. 1875.

⁴⁵ 1/STB 2/41 preparatory examination, 12 Aug. 1869; i/STB 2/45 preliminary examination, 21 Jan. 1875; Zuid Afrikaan, 5 May 1875 etc.

⁴⁶ See Rudé, Criminal and Victim, ch. 3, and R. Schulte, ‘Arsonists. Conflicts of domination and subjectivity in a rural society’ (paper presented to the Hamburg conference on Herrschaft: cf. n. 20), 2, for comparative material on arson in rural Germany and England during the nineteenth century. I am grateful to Shula Marks for sending me a copy of this paper.

⁴⁷ Schulte, , ‘Arsonists’, 3.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Although it does not appear that the matter ever went further than the form of a statement made by Jooses: i/STB 2/42, Statement to Resident Magistrate, 27 Mar. 1870.

⁴⁹ The case was settled out of court with Morkel paying compensation for work lost. i/STB 2/42 deposition, 16 Aug. 1871. Also i/STB 2/50 case 46, 27 Mar. 1882.

⁵⁰ i/STB 2/62 case 195, 27 Mar. 1893; see also i/STB 2/48 case 200, 24 Sept. 1880.

⁵¹ See i/STB 2/48, case 200, 24 Sept. 1880; i/STB 2/54, case 141, n.d. for trial, but the ‘crime’ took place on 15 April 1885; i/STB 2/56, case 185, 28 July 1887; i/STB 2/68, case 34 Jan. 1898 etc.

⁵² See i/STB 2/53 case 89, 4 Mar. 1884; i/STB 2/53 case 98, 11 Mar. 1884.

⁵³ See Brenner, R., ‘Agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe’, Past and Present, no. 70 (02, 1976), 30–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for comments on how patterns of landholding and living conditions affect the development of class consciousness.

⁵⁴ i/STB 2/56 case 185, 28 July 1887; also see i/STB 2/62 case 220, 25 Aug. 1893: case of a shepherd keeping an account book recording wages received and debts incurred.