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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The changing legal position of the Khoisan in the Cape Colony, 1652-1795 |
Author: | Ross, Robert |
Year: | 1979 |
Periodical: | African Perspectives |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 67-87 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | The Cape South Africa Netherlands |
Subjects: | Khoikhoi colonization |
Abstract: | During the rule of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Cape, there was a gradual breaking of the independence of the indigenous peoples of the Cape, the Khoisan. Those Khoisan who owned cattle were slowly stripped of their riches and forced to become either raiders or agricultural labourers and shepherds for the white farmers, eventually finding themselves in a position of subjugation to the farmers which can best be described as that of bondsmen. On. the basis of the records of the High Court of Justice in Cape Town, the author analyses the shifts in the legal status of the Khoisan between the foundation of the Cape colony in the middle of the seventeenth century and its conquest by the British about 150 years later. Because the imposition of Dutch legal authority on the Khoi was a gradual, unplanned process, and in no way an integral part of the establishment of the Cape colony, therefore the shifts in the legal status of the Khoisan provide an usable index of their shifting social position. Notes. |