Speaking for the slave: Britain and the Cape, 1751-1838
Postcolonial studies has asked the question "Can the subaltern speak? ", but has focused less strongly on the strategies by which the subaltern is prevented from securing a hearing. The textual and social strategies used to prevent Cape slaves in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries from voicing their plight have been neglected, though both pro- and anti-slavery lobbyists were eloquent. To present the slave as one whose inferiority rendered him incapable of pleading his cause was a device of the pro-slavery group; to pretend that consultation was impossible was another, though people who offered this defence were often surrounded by slaves. Others, accepting and profiting from the inequalities of a class-stratified society, were unable to perceive any but the extreme experiences of an unfree condition as constituting injustice. Anti-slavery campaigners were rarely in favour of the slave's being consulted: they preferred to condemn their political rivals, the slave-owners. Abolition found many of them searching for arguments to maintain the inequalities of society, and especially to prevent former serfs from securing a hearing.
TWO ‘HOTTENTOTS’, SOME SCOTS AND A WEST INDIAN SLAVE: THE ORIGINS OF KAATJE KEKKELBEK
Abstract Kaatje Kekkelbek, or Life among the Hottentots, by Andrew Geddes Bain, continues to be of academic interest for three main reasons: firstly, for its peculiar linguistic composition, secondly, as one of the earliest examples of South African Settler drama, and, thirdly, for its portrayal of the life of so-called ‘Hottentots’ in the 1830s. Concerning the latter, critical opinion has been divided. This article aims to lay to rest the claims of Michael Chapman and others that Kaatje Kekkelbek is in any way sympathetic to the lot of ‘Hottentots’, as represented by the eponymous heroine, by attempting to locate the play in the historical context of its production. A further claim is then made that, owing to the form of the drama, Kaatje Kekkelbek is actually a pastiche of a slave narrative, quite possibly The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, which was edited by Thomas Pringle in London.
All the Lighter Parts: Lady Anne Barnard's Letters from Cape Town
I N S E P T E M B E R 1795' Cape 0 1 Good Hope, at that time governed by the Dutch East India Company, fell to the British, and after an eighteen-month period of military government, the British Minister for W a r and the Colonies, Henry Dundas, secured Ear l Macartney for the post of civil governor. Appointed simultaneously with Macartney and as Secretary of the colony was Andrew Barnard, who on marrying Lady Anne Lindsay in 1793 had resigned from the army. Their marriage, though extremely successful, was somewhat surprising in its day. Lady Anne, the daughter of the Scottish Ear l of Balcarres, was forty-three when it occurred, twelve years older than Barnard. She and her widowed sister, Lady Margaret Fordyce, had lived together as popular London hostesses for twenty years. They were friends of the Prince of Wales, of Pitt, and of many politicians of the day. Lady Anne was especially intimate with Henry Dundas, whom she had known since childhood when she had lived with her widowed mother in Edinburgh. It was because of their long friendship that Dundas agreed to give the office of Secretary to Barnard when, in 1796, he formed a civil administration for the Cape. In accompanying her husband on what promised to be a stay of several years abroad, Lady Anne knew she was acting somewhat unusually for a woman of her class and age. Macartney's wife did not accompany him, and Lady Anne, as wife of the senior government official to be accompanied by a spouse, would be the official hostess of the administration, a task for which her talents and experience well fitted her. Her special position was recognized by Macartney when he allocated the Governor's Lodgings in the