The slave question
Subtitle: liberty and property in South Africa
By: R.L. Watson.
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press; University Press of New England
Published: 1990
Place of publication: [Middletown, CT]; Hanover, NH
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
Subjects: Slavery -- South Africa -- Cape of Good Hope -- History -- 19th century.
Description: This volume examines attitudes toward slavery among white settlers in South Africa from 1820 until emancipation by an act of the British Parliament in 1834. Drawing largely on contemporary newspaper, missionary, and government reports, the author finds only individual expressions of the view that people should not be held as property; the majority of whites accepted property as more important than liberty. There is a brief analysis of the part that emancipation played in the Great Trek of Afrikaners. The final chapter compares the situation in South Africa with that in the United States in the decades preceding the Civil War.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-265) and index.