Ethnic fragmentation among slaves prevented collective rebellion in the Cape

Evidence

Robert Shell has shown that slave demography within the Western Cape, under firm Company control, had grown increasingly heterogeneous by the later 1700s. Cape slaves hailed from a range of different societies, spoke different languages, were culturally distinct. This undermined the emergence of any cultural solidarity among slaves, thus resulting in the fact that any rebellious slave activity was overwhelmingly likely to be individual rather than collective. Locally born slaves were considered more loyal and less likely to rebel, especially those mixed, those whose fathers were European or of European descent and whose mothers were slaves. They lived longer, spoke the local language, and a young woman, little more than a girl, might be given permission to marry a European man who would bear some of the costs of her upkeep and yet whose children would remain the slave property of the slave-master, at least until they turned 25. Creole slaves, not least the pubescent, accordingly fetched a significant premium, costing nearly half as much as foreign slaves. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1372

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the law-merchant literature on how heterogeneity undermines collective action and reputation enforcement among subordinated groups. — connects to: Slave cultural heterogeneity suppressed collective rebellion, channeling resistance into individual acts — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1372