Slavery Essay

1024 Words3 Pages

Slavery is the practise of treating people as human cargo and selling, buying and forcing them to work without a compensation for their service. Chattel slavery or traditional slavery is when a person is treated as the property of another. Slaves are inherited from parents or given as gifts. Forced labour is when people are forced to work for another without compensation for their services. Slavery was found 4000 years before the Christian era in Egypt to build pyramids and in Greece (mainly Athens and Sparta). In the instance of slavery at the Cape, slaves contributed greatly to the building up of the colony and to the economic state of the slave owners and their country of origin. When Jan van Riebeeck (a former slave and later commander of the DEIC) arrived at the Cape in 1652 with the task of setting up a refreshment station for ships travelling to the spice countries of the East, he was unfamiliar with the land and needed the local knowledge of the terrain to find fresh water and suitable farming land. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to use the local population as labour, the Dutch turned to slavery. Slaves were imported from other African lands and islands like Madagascar and Angola to provide cheap labour. Not much is known about the Cape slaves other than their names, gender and place of origin. Slaves were forcibly removed from their homes, family and friends and were taken to unfamiliar lands. Some even had their names changed by their owners- usually to names from the bible, the months they were captured or their place of origin. Company slaves, however, kept their African names. Slaves were thought of as property of their owners and were transported like animals in the worst conditions. The under deck, where the... ... middle of paper ... ...ite farms, form a group of slaves and leave Stellenbosch. This was ultimately a failure. Four slaves attacked a farm in Stellenbosch, killing one burgher and wounding another. They stole the firearms from the farm. The slaves were tracked by a soldier, farmer and some khoikoi. They were found and a gun fight ensued, killing three of the slaves and wounding one. Other forms of resistance was working slowly, poisoning masters and arson. Some slaves attacked anyone including fellow slaves using poison or a “kris”, which is a type of snake-shaped dagger. There was a temporary ban of the importation of Asian males from 1767 to 1791.The British handed the Cape back to the Dutch in 1803 with the Treaty of Amiens but occupation was taken up again, permanently, in 1806 due to a fear of losing trade with the East as Napoleon Bonaparte was conquering many countries in Europe.

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