2016/05/03 by Nigel Worden · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Global Maritime and Colonial Histories #South African History and Culture
paper · doi:10.1080/03057070.2016.1171554
crossref issued 2016/05/03 · crossref published 2016/05/03 · crossref published-print 2016/05/03 · openalex publication_date 2016/05/03 · crossref published-online 2016/05/23 · crossref created 2016/05/24 · crossref deposited 2016/12/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/08/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The most immediate and visible connection of early colonial Cape Town to the Indian Ocean world lay in its sizeable slave population. This article will examine new data from household inventories to enumerate in more precise ways than has previously been possible the Indian Ocean origins of slaves imported into the town in the 18th and early 19th centuries. In particular, it identifies the importance of south Asian sources in the earlier parts of the 18th century and the shift to the African coast in the later 18th and 19th centuries. Both of these regions are neglected in current academic and popular perceptions of the origins of slaves in the city. Comparisons will be made throughout with slavery in other colonial Indian Ocean port cities of the period.