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Social Dynamics

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Eighteenth century cape society and itshistoriography: Culture, race, and class

Hermann Giliomee

To cite this article: Hermann Giliomee (1983) Eighteenth century cape societyand its historiography: Culture, race, and class, Social Dynamics, 9:1, 18-29, DOI:10.1080/02533958308458331

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02533958308458331

Published online: 13 May 2008.

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SOCIAL DYNAMICS 9(1) 18-29

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CAPE SOCIETYAND ITS HISTORIOGRAPHY: CULTURE,RACE, AND CLASS

HERMANN GILIOMEE University of Cape Town

The revisionist literature of the 1970s approached social stratification in South Africa withthe insistence that proper 'weighting' of the race and class factors should occur. Arguing thatclass and not racial consciousness was the key determinant of social structure in pre-industrial South Africa, it concluded that eighteenth century Cape society in certain areas ofthe colony was characterised by greater fluidity than the caste system of the American Southor industrialised South Africa. George Fredrickson's comparative analysis of American andSouth African history rejects the first mentioned approach but agrees with the conclusion.This article argues that Fredrickson erred by characterising Cape society as being largelybased on class and a permeable colour line. The extent to which Cape Town or frontiersociety can be categorised as such was limited, while the agrarian Western Cape, in terms ofmanumission rates and the incidence of mixed marriages, was one of the most rigid castesocieties in the world. The article concludes by observing that only by studying how politicaland class relationships reinforced each other can the full complexity of eighteenth centuryCape society be revealed.

1. Theoretical PerspectivesIn the revisionist literature of the 1970s therewas a strong tendency to argue that racismbecame salient and institutionalised in SouthAfrica only from the mid-nineteenth centuryon. The crucial developments were: (a) the in-corporation of South Africa into worldcapitalism, and (b) the introduction of therelations of industrial capitalism with itsemphasis on free instead of forced labour(Freund, 1976). Because this removed slavery(or serfdom) as the fundamental divide insociety racism developed into an ideologyfirst in a response to the campaign to abolishslavery and then as a legitimation of theoperative post-slavery social categories.

According to the revisionists of the 1970sclass and race relations in eighteenth centuryCape society differed qualitatively from therelations of industrial capitalism. Freund(1976) saw the slave society of the WesternCape as resembling much more Brazil, withits fluid social patterns, than the AmericanSouth with its rigid caste system. In his viewthe line between European and black wasvaguely drawn and frequently crossedthrough intermarriage: "Above all, moneywhitened" (Freund, 1976: 56). Because of thisblurred colour line legal and social status didnot coincide with ethnic origin in the eigh-teenth and the early nineteenth century.

A related tendency of the revisionists was todeny beliefs and ideas an independent role inshaping society. Revisionists did not deny

that beliefs and ideas were important. In hisjustly celebrated essay on class and racerelations in eighteenth century South AfricaLegassick (1970/1 and 1980) specificallystated that racist ideas, forming part of thecolonists' inheritance from Europe, werepresent from the beginning and served tolegitimise the subordination and exploitationof blacks. But these ideas ultimately had to beseen as the product of a specific set of socialrelations, first of the master/ slave (or serf)relationship and subsequently of thepatron/client relationship on the frontier.According to Legassick (1980: 55) the racistideas only hardened into an ideology inresponse to the nineteenth century challengeto the system of social relations.

Underlying the revisionists' work was theirdetermination to weigh or rank thematerialist and idealist factors. As DeborahPosel remarks in her contribution to thisissue: class and race were to be rankedhierarchically and invariably class was rankedas the more fundamental variable whichcould account for the development andfunctions of racial practices and policies.Posel suggests an alternative mode whichdoes not seek a uniform ranking of onevariable over another but rather establishtheir concrete interrelationships. Thechallenge in this case is to show how racialideas and cleavages, on the one hand, andclass relations, on the other hand, structuredand reinforced each other.

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Posel's suggestion represents a determinedattempt to break out of the rigid race-or-classconceptualisation which characterised SouthAfrican historiography in the 1970s. Here sheis in good company. Max Weber, as AnthonySmith (1981: 41) recently observed, utilisedthe terms "ideal" and "material" only as polesof a continuum. To oppose them toodrastically and to opt for the logical andsubstantive priority of the one at the expenseof the other when analysing racism, ethnicityand nationalism creates more problems thanit solves.

In the early 1980s the revisionists of SouthAfrican historiography also began toquestion some of the certainties of the 1970s.Johnstone (1982: 25) spoke out against theassumption "that only one paradigm can bevalid, that different ones are completelyincompatible, and that you just pick yourparadigm and do your work; and, of course,reject, as rather foolish, any glib ideas orimplications to the effect that no otherapproach in the world besides Marxismunderstands anything". He made a plea forhistorians, in employing their respectiveparadigms, to recognise that "there may besome measure of complementarity besidesincompatibility" (Johnstone, 1982: 25).

South African historiography can onlybenefit by a search for the common groundinstead of an arid race-or-class debate, and bydetermined attempts to probe interrelation-ships rather than to rank or weigh dog-matically idealist and materialist forces. Whatshould matter most is to keep the idealist andmaterialist conceptualisations open toempirical correction rather than imposetheoretical categories in a rigid conceptualframework.

The new comparative study of GeorgeFredrickson, White Supremacy (1981), ofclass and race relations in South Africa andthe United States is of great historiographicalinterest not only because Fredrickson is, alsoby American standards, a major practioner ofthe craft. Firstly, Fredrickson, unlike thehistorical materialists of the 1970s explicitlyrefuses to rank race and class as determinantsof social relations. Secondly, Fredrickson,unlike the historical materialists, locates thedevelopment of white supremacist attitudesand policies in pre-industrial settings ratherthan in industrial capitalism. Lastly,Fredrickson agrees with a historicalmaterialist like Freund in considering late-eighteenth century South African society as a

remarkably fluid one which contrasted withthe rigid caste society of the American South.White Supremacy provides a goodopportunity to review the literature on thenature of eighteenth century Cape society andits historiography.

To elaborate briefly on the first two of thesepoints before discussing his work in detail.Fredrickson (1981: xx-xxi) lays histheoretical cards on the table right at thebeginning of his study:

The debate over the relative significance of"race" and "class" as determinants of black orbrown inequality in societies like the UnitedStates and South Africa, has led some scholarsto take bold and unyielding stands in favour of"idealist" or materialist explanations. I havenot done so. I have sought instead tocomprehend the interaction and inter-relationship of "race" and "class" — of ethnicconsciousness and economic advantage —without assigning a necessary priority to either.I have concluded that the historical record inthese two instances will simply not sustain afinal or universally applicable ruling on which isprimary and independent and which issecondary and subordinate. In most cases thetwo sides of the polarity are mutually reinfor-cing, and where they clearly conflict theoutcome is open and may depend on theintervention of some other partiallyautonomous force, such as a political authorityor pressure group that has interests or aims ofits own that can be distinguished from those ofthe dominant economic classes or self-conscious ethnic communities within the localcommunity (xx-xxi).

Secondly Fredrickson does not believe thatthe origins of racism and racist practicesshould be located in the relationships whichindustrial capitalism introduced. As he putsit: "White supremacist attitudes and policiesoriginated in pre-industrial settings wheremasters of European extraction lorded it overdark-sk inned slaves and s e r v a n t s "(Fredrickson, 1981: 199). By the end of theeighteenth and beginning of the nineteenthcentury disaffected Afrikaners in the cattle-farming interior began to defend their specialtreatment of black servants by giving renewedemphasis, like the Southerners, to race as the"one great differentiator and by affirming theideal of a racially circumscribed democracy— with equality for all whites and rigidsubordination for all non-whites — thatmodern scholars have summed up in thephrase "Herrenvolk egal i tar ianism".(Fredrickson, 1981: 166). As to the impact ofindustrial capitalism, Fredrickson observes

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that discrimination against black workers ofcourse served the interests of industrialcapitalists and white workers. However, "it isdifficult to account for the specific nature ofracial caste or exclusion in industry withoutreference to pre-existing beliefs about thecharacter, capacity, and social status of non-whites". (Fredrickson, 1981: 205).

This brings us, thirdly, to Fredrickson'sanalysis of eighteenth century Cape society.While the entire study makes for absorbingreading it is the early chapters of the bookcovering this theme that will arouse thegreatest interest and that will determine thebook's place in our historiography. It is whenFredrickson discusses slavery and the rise of acolour line that there is the greatest degree ofcomparability between the Cape and theAmerican colonies. When it comes to thenineteenth and twentieth century politicalhistories of South Africa and the UnitedStates the structure of comparability beginsto weaken and Fredrickson (1981: 136)himself concedes that these histories "mightseem too dissimilar to offer grounds forfruitful comparison".

There is also another reason why the firsthalf of the book is of considerable significance.Fredrickson's study takes issue with some ofthe main theses in the literature oncomparative race relations. One is that theretends to be a low incidence of inter-racialmarriages when a colonial society isdominated by Protestant and commercially-inclined North Europeans with a considerableproportion of white women in their midst.Another postulates that a low degree ofmanumission tends to be accompanied by alow rate of inter-racial marriages. On bothscores Fredrickson's study tries todemonstrate that the opposite was the case inthe Cape Colony.

It is useful to discuss Fredrickson's viewson pre-industrial social relations under threeheadings: (1) the nature of slavery — did itdevelop as racial or heathen slavery? (2) thenature of Cape society — was it fluid or closed?and (3) the colour line—was it permeable andwas racial mixing tolerated?

2. The nature of Cape slaveryFredrickson gives a novel interpretation ofthe rise of racial slavery in the Americancolonies and the Cape colony. He does notagree with the view that blacks were enslavedbecause they were black and consideredinnately inferior. Instead, blacks were

enslaved because they were vulnerable on twolevels: legally (they were captives) andculturally (they were heathens). With this as apremise, Fredrickson purports to show thatthe development of slavery took a differentroute in the American colonies and the Capecolony. He argues that in the American caseslavery underwent a relatively quick change.At first it was based on actual heathen status,and then on heathen descent. By the end of theseventeenth century, however, heathennesswas completely associated with blackness andfrom then onwards racial differences weremade the basis of slavery. In the Cape Colony,the attempt to find a legal basis for enslavingbaptised Christians was, in Fredrickson'sview, a much longer and more agonisingprocess. A major deterrent was theresolutions of the authoritative Synod ofDort which in 1618 laid down that baptisedslaves should not be sold, but should "enjoyequal right of liberty with the otherChristians". Fredrickson deduces from thisthat slavery was actually based on heathenstatus and that considerable uncertaintyabout the position of Christian slaves plaguedslaveholders. The fear that they would losetheir slaves was one of the major reasons whyso little missionary work was done amongblacks at the Cape. This long delay in the fulllegitimation of Christian slavery made thewhite supremacist tradition in South Africamuch more dependent on cultural pluralismthan the American One. In South Africa it wasalways necessary to stress that slaves wereboth "heathens" and "blacks". In a colony likeVirginia this was unnecessary because it hadalready been decided in the late seventeenthcentury to base slavery explicitly upon race(Fredrickson, 1981: 70-85).

Fredrickson, like MacCrone (1937), arguesthat Cape society during the first hundredyears and more was cleaved primarily by theEuropean's sense of cultural chauvinismrather than by feelings of biologicalsuperiority, which is the main root of modernracism. The MacCrone-Fredrickson thesisimplies that at the early stages of thesettlement at the Cape racial differences didnot mean much to the Europeans.Fredrickson argues further that the justi-fications for slavery did not turn around thefact that the slaves were non-Europeans butwas in face an ambiguous mixture of racial,cultural (especially religious) and legalrationalisations in which the racial elementbecame predominant only later on.

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Let us first look at Colonial America toexamine Fredrickson's interpretation of theideological basis of slavery In hisauthoritative analysis of race attitudes inColonial America, Winthrop Jordan statesthat heathenness was an important com-ponent in the colonists' initial reaction to theNegroes. Yet he warns that this can easily beoyerstressed. The colonists did notdistinguish consistently between the Negroesthey converted and those they did not. Indealing with people of different colour andculture American colonists referred to"Negroes" and by the eighteenth century to"blacks" and "Africans", but almost never to"heathens"/ "pagans" or "savages". It was,Jordan stresses, racial, not religious, slaverythat developed. But one still would want toknow what was the decisive consideration inthe act of enslavement: the slaves' blacknessor their heathen status? Jordan (1968: 97)gives an answer that is far more convincingthan that of Fredrickson.

[The] colonists' initial sense of difference fromthe Negro was found not on a singlecharacteristic but on a congeries of qualitieswhich, taken as a whole, seemed to set theNegro apart... What may have been his moststriking characteristics, his heathenism and hisappearance, were probably requisite to hiscomplete debasement. His heathenism alonecould never have led to permanent enslavementsince conversion easily wiped out that failing. Ifhis appearance, his racial characteristics, meantnothing to the English settlers it is difficult tosee how slavery based on race ever emerged,how the conception of complexion as the markof slavery ever entered the colonists' mind.

Fredrickson's interpretation of the way inwhich slavery developed at the Cape is alsoquestionable. In fact the development wasunambiguous. It arose as a result of a govern-ment decision to import slaves. There wasnever any fumbling for a legal basis or anydiscussion of whether slavery should befounded on colour or heathenness. There isno evidence for Fredrickson's assertion thatthe Cape passed through a slow and agonisingprocess trying to find a legal basis forChristian slavery, or that the resolutions ofthe -Synod ot &eit; which supportedChristian slaves' 'equal right' to freedom,were ever taken seriously into account. Allthat happened at the Cape was that a ministeror two at the Cape protested ineffectuallyabout the way in which the resolutions of theSynod of Dort were being ignored at the

Cape. But the actual impact of Dort wasminimal. As Richard Elphick( 1983) remarks,only 8 percent of the slaves manumittedbetween 1715 and 1791 stated in theapplication for manumission that they werebaptised, which hardly gives the impressionthat the status of a baptised Christian wasindeed considered as grounds for claimingfreedom.

Furthermore, the Company itself ignoredthe resolutions with respect to its own slavelabour force, approximately 600 strong.Between 1717 and 1791 more than 90 percentof the slaves it had baptised were not freed.(Elphick and Shell 1979). Clearly there waslittle that a burgher who had his slavebaptised had to worry about. This was theposition until 1770, when a regulation wasissued which gave the force of law to theresolution of the Synod of Dort by banningthe sale of slaves confirmed in the Christianreligion. Between 1770 and 1812, when thisregulation was abolished, there was indeed anelement of uncertainty and strong resistancebuilt up among the burghers to having theirslaves baptised. But there was nothing of thesort in the first 120 years of white settlementas Fredrickson's view would suppose. Onlysome 2000 slaves were baptised during thenearly 150 years of Company rule. This waspartly because the Cape church was opposedto baptising adults ignorant about thedoctrines of the Christian faith and partlybecause the few ministers (still fewer than 10by 1795, when there were already more than20000 colonists) found very little time to domissionary work among the dispersed slavepopulation. Even without the impediment ofthe regulation of 1770 the spread ofChristianity was extremely slow. The fact thatthe colonists so often stressed that slaves wereboth blacks and heathens had little to do withattempts to legitimise slavery as Fredricksontries to argue. It was merely an observationwhich closely parallelled the factual situation.

3. The nature of Cape societyWe come now to the degree of openness ofeighteenth century society in the Cape and theAmerican colonies. In the terms ofT-Min»B>awn41947) both the .Cape Colonyand the American South were 'closed' slavesystems where restrictive manumissionrequirements resulted in only a very smallnumber of slaves being manumitted. This wasin sharp contrast to Brazil, where slaves hadmuch greater opportunities for legal freedom

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and upward mobility. Fredricksonacknowledges this, but instead of building onit tries to establish another major differencebetween the Cape and the American South.This attempt forms another flaw in the book.

Fredrickson argues that the AmericanSouth from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century was fundamentally a castesociety consisting of a dominant white casteand a subordinate black caste. Members ofthe white caste overwhelmingly marriedwithin the caste and mixed marriages wereconsidered taboo. The caste line was a racialline maintained by discriminatory legislationapplicable to all blacks, whether slave or free.Intermarriage and bearing of arms by blackswere banned. In contrast, Fredrickson viewsthe late eighteenth and early nineteenthcentury as one which, like the South, pointedin the direction of a rigid rural divide.However, eighteenth century Cape societywas in a real sense different from either theSouth or post-1870 South African society.Interrupting the flow of his argument (whichis similar to that of MacCrone) that culturalslavery gradually yielded to racial slavery,Fredrickson suddenly latches onto amaterialist interpretation of Freund (1976).He writes: "One way to comprehend the socialstructure of the late-eighteenth- and earlynineteenth-century Cape is to see it as a classsociety in which race mattered in thedetermination of status but was not all-important" (Fredrickson, 1981: 88).

Fredrickson does not give convincingreasons why two societies which were both"closed" in terms of the requirements formanumission (the act of freeing a slave)would have strikingly different patterns ofstratification. He also makes a basic error byfailing to take into account the sharp regionalvariations in the Cape Colony as regards socialstratification. In their study on intergrouprelations at the Cape, Richard Elphick andRobert Shell (1979: 116-123,160-162) clearlydemonstrated the huge difference between therural JSouth Western Cape, which was veryrigid, and the city of Cape Town, which wasmore open with respect to manumission andintermarriage. Fredrickson did not take thisinto account, perhaps because he wanted,above all, to demonstrate differences betweenthe American South and the Cape Colony,rather than to accept that these societies werein many respects more similar than not.

It can still be argued with some plausibility,as Fredrickson does, that Cape Town was to a

limited extent a class society which evinced ameasure of fluidity. The social hierarchy ofthe town was composed of a white upper classof Company officials and wealthy colonists,an intermediate group of freemen, mostly whitebut including some people of colour, and aservile class. However, the interpretation ofthe Cape as a fluid class society is quite invalidwhen applied to the agrarian rural districts ofthe South Western Cape. If ever there was arigid racial caste society, it was the ruralWestern Cape.1 And it was not a peripheralarea but the heartland of slavery. In 1773,slaves living in the agrarian South WesternCape made up almost 70 percent of the totalslave population, while only 25 percent livedin Cape Town (Worden, 1982: 30).

The reason for the rigidity of rural WesternCape society must be sought primarily in theeconomic system. It was dominated byfarming which was based on slavery as Rosspoints out in this issue. Even enlightenedofficials considered it an indispensable evil.Social stratification in these districts was aboveall determined by racial slavery. The dividebetween the free and the slaves almostcompletely corresponded with the racialdivide. Very few slaves were ever manumitted.The Cape Colony's average manumission rateper year of 0,165 percent of the slave force (sixtimes lower than that of Brazil and Peru!)(Elphick and Shell, 1979: 136), gave the CapeColony one of the lowest manumission ratesin the world. And of all the manumissions inthe colony the rural western districtscontributed only a very small proportion.From 1715-1791 a total of 609 private ownerssubmitted requests for the manumission ofapproximately 1000 slaves. Of these ownersonly 29 lived outside the Cape district(Elphick and Shell, 1979: 143). Clearly therate of manumission in the heartland of Capeslavery1 was similar to that of the rigid NorthAmerican plantation systems. By denying orignoring this Fredrickson presents a picturethat fails to reveal an essential feature of Capesociety.

One must also look at the fates and fortunesof the slaves who were manumitted, for it isthe position of these free blacks whichindicates the extent to which racialcharacteristics, as distinct from slave status,determined the social structure. Studies byWorden (1982) and Hattingh (1981) for theCape district and the Stellenbosch districtrespectively conclude that there were very fewfree black farmers. Economic opportunities

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for free blacks were extremely limited. InStellenbosch there had been several free blackwine producers and grain farmers but by themiddle of the eighteenth century there wasno identifiable free black farmer. In CapeTown some free blacks were still able toaccumulate considerable possessions, but therural free blacks apparently lived near tobankruptcy and their plight worsened as theeighteenth century advanced. They could notrely on an extended family network forfinancial support in times of hardship.And there was not a strong possibility ofeither inheritance by the break-up of familyestates or marriage to a wealthy widow whichoften enabled a struggling white farmer toovercome his financial difficulties.

Even in Cape Town the position of the freeblacks worsened in the second half of theeighteenth century. Until then Cape Townwas still fairly open for free blacks. GovernorRyk Tulbagh remarked in 1752 that,"although they do not stem from Europeanblood, the Free Blacks and all other similarpersons living here nevertheless enjoy all theprivileges and rights of burghers" (Worden,1982: 391). However, in the second half of theeighteenth century the free blacks sufferedincreasing restrictions and statutorydiscrimination. The fact that they were bothof non-European descent and mostly poorcounted heavily against them. To be free wasnot an admission ticket to equal treatmentwith burghers; one had to be white as well.Writing about aspects of life in Cape Town inthe early nineteenth century, Shirley Judges(1977) concludes that free blacks were nearerin status to slaves than to whites.

Thus even for Cape Town there are seriousdoubts about Fredrickson's interpretationthat the Cape Colony was a class society inwhich race mattered in the determination ofstatus but was not all-important. For the ruralWestern Cape, the heartland of slavery, thisproposition is clearly incorrect.

What was the situation on the frontier tothe east and the north of the settled areas? Onan open or pioneering frontier where therewas a relatively small white population andabundant resources, some people of colour,whether they were free blacks or nominallyfree Khoikhoi, found opportunities to dointermediate jobs like hunting, drivingwagons or bartering.2 In a sense they were anintermediate class between the free and theunfree. Some marriages took place betweenpoor whites and members of the intermediate

class. However, when land gave out on thefrontier, whites threw obstacles in their wayon the grounds that the intermediate jobswere "burgher trades". Technically, abaptised Bastaard could qualify as apractitioner of a burgher craft or occupation,but on closing frontiers they were effectivelysqueezed out. Their colour, as much as theirpoor and powerless condition, wasresponsible for the intermediate class beingsquashed. What remained was a stark linebetween those who were white and free andthose who were non-white and unfree.(Giliomee, 1979 and 1981). Thus the frontiertended to turn steadily into a society that wasrigidly stratified along the lines of race,leaving only Cape Town to fit, in a limitedsense, Fredrickson's characterisation of theCape as a class society.

4. The permeability of the colour lineFredrickson's main proposition about racemixture and the rise of a colour line cansimply be summarised as follows: theAmerican South was characterised by arestrictive pattern, while the South Africanpattern was permissive, especially in the earlystages (the first century or so of settlement). InAmerica legislation was soon passed toprevent miscegenation and the growth of aclass of free people of colour. Although somemiscegenation still continued, this usuallyinvolved sexual exploitation of slave womenby masters or other whites. The basis ofsociety was the racial caste principle whichheld that all whites were members of anexclusive and privileged community by virtueof their racial origin. Children from unionsbetween whites and blacks were stigmatisedfor life as an "abominable mixture andspurious issue", as one statute phrased it, andhad little chance of being assimilated into thedominant group. Laws and social pressurelimited inter-racial marriages to a bareminimum.

In Fredrickson's view, the Cape Colonymanifested a striking contrast. According tohim there was a "surprising frequency andsocial acceptability of legal intermarriage"(Fredrickson, 1981: 114). No less strikingthan what Fredrickson calls the"comparatively high incidence of inter-marriage", was the tendency at the Cape,during the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, for the "white" or European popu-lation to absorb some of its mixed offspring.Fredrickson (1981: 119) concludes that

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"substantial infiltration of the whitepopulation by those of non-European originobviously occurred, contrary to the myth ofthe Afrikaner race purity that laterdeveloped".

One hesitates to take issue withFredrickson lest one is suspected of defendingthe myth of Afrikaner racial purity. However,purely on methodological grounds he must beseverely faulted. His conclusions, as far asSouth Africa is concerned, are unsoundbecause his focus and method produced adistorted picture of the colony taken as awhole. Firstly Fredrickson tends toextrapolate from data about first-generationor founding marriages (stamvaderhuwelike)to conclude that the rate of inter-racialmarriages was high. Using the data of Heese(1971), Fredrickson calculated that about 24percent of the first-generation marriagestaking place between 1688 and 1807 involvedone spouse who had some known degree ofnon-white ancestry. However, it must bestressed that first-generation marriagesrepresent an atypical sample and are not agood indication of the established mores of asociety. Curiously enough, Fredricksonrecognises this where he writes about first-generation marriages by German immigrantsat the Cape, noting that the low status of newimmigrants put them at a disadvantage withestablished colonists in competing for alimited number of women. However, he doesnot recognise that this is true in general forfirst-generation marriages and that onecannot make any reliable inferences fromthese marriages about the rate of inter-marriages in the second and succeedinggenerations.

A second methodological fault must benoted. Fredrickson cites with approval anarticle by an anonymous writer whoconcluded in 1953 that 10 percent of allmarriages at the Cape were clearly mixed.This study is apart from being anonymousalso polemical and must, for these reasons, betreated with great circumspection (Fredrick-son gives the unconvincing explanation thatthe author concealed identification because ofthe sensitive nature within South Africa of thequestion of white racial ancestry). This study,furthermore, investigated the marriageregisters only of a Cape Town congregation.So did one of the other studies cited, that ofM.C. Botha (1972), who calculated aninterracial marriage rate of 6-8 percent for theperiod 1757-1766.

Like first-generation^ marriages, CapeTown marriages represent an atypical sample.Cape Town was the home of passing sailorsand of a large number of unmarried servantsof the Dutch East India Company who hadlittle chance of competing successfully withthe burghers for wives. With its inns, a well-known brothel (the Company slave lodge),the emphasis on services rather thanproduction, and its seaport social mores

' Cape Town was markedly dillerent From therest of the colony. It is significant thatStellenbosch burghers who took black wiveschose to get married in Cape Town. A spotcheck by Elphick and Shell (1979: 131) of theStellenbosch church records of the eighteenthcentury revealed no obviously inter-racialmarriages at all. In an article in which Heese(1981) strongly criticised Fredrickson for theway in which he misinterpreted his data, hecalculated that in the Western Capecongregation of Swartland (Malmesbury)only 7 marriages out of a total of 508 weremixed in the period 1800 to 1840 :— apercentage of 1,2 against 15,9 percent,forCape Town in the same period. In his study ofthe rural Western Cape, Worden (1982: 401)concludes that miscegenation had littleimpact on the structure of society and theoffspring of such unions were assimilated intothe slave class. In this it resembled the NorthAmerican slave colonies. Even on the EasternCape frontier, where one could expect lessrigid morals and racial attitudes than in therural Western Cape, the rate of inter-racialmarriages was low. Of the 689 couples listedin the Graaff Reinet opgaaf of 1798, only 5-6percent can be described as "mixed" in thatone of the parents had a grandparent who was,not a European (Giliomee, 1979: 324).

One of the best indications of the incidenceof inter-racial marriages in the entire colony isa study by De Bruyn (1976) who found that ofa sample of 1063 children baptised in 1807 inall churches only 5 percent had a grandparentwho had some known non-European ancestry(at least one non-European grandparent).Inter-racial marriages which did occur werelargely confined to lower-status whites suchas lowly-paid Company servants. Ross (1975)observed that as a result of disproportionatesex ratios about 10 percent of adult, Cape-born white men failed to find legitimate wives.They entered into unions with womencategorised as "coloured". The result, in thewords of Ross (1975), was the following:

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Generation by generation, so it would seem, thepoorer and less well-connected male membersof the Christian community were paired off intothe mass of "non-white" underlings, for nodoubt it was these people who were least able toacquire white wives. So began the process ofequation between economic and racialstratification that has bedevilled South Africaever since.There is also little evidence for Fred-

rickson's assertion that the offspring of inter-racial marriages had a reasonable chance ofbeing recognised as white. Ross concludesthat the male offspring, at least, were almostcertainly ostracised from the dominantgroup. Some light-skinned "coloured" girlsdid manage to become accepted in whitesociety by marriage to a white man. However,given the evidence cited above about theincidence of inter-racial marriages, this couldnot have been a widespread phenomenon atall outside Cape Town, and it occurredpredominantly among the lower classes ofwhites. As the eighteenth century progressedthere was increasingly less evidence forFredrickson's view (1981: 120) that racemixture at the Cape could be described as"selective incorpora t ion throughhypergamous intermarriage".

How tolerant was Cape Town really inracial matters? To answer this question oneshould not be misled by the high incidence ofmiscegenation in and around the city.Miscegenation outside wedlock is not in anyway proof of racial tolerance for, asSchermerhorn (1978: 114) has put it:"miscegenation (which overwhelmingly takesthe form of concubinage) is simply the sexualaspect of superordination where dominant-group men exploit subordinate-groupwomen". It is mixed marriages that form thecrucial yardstick of racial tolerance. The factthat mixed marriages were legally permittedat the Cape (and not in the American South)may lead one to believe that the Cape was aracially permissive society. How is one toaccount for the legal sanction given to mixedmarriages at the Cape? One important factorwas the impact of the Company's racially-integrated possessions in East India. The EastIndia heritage, of which Fredrickson gives anexcellent account, undoubtedly influencedCompany officials at the Cape in theirattempt to structure society, but one does notknow how much the colonists were influencedby it. The place where this influence wouldmake itself felt, was the Matrimonial Courtset up by the government to give official

sanction to all proposed marriages.Prominent burghers served on this court andthere is no evidence that they ever refusedpermission to mixed couples. But one doeswonder whether the Company, which untilthe 1770s followed a strictly colour-blindpolicy, would ever have permitted a refusalbased purely on racial grounds.

Perhaps the question of the racial per-missiveness of the Cape should be couched indifferent terms. Why, given the fact that theCape in the eighteenth century clearlydeveloped into a racially segmented society,did the authorities and the burghers continueto permit mixed marriages? There can be nodoubt that if mixed marriages had somehowthreatened to disrupt the prevailing socialorder the Company would have had nocompunction in banning them regardless ofthe East Indian heritage. The key to thisproblem surely lies in the extremely lowmanumission rate. Because slaves could notmarry this meant that a very limited numberof mixed marriages could take place. Thosewhich did take place were not a matter ofgreat concern. With the fundamental divisionof slavery kept firmly in place by a low manu-mission rate, there was no fear among thedominant class that inter-racial marriageswould erode the social order: A ban on inter-racial marriages would have beensuperfluous. The restrictive manumissionregulations effectively served the purpose ofkeeping the existing divide intact.

This leaves the question of the attitude ofthe white colonists towards mixed marriages.Fredrickson argues that, as a result of the pre-ponderance of white males over females,mixed marriages at the Cape were much morefrequent than in the American colonies,where adult females were not so greatly out-numbered by males. There is something inthis, but not too much should be made of it.By the beginning of the eighteenth century thesex ratio of the white population in Virginiawas 100 women to every 400 men; that ofSouth Carolina was 100 : 148; while in NewEngland there was parity and even a surplusof women in some colonies. By the end of theeighteenth century the sex ration of the entirewhite population of the United States stood at100:104. (Moller, 1945:113-153). In the CapeColony the sex ratio declined from 100:260 in1690 to 100 : 140 in 1770 (Elphick and Shell,1979: 128). The relative shortage of whitewomen at the Cape made possible a greaterincidence of mixed marriages than in the

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American colonies, particularly in the firstphase of the settlement. However, halfwaythrough the eighteenth century white womenin the Cape Colony seemed to have reachedthat critical proportion where they couldexercise a decisive influence against mixedmarriages.

The influence of the attitudes of whitewomen on racial attitudes in general is largelyomitted in Fredrickson's account. Yet severalstudies of race relations stress this. In hismajor comparative study Davis (1966: 279)formulated it as a general rule that moralindignation about inter-racial intercourse wasmore intense where large numbers of whitewomen and a high valuation of marriagemade illicit sexual relations less tolerable.Here a distinction should be made betweenwomen of Northern European descent whosettled in North America, South Africa,Australia, etc., and those of SouthernEuropean descent who went out to SouthAmerica and particularly to Brazil. Theformer had a relatively stronger socialposition and status in family and public lifeand were much more able to prevent theirsons from marrying non-whites or theirhusbands from legitimising the offspring oftheir extra-marital affairs. Degler (1971: 232-239) in his comparative study sees this as oneof the factors responsible for the harsher formof racism of North America compared to themilder form of Brazil. Studies of othercolonial societies where North Europeanssettled confirm these impressions. Scher-merhorn (1978: 115) cited this observationabout India by two leading historians: "Itmust be confessed that the growing number ofEnglish women who began to settle in Indiawith their husbands increased the tendency ofthe white population to form ... a caste. H.Moller (1945) in a study of colonial NorthAmerica (which Fredrickson does not cite)concludes that the emergence of racialantipathies in the American colonies was, to alarge extent, due to the presence and influenceof white women. Women, Moller observes,generally tend to refrain from matrimonialand social relations with men of a social andcultural stratum lower than their own. In thecolonies this attitude worked againstEuropeans marrying people culturally andracially related to slaves. Undoubtedly thisattitude would also have expressed itself insevere pressure exerted by women on theirchildren to marry within the white group.

One expects that at the Cape, where all thewhite women were of North Europeandescent, a similar development took place andthat the resistance to mixed marriagesstiffened with every generation. Fredricksonerrs by attaching too much importance to thehigh incidence of inter-racial marriages in thefirst generation. It is only in the marriages ofthe second generation and onwards thatwomen could exert their influence. Thus evenin race relations it is sound practice to keep inmind the rule oichercher lafemtne. The wayin which the influence of white women on theevolution of South African race relations hasbeen ignored represents one of the greatestflaws of the male-centric South Africanhistoriography. Some remarks by an astuteobserver of eighteenth century Cape societysuggest that the social influence of Afrikanerwomen should not be underestimated.Mentzel (1925: 68) commented on theirnatural dignity and added: "South Africanwomen look to me more intelligent as a wholethan their menfolk. The majority among themunderstand more about what their husbandsdo than the men themselves."

5. ConclusionFredrickson's study has made a majorcontribution by shifting the investigation intothe origins of racial stratification and racismback into the pre-industrial period. Anotherimportant contribution is his identification ofslavery as the wellspring of white supremacistthought and action (Fredrickson, 1981: 93).Some of the other conclusions of Fredricksonwith respect to eighteenth century Capesociety must be doubted. According to him,cultural slavery only gradually yielded toracial slavery; late eighteenth- and earlynineteenth-century Western Cape societyremained fluid and resembled more a classthan a caste society; and it was the frontier andconquest of Bantu-speaking Africans whichimparted a rigid racial division (1981: 131).

Fredrickson's interpretation in somerespects is not fundamentally at odds withthat proposed by MacCrone (1937) nearlyfifty years ago. Two central assumptions ofMacCrone were that the original cleavage wasa religious one and that baptism offered aslave freedom and a higher status. This hasrecently been proved incorrect by Elphick andShell (1979) who showed that it is wrong todepict Cape slavery as originally based onculture. It is also incorrect to characterise theWestern Cape as primarily a class society "in

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which race mattered in the determination ofstatus but was not all-important"(Fredrickson, 1981: 88). The lowmanumission rate and incidence of mixedmarriages make it impossible to accept thisinterpretation. The relative degree of fluidityof Cape Town must not obscure the essentialfeatures of the larger society. A system ofstrict endogamy and a mixed marriage tabooamong people of European descent arose,particularly in the agrarian Western Cape, inthe eighteenth century and had hardened bythe end of that century. It was the WesternCape which exported these racial norms tothe frontier. Citing Owen Lattimore,Legassick (1980: 67-68) correctly states thatone must look to what settled society did tothe frontier, not what the frontier did tosociety.

Fredrickson's study is an importantcontribution to the attempt to transcend thearid race-orelass dichotomy and probe theway in which racial and cultural factorsinteracted with class factors in shaping thesocial structure. Fredrickson failed to capturethe true essence of eighteenth century Capesociety not because he failed to use the "right"paradigm, but because of methodologicalerrors and missing vital connections. Forinstance he attaches far too much importanceto the Dutch ethos of colonisation and theideology of the Company officials (inheritedfrom the East Indies). This induces him toexaggerate the "fluid" and "permissive"nature of Cape society and ignore the way inwhich the slave system steered Cape society ina different direction.

At the same time, racial prejudice played afar more important role in social relationsfrom the mid-eighteenth century onwardsthan Fredrickson suggests. These prejudiceswere related to the class order but also tothe nature of the Calvinist church and tothe high standing women of North Europeandescent enjoyed in the family and social lifecompared to their South European counter-parts in a colony like Brazil. Without bringinginto account the influence of white womenand the church one cannot adequately explainthe low incidence of inter-racial marriagesparticularly outside Cape Town. This madefor a fairly rigid racial order and not for aclass society. (Giliomee and Elphick, 1979).

Fredrickson's study is nevertheless sochallenging and sophisticated that it will forceSouth African historians to rethink both theeighteenth century and the race-class debate.

The first step in such an inquiry is to realisethat the terms of the debate have occasionallybeen incorrectly formulated. Johnstone(1976: 8) in his general discussion of thedebate conjures up an idealist straw man asfoil for his historical materialism. This is anidealism which has "a tendency of seeing andexplaining social realities solely or essentiallyin terms of mental and psychological factors,such as attitudes, ideas, beliefs, values andideology". There are in fact very fewhistorians who operate on such naiveassumptions. Even MacCrone (1937), who asa psychologist emphasised the role ofattitudes, did not say that the Afrikanerfrontier farmers acted the way they didbecause of some nasty prejudices. It was theanarchic frontier conflict situation whichprompted them to define rigid in- and out-groups. Put in theoretical terms, MacCrone'sargument comes down to the view that theorigins of the racism are frequently found inconquest and frontier conflict rather thanclass imperatives. MacCrone would today besupported by sophisticated cultural pluralistswho argue that "the polity is often prior to theeconomy" (Van den Berghe, 1981).

What this means is that historiansinterested in the casual connections betweenidealist and materialist forces must closelyinvestigate how that polity is constructed. Ananalysis of eighteenth century Cape societywill show that the political identification ofthe colonists went far beyond being anexpression of their place in the productionsystem. It confirms the point elsewhere madeby Fredrickson (1984) in the Americancontext that "the politics of state building andnation making can be shown to be a powerfulautonomous force" which to an importantextent is distinct from the politics of class. Aproper investigation of the construction of apolity means a much greater concern withethnic sentiments, the concerns ofgovernmental elites and bureaucracies than"even the most flexible adherents of Marxismhave thus far managed to do" (Fredrickson,1984).

Accordingly, an analysis of eighteenthcentury Cape society must, apart from thefocus on the vital importance on classrelationships, also concentrate on the polity.This polity developed around both a legal anda customary conception of society.Officialdom defined four legal status groups— burghers, Company servants, slaves andindigenous aliens. Anyone who has done

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primary research on the eighteenth centurywould know how pervasive this categor-isation was in the thoughts and actions ofthose living at that time (Elphick andGiliomee, 1979). Drawing on a commonmedieval heritage the colonists themselvesadded a customary definition of man's rank insociety according to the estate in which he wasborn. Primordial loyalties in terms oflanguage, religion and culture, together withhonour and style of life, were the maindeterminations of an estate (Ross, 1982;Hughes, 1979). It was on these legal andcustomary conceptions that subsequentmobilisations and identifications of class andcolour built. Only by studying how politicaland class relationships and identificationsreinforced each other can the full complexityof eighteenth century Cape society berevealed. An exclusive focus on race or classor of how race derived from class will notprobe deep or wide enough.

NOTES1. The Cape district comprised both Cape Town and

rural divisions along the Western coastal belt. By 1770roughly half of the slave population lived in thisdistrict.

2. Legassick (1980) argued that if there was an importantshift on the South African frontier it was the trendaway from the master-slave class relationship of theWestern Cape to a chief-subject or patron-clientrelationship. These relationships did not make thefrontier the scene of greater hostility but of greaterfluidity than the slave-holding Western Cape.Elsewhere (Giliomee, 1981) I argued that on whatcould be called the "open" or pioneering frontier,characterised by an abundance of land and lack of asingle controlling authority, people were often forcedto seek allies across racial lines. However, in what Icalled the closing frontier, where competition forscarce resources was getting ever fiercer, fears andhates were intensified in a conflict which from the starthad cultural and material dimensions. The frontierwhich Legassick knows best, the Northern frontieralong the Orange River, remained open for aprolonged period while, except for the first decade(1775 to c. 1785) the eastern frontier was a rapidlyclosing society. Cross-racial al l iances andrelationships tended to be so brief and fragile that it isdifficult to see the chief-subject or patron-clientrelationship as a general phenomenon. The assertionthat "the sterotype of the African as enemy cannot betraced to the eighteenth century" (Legassick, 1980:68)must be seriously questioned. The documents aboundwith evidence of a white frontier society which wasinsecure and fearful of the Africans who were oftenportrayed as formidable competitors and foes.Military alliances or co-operation were tactical ratherthan strategic. Neverthele^Legassick's articleremains the single most important revision in theSouth African historiography of the 1970s.

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