"a Just and Self-Respecting System"?: Black Independence, Sharecropping, and Paternalistic Relations in the American South and South Africa

Agricultural History

Volumn 72, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 352-380

  Ochiltree, Ian D ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AFRICAN AMERICANS; AGRICULTURAL HISTORY; BLACK POPULATION; CULTURAL HISTORY; PATERNALISM; RURAL HISTORY; SHARECROPPING;

SOUTH AFRICA, HIGHVELD; USA, (SOUTH);

EID: 0031791301     PISSN: 00021482     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. The Highveld can be defined as "the highland savannah plain, bisected by the Vaal River, which forms the arable heartland of the South African interior plateau." It ranges from an altitude of 1,800 meters (6,000 feet) in the east where it is bordered by the Drakensberg and Maluti mountain ranges, to 1,200 meters (4,000 feet) in the west. See Timothy J. Keegan, Rural Transformations in Industrializing South Africa: The Southern Highveld to 1914 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986), xii. In the context of the discussion which follows, South African sharecropping was most typically found on the Highveld districts of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, but increasingly on the more isolated areas of the southwestern Transvaal as the twentieth century progressed.
2. James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa (1897; reprint, New York: New American Library, 1969); Maurice S. Evans, Black and White in the Southern States: A Study of the Race Problem in the United States From a South African Point of View (London: Longman, Green, 1915); George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), xxiv; John Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
3. James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa (1897; reprint, New York: New American Library, 1969); Maurice S. Evans, Black and White in the Southern States: A Study of the Race Problem in the United States From a South African Point of View (London: Longman, Green, 1915); George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), xxiv; John Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
4. James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa (1897; reprint, New York: New American Library, 1969); Maurice S. Evans, Black and White in the Southern States: A Study of the Race Problem in the United States From a South African Point of View (London: Longman, Green, 1915); George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), xxiv; John Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
5. James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa (1897; reprint, New York: New American Library, 1969); Maurice S. Evans, Black and White in the Southern States: A Study of the Race Problem in the United States From a South African Point of View (London: Longman, Green, 1915); George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), xxiv; John Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
6. Charles Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, A South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1996); Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (London: Jonathan Cape, 1974). See also Colin Bundy, "Comparatively Speaking: Kas Maine and South African Agrarian History," Journal of Southern African Studies 23 (June 1997): 363-70. The resurgence of interest in comparative studies of these two countries was demonstrated at a symposium held in London in 1996. Organized by Shula Marks and Rick Halpern, the symposium "Beyond White Supremacy? Comparative American and South African History" featured sessions on the comparative histories of agriculture, mining, religion, and the environment.
7. Charles Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, A South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1996); Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (London: Jonathan Cape, 1974). See also Colin Bundy, "Comparatively Speaking: Kas Maine and South African Agrarian History," Journal of Southern African Studies 23 (June 1997): 363-70. The resurgence of interest in comparative studies of these two countries was demonstrated at a symposium held in London in 1996. Organized by Shula Marks and Rick Halpern, the symposium "Beyond White Supremacy? Comparative American and South African History" featured sessions on the comparative histories of agriculture, mining, religion, and the environment.
8. Charles Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, A South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1996); Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (London: Jonathan Cape, 1974). See also Colin Bundy, "Comparatively Speaking: Kas Maine and South African Agrarian History," Journal of Southern African Studies 23 (June 1997): 363-70. The resurgence of interest in comparative studies of these two countries was demonstrated at a symposium held in London in 1996. Organized by Shula Marks and Rick Halpern, the symposium "Beyond White Supremacy? Comparative American and South African History" featured sessions on the comparative histories of agriculture, mining, religion, and the environment.
9. James Roark writes in Masters Without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), "The dominant theme in the planters' lives became the search for a substitute for slavery," 131.
10. Eric Foner, "Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth Century America," Oxford University Harmsworth Inaugural Lecture, 17 May 1994 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 25; R. W. Wallace (in Mississippi) to M. A. Wallace (his sister), 16 August 1865, Wallace, Rice, and Duncan Family Papers, Mss. P1b (9019), University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina (hereafter WRDFP).
11. R. W. Wallace to M. A. Wallace, 16 August 1865, WRDFP; Michael Wayne, The Reshaping of Plantation Society: The Natchez District, 1860-1880 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983), 45.
12. Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 132; Ronald L. Davis, Good and Faithful Labor: From Slavery to Sharecropping in the Natchez District, 1860-1890 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), 3.
13. Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 132; Ronald L. Davis, Good and Faithful Labor: From Slavery to Sharecropping in the Natchez District, 1860-1890 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), 3.
14. Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch, "Sharecropping: Market Response or Mechanism of Race Control?" in What Was Freedom's Price?, ed. D. G. Sansing (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1978), 60;
15. Davis, Good and Faithful Labor, 4; J. Dozier Pou (of Columbus, Ga.) to Robert Preston Brooks, 15 February 1912, box 28, mss. 1300, Robert Preston Brooks Papers, Special Collections, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia (hereafter RPBP). Ransom and Sutch suggest that blacks were the principal initiators of crop-sharing arrangements, writing, "it cannot be argued that sharecropping was imposed by whites on an unwilling but powerless black population. Instead, it is closer to the truth to say that sharecropping was imposed by blacks on a reluctant class of white landowners," in "Sharecropping," 66.
16. William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (1941; reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 276.
17. Keegan, Rural Transformations. Sharecropping had long been a feature of the South African countryside. Early European travelers had commented on crop-sharing arrangements that allowed Sotho farmers to cultivate Griqua lands in the 1860s. Interracial sharecropping relationships between white landowners and black farmers were certainly in evidence in the Orange Free State by 1872 and quite possibly predated the emergence of similar tenancy arrangements in the American South. In 1916 one observer reminded critics that sharecropping was nothing new, "There was a considerable body of natives who have for years - some of them for all their lives -lived as independent tenants under the share system on private lands," Sir W. H. Beaumont, chair, minutes of Natives Land Commission, UG-25-16, Union of South Africa (Cape Town: Cape Times Ltd., Government Printers, 1916).
18. Keegan, Rural Transformations. Sharecropping had long been a feature of the South African countryside. Early European travelers had commented on crop-sharing arrangements that allowed Sotho farmers to cultivate Griqua lands in the 1860s. Interracial sharecropping relationships between white landowners and black farmers were certainly in evidence in the Orange Free State by 1872 and quite possibly predated the emergence of similar tenancy arrangements in the American South. In 1916 one observer reminded critics that sharecropping was nothing new, "There was a considerable body of natives who have for years - some of them for all their lives - lived as independent tenants under the share system on private lands," Sir W. H. Beaumont, chair, minutes of Natives Land Commission, UG-25-16, Union of South Africa (Cape Town: Cape Times Ltd., Government Printers, 1916).
19. Friend (Bloemfontein, So. Africa), 10 December 1897, cited in Keegan, Rural Transformations, 25, 61.
20. Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine, 17. Sotho farmers were known to be skilled and experienced agriculturalists, and as early as the 1860s, the lowlands of Lesotho were described in official documents as "the granary of the Free State and parts of the Cape Colony." But the long and debilitating wars with the Orange Free State undermined the basis of what had earlier been described as this "thriving and well-ordered people," and by 1884 perhaps thirty thousand Sotho farmers had been drawn onto the Highveld in search of farming opportunities. Tim Keegan, "The Making of the Orange Free State, 1846-54," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 17, no. 1 (1988); Tim Keegan, "The Restructuring of Agrarian Class Relations in a Colonial Economy: The Orange River Colony, 1902-1910," Journal of Southern African Studies 5, no. 2 (1979). A signifcant difference between the two worlds was that African sharecroppers were striving for a foothold on land that they once regarded as their own, whereas African American sharecroppers were farming cotton on lands that they had been compelled to work as slaves.
21. Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine, 17. Sotho farmers were known to be skilled and experienced agriculturalists, and as early as the 1860s, the lowlands of Lesotho were described in official documents as "the granary of the Free State and parts of the Cape Colony." But the long and debilitating wars with the Orange Free State undermined the basis of what had earlier been described as this "thriving and well-ordered people," and by 1884 perhaps thirty thousand Sotho farmers had been drawn onto the Highveld in search of farming opportunities. Tim Keegan, "The Making of the Orange Free State, 1846-54," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 17, no. 1 (1988); Tim Keegan, "The Restructuring of Agrarian Class Relations in a Colonial Economy: The Orange River Colony, 1902-1910," Journal of Southern African Studies 5, no. 2 (1979). A signifcant difference between the two worlds was that African sharecroppers were striving for a foothold on land that they once regarded as their own, whereas African American sharecroppers were farming cotton on lands that they had been compelled to work as slaves.
22. Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine, 17. Sotho farmers were known to be skilled and experienced agriculturalists, and as early as the 1860s, the lowlands of Lesotho were described in official documents as "the granary of the Free State and parts of the Cape Colony." But the long and debilitating wars with the Orange Free State undermined the basis of what had earlier been described as this "thriving and well-ordered people," and by 1884 perhaps thirty thousand Sotho farmers had been drawn onto the Highveld in search of farming opportunities. Tim Keegan, "The Making of the Orange Free State, 1846-54," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 17, no. 1 (1988); Tim Keegan, "The Restructuring of Agrarian Class Relations in a Colonial Economy: The Orange River Colony, 1902-1910," Journal of Southern African Studies 5, no. 2 (1979). A signifcant difference between the two worlds was that African sharecroppers were striving for a foothold on land that they once regarded as their own, whereas African American sharecroppers were farming cotton on lands that they had been compelled to work as slaves.
23. Stanley Trapido, "Landlord and Tenant in a Colonial Economy: The Transvaal, 1880-1910," Journal of Southern African Studies 5 (Spring 1978): 26-58.
24. William Beinart, "The Disappearance of Sharecropping: A South African Comparison," in Race and Class in the American South Since 1890, ed. Melvyn Stokes and Rick Halpern (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1994), emphasized that acquiring adequate grazing for a homestead's cattle was at least as important as the size and quality of the land itself, 111-18. For general discussions of sharecropping, see A. F. Robertson, The Dynamics of Productive Relationships: African Share Contracts in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); T. J. Byres, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers (London: Frank Cass, 1983).
25. William Beinart, "The Disappearance of Sharecropping: A South African Comparison," in Race and Class in the American South Since 1890, ed. Melvyn Stokes and Rick Halpern (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1994), emphasized that acquiring adequate grazing for a homestead's cattle was at least as important as the size and quality of the land itself, 111-18. For general discussions of sharecropping, see A. F. Robertson, The Dynamics of Productive Relationships: African Share Contracts in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); T. J. Byres, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers (London: Frank Cass, 1983).
26. William Beinart, "The Disappearance of Sharecropping: A South African Comparison," in Race and Class in the American South Since 1890, ed. Melvyn Stokes and Rick Halpern (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1994), emphasized that acquiring adequate grazing for a homestead's cattle was at least as important as the size and quality of the land itself, 111-18. For general discussions of sharecropping, see A. F. Robertson, The Dynamics of Productive Relationships: African Share Contracts in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); T. J. Byres, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers (London: Frank Cass, 1983).
27. Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine, 6. For the significance of absentee landlords, see Keegan, Rural Transformations, 64-74, and Stanley Trapido, "Putting a Plough to the Ground: A History of Tenant Production on the Vereeniging Estates, 1896-1920," in Putting a Plough to the Ground: Accumulation and Dispossession in Rural South Africa, 1850-1930, ed. William Beinart, Peter Delius, and Stanley Trapido (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986), 336-72. In the South, on the other hand, absentee landlords preferred to rent land to tenants rather than use sharecroppers because of the difficulties in ensuring adequate supervision. Robert Preston Brooks, "A Local Study of the Race Problem: Race Relations in the Eastern Piedmont Region of Georgia," Political Science Quarterly 26 (June 1911): 212, wrote, "Cropping tends to prevail in those communities where the landlord lives on his plantation and gives his whole time to the work of supervision. Unless closely supervised, the negro will not work steadily, nor take care of the stock, nor keep up the terraces, hedges and fences, nor even take proper care of the crop at harvest."
28. Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine, 6. For the significance of absentee landlords, see Keegan, Rural Transformations, 64-74, and Stanley Trapido, "Putting a Plough to the Ground: A History of Tenant Production on the Vereeniging Estates, 1896-1920," in Putting a Plough to the Ground: Accumulation and Dispossession in Rural South Africa, 1850-1930, ed. William Beinart, Peter Delius, and Stanley Trapido (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986), 336-72. In the South, on the other hand, absentee landlords preferred to rent land to tenants rather than use sharecroppers because of the difficulties in ensuring adequate supervision. Robert Preston Brooks, "A Local Study of the Race Problem: Race Relations in the Eastern Piedmont Region of Georgia," Political Science Quarterly 26 (June 1911): 212, wrote, "Cropping tends to prevail in those communities where the landlord lives on his plantation and gives his whole time to the work of supervision. Unless closely supervised, the negro will not work steadily, nor take care of the stock, nor keep up the terraces, hedges and fences, nor even take proper care of the crop at harvest."
29. Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine, 6. For the significance of absentee landlords, see Keegan, Rural Transformations, 64-74, and Stanley Trapido, "Putting a Plough to the Ground: A History of Tenant Production on the Vereeniging Estates, 1896-1920," in Putting a Plough to the Ground: Accumulation and Dispossession in Rural South Africa, 1850-1930, ed. William Beinart, Peter Delius, and Stanley Trapido (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986), 336-72. In the South, on the other hand, absentee landlords preferred to rent land to tenants rather than use sharecroppers because of the difficulties in ensuring adequate supervision. Robert Preston Brooks, "A Local Study of the Race Problem: Race Relations in the Eastern Piedmont Region of Georgia," Political Science Quarterly 26 (June 1911): 212, wrote, "Cropping tends to prevail in those communities where the landlord lives on his plantation and gives his whole time to the work of supervision. Unless closely supervised, the negro will not work steadily, nor take care of the stock, nor keep up the terraces, hedges and fences, nor even take proper care of the crop at harvest."
30. Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine, 6. For the significance of absentee landlords, see Keegan, Rural Transformations, 64-74, and Stanley Trapido, "Putting a Plough to the Ground: A History of Tenant Production on the Vereeniging Estates, 1896-1920," in Putting a Plough to the Ground: Accumulation and Dispossession in Rural South Africa, 1850-1930, ed. William Beinart, Peter Delius, and Stanley Trapido (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986), 336-72. In the South, on the other hand, absentee landlords preferred to rent land to tenants rather than use sharecroppers because of the difficulties in ensuring adequate supervision. Robert Preston Brooks, "A Local Study of the Race Problem: Race Relations in the Eastern Piedmont Region of Georgia," Political Science Quarterly 26 (June 1911): 212, wrote, "Cropping tends to prevail in those communities where the landlord lives on his plantation and gives his whole time to the work of supervision. Unless closely supervised, the negro will not work steadily, nor take care of the stock, nor keep up the terraces, hedges and fences, nor even take proper care of the crop at harvest."
31. Keegan, Rural Transformations, 51;
32. Union of South Africa, Natives Land Commission, UG-22,41;
33. Owen Thomas, "Confidential Report to the Chairman and Directors of the Transvaal Consolidated Land and Exploration Co. Ltd." (Johannesburg, 1903), 5-6,
34. cited by Trapido in "Landlord and Tenant," 32;
35. Van Onselen, "Race and Class in the South African Countryside: Cultural Osmosis and Social Relations in the Sharecropping Economy of the South Western Transvaal, 1900-1950," American Historical Review 95 (February 1990): 106.
36. Union of South Africa, Department of Native Affairs, Blue Book on Native Affairs for 1910, UG17-1911 (Cape Town: Cape Times Ltd., Government Printers, 1911), 154, 274.
37. Keegan, Rural Transformations, 190; Friend, 5 February 1908.
38. Thomas Nkadimeng and Georgina Relly, "Kas Maine: The Story of a Black South African Agriculturalist," in Town and Countryside in the Transvaal, ed. Belinda Bozzoli (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1983), 88.
39. Charles Flynn, White Land, Black Labor: Caste and Class in Late Nineteenth-Century Georgia (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983), 9-11.
40. Brooks, "Local Study of the Race Problem," 208; Robert Preston Brooks, "Report on Economic Conditions on Georgia Plantations," 10; Orville V. Burton, "Race and Reconstruction: Edgefield County, South Carolina," in The Southern Common People: Studies in Nineteenth Century Social History, ed. E. Magdol and J. Wykeham (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 216, 218. For a discussion on the development of lien laws and their significance to white control over the black tenancy, see Harold Woodman, New South, New Law: The Legal Foundations of Credit and Labor Relations in the Postbellum Agricultural South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995).
41. Brooks, "Local Study of the Race Problem," 208; Robert Preston Brooks, "Report on Economic Conditions on Georgia Plantations," 10; Orville V. Burton, "Race and Reconstruction: Edgefield County, South Carolina," in The Southern Common People: Studies in Nineteenth Century Social History, ed. E. Magdol and J. Wykeham (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 216, 218. For a discussion on the development of lien laws and their significance to white control over the black tenancy, see Harold Woodman, New South, New Law: The Legal Foundations of Credit and Labor Relations in the Postbellum Agricultural South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995).
42. Brooks, "Local Study of the Race Problem," 208; Robert Preston Brooks, "Report on Economic Conditions on Georgia Plantations," 10; Orville V. Burton, "Race and Reconstruction: Edgefield County, South Carolina," in The Southern Common People: Studies in Nineteenth Century Social History, ed. E. Magdol and J. Wykeham (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 216, 218. For a discussion on the development of lien laws and their significance to white control over the black tenancy, see Harold Woodman, New South, New Law: The Legal Foundations of Credit and Labor Relations in the Postbellum Agricultural South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995).
43. Brooks, "Local Study of the Race Problem," 208; Robert Preston Brooks, "Report on Economic Conditions on Georgia Plantations," 10; Orville V. Burton, "Race and Reconstruction: Edgefield County, South Carolina," in The Southern Common People: Studies in Nineteenth Century Social History, ed. E. Magdol and J. Wykeham (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 216, 218. For a discussion on the development of lien laws and their significance to white control over the black tenancy, see Harold Woodman, New South, New Law: The Legal Foundations of Credit and Labor Relations in the Postbellum Agricultural South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995).
44. Woodman, New South, New Law, 114; Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco and Rice Cultures Since 1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985): 4, 6. For restrictive and oppressive legislation and social codes of these years, see William Cohen, At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861-1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991). For segregation and white supremacy in a comparative perspective,
45. Woodman, New South, New Law, 114; Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco and Rice Cultures Since 1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985): 4, 6. For restrictive and oppressive legislation and social codes of these years, see William Cohen, At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861-1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991). For segregation and white supremacy in a comparative perspective,
46. Woodman, New South, New Law, 114; Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco and Rice Cultures Since 1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985): 4, 6. For restrictive and oppressive legislation and social codes of these years, see William Cohen, At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861-1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991). For segregation and white supremacy in a comparative perspective,
47. see Cell, Highest Stage, and Fredrickson, White Supremacy.
48. Nkadimeng and Relly, "Kas Maine," 95. Tim Keegan writes that "The agitation against the black sharecroppers was generally focused on the supposed and ill-defined relationship between black peasant prosperity and white landlessness and impoverishment, with all that these developments allegedly meant for the structure of authority in a racially ordered society," Rural Transformations, 183.
49. Nkadimeng and Relly, "Kas Maine," 95. Tim Keegan writes that "The agitation against the black sharecroppers was generally focused on the supposed and ill-defined relationship between black peasant prosperity and white landlessness and impoverishment, with all that these developments allegedly meant for the structure of authority in a racially ordered society," Rural Transformations, 183.
50. Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (1979; reprint, London: James Currey, 1988), 215. For more on the Land Act
51. see Timothy J. Keegan, "The Sharecropping Economy, African Class Formation and the Natives Land Act of 1913 in the Highveld Maize Belt," in Town and Countryside in the Transvaal;
52. Dunbar Moodie, "Class Struggle in the Development of Agrarian Capitalism in South Africa: Reflections on the Relevance of the Natives Land Act, 1913" (paper presented at History Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand, 1981). The impact of the Land Act on African sharecroppers is vividly described in
53. Sol T. Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa (1916; reprint, Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1987);
54. see also R. W. Msimang, Natives Land Act, 1913: Specific Cases of Evictions and Hardships (Johannesburg: South African Native National Congress, 1914).
55. Van Onselen, "Race and Class," 107;
56. Van Onselen, "The Social and Economic Underpinning of Paternalism and Violence on the Maize Farms of the South Western Transvaal, 1900-1950," Journal of Historical Sociology 5 (June 1992): 139; Keegan, Rural Transformations, 157. The applicability and usefulness of paternalism as an analytical tool for the study of South African society has been questioned by Robert Ross, "Paternalism, Patriarchy and Afrikaans," South African Historical Journal 32 (May 1995): 34-47. Ross argues that attempts to "import specific aspects of the historiography on slavery in the United States to South Africa are mistaken" (34). With the brief exception of a period from 1815 to 1834, he says, the sources - very different in South Africa to those available in American archives - do not allow the paternalism thesis to be rigorously applied or tested. Moreover, the idealized notions of "quasi-kin" on which paternalism rests are, he argues, not present in Cape slavery. Significantly, Ross confines his criticism to historians of South African slavery and does not criticize Van Onselen's use of paternalistic relationships in the sharecropping countryside of the early-twentieth century Transvaal. Van Onselen, while acknowledging the "danger of useful sociological tools being employed rather indiscriminately in what are, after all, vastly differing historical settings," argues specifically that the paternalism that he sees mediating the relationship between Kas Maine and his white landlords was one that did involve precisely the "sense of quasi-kinship transcending barriers of caste or race" that George Fredrickson identified as integral to paternalism. See Van Onselen, "Social and Economic Underpinnings," 129; George Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race, Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism and Social Inequality (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 19.
57. Van Onselen, "The Social and Economic Underpinning of Paternalism and Violence on the Maize Farms of the South Western Transvaal, 1900-1950," Journal of Historical Sociology 5 (June 1992): 139; Keegan, Rural Transformations, 157. The applicability and usefulness of paternalism as an analytical tool for the study of South African society has been questioned by Robert Ross, "Paternalism, Patriarchy and Afrikaans," South African Historical Journal 32 (May 1995): 34-47. Ross argues that attempts to "import specific aspects of the historiography on slavery in the United States to South Africa are mistaken" (34). With the brief exception of a period from 1815 to 1834, he says, the sources - very different in South Africa to those available in American archives - do not allow the paternalism thesis to be rigorously applied or tested. Moreover, the idealized notions of "quasi-kin" on which paternalism rests are, he argues, not present in Cape slavery. Significantly, Ross confines his criticism to historians of South African slavery and does not criticize Van Onselen's use of paternalistic relationships in the sharecropping countryside of the early-twentieth century Transvaal. Van Onselen, while acknowledging the "danger of useful sociological tools being employed rather indiscriminately in what are, after all, vastly differing historical settings," argues specifically that the paternalism that he sees mediating the relationship between Kas Maine and his white landlords was one that did involve precisely the "sense of quasi-kinship transcending barriers of caste or race" that George Fredrickson identified as integral to paternalism. See Van Onselen, "Social and Economic Underpinnings," 129; George Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race, Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism and Social Inequality (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 19.
58. Van Onselen, "The Social and Economic Underpinning of Paternalism and Violence on the Maize Farms of the South Western Transvaal, 1900-1950," Journal of Historical Sociology 5 (June 1992): 139; Keegan, Rural Transformations, 157. The applicability and usefulness of paternalism as an analytical tool for the study of South African society has been questioned by Robert Ross, "Paternalism, Patriarchy and Afrikaans," South African Historical Journal 32 (May 1995): 34-47. Ross argues that attempts to "import specific aspects of the historiography on slavery in the United States to South Africa are mistaken" (34). With the brief exception of a period from 1815 to 1834, he says, the sources - very different in South Africa to those available in American archives - do not allow the paternalism thesis to be rigorously applied or tested. Moreover, the idealized notions of "quasi-kin" on which paternalism rests are, he argues, not present in Cape slavery. Significantly, Ross confines his criticism to historians of South African slavery and does not criticize Van Onselen's use of paternalistic relationships in the sharecropping countryside of the early-twentieth century Transvaal. Van Onselen, while acknowledging the "danger of useful sociological tools being employed rather indiscriminately in what are, after all, vastly differing historical settings," argues specifically that the paternalism that he sees mediating the relationship between Kas Maine and his white landlords was one that did involve precisely the "sense of quasi-kinship transcending barriers of caste or race" that George Fredrickson identified as integral to paternalism. See Van Onselen, "Social and Economic Underpinnings," 129; George Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race, Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism and Social Inequality (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 19.
59. Van Onselen, "The Social and Economic Underpinning of Paternalism and Violence on the Maize Farms of the South Western Transvaal, 1900-1950," Journal of Historical Sociology 5 (June 1992): 139; Keegan, Rural Transformations, 157. The applicability and usefulness of paternalism as an analytical tool for the study of South African society has been questioned by Robert Ross, "Paternalism, Patriarchy and Afrikaans," South African Historical Journal 32 (May 1995): 34-47. Ross argues that attempts to "import specific aspects of the historiography on slavery in the United States to South Africa are mistaken" (34). With the brief exception of a period from 1815 to 1834, he says, the sources - very different in South Africa to those available in American archives - do not allow the paternalism thesis to be rigorously applied or tested. Moreover, the idealized notions of "quasi-kin" on which paternalism rests are, he argues, not present in Cape slavery. Significantly, Ross confines his criticism to historians of South African slavery and does not criticize Van Onselen's use of paternalistic relationships in the sharecropping countryside of the early-twentieth century Transvaal. Van Onselen, while acknowledging the "danger of useful sociological tools being employed rather indiscriminately in what are, after all, vastly differing historical settings," argues specifically that the paternalism that he sees mediating the relationship between Kas Maine and his white landlords was one that did involve precisely the "sense of quasi-kinship transcending barriers of caste or race" that George Fredrickson identified as integral to paternalism. See Van Onselen, "Social and Economic Underpinnings," 129; George Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race, Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism and Social Inequality (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 19.
60. Van Onselen, "The Social and Economic Underpinning of Paternalism and Violence on the Maize Farms of the South Western Transvaal, 1900-1950," Journal of Historical Sociology 5 (June 1992): 139; Keegan, Rural Transformations, 157. The applicability and usefulness of paternalism as an analytical tool for the study of South African society has been questioned by Robert Ross, "Paternalism, Patriarchy and Afrikaans," South African Historical Journal 32 (May 1995): 34-47. Ross argues that attempts to "import specific aspects of the historiography on slavery in the United States to South Africa are mistaken" (34). With the brief exception of a period from 1815 to 1834, he says, the sources - very different in South Africa to those available in American archives - do not allow the paternalism thesis to be rigorously applied or tested. Moreover, the idealized notions of "quasi-kin" on which paternalism rests are, he argues, not present in Cape slavery. Significantly, Ross confines his criticism to historians of South African slavery and does not criticize Van Onselen's use of paternalistic relationships in the sharecropping countryside of the early-twentieth century Transvaal. Van Onselen, while acknowledging the "danger of useful sociological tools being employed rather indiscriminately in what are, after all, vastly differing historical settings," argues specifically that the paternalism that he sees mediating the relationship between Kas Maine and his white landlords was one that did involve precisely the "sense of quasi-kinship transcending barriers of caste or race" that George Fredrickson identified as integral to paternalism. See Van Onselen, "Social and Economic Underpinnings," 129; George Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race, Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism and Social Inequality (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 19.
61. Jane Maguire, On Shares: Ed Brown's Story (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1975).
62. Daniel, Breaking the Land, 242, xii; Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Random House, 1974), 3; Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race, 19. Fredrickson, of course, raised questions about Genovese's paternalism thesis and its applicability to "the living and breathing aristocrats of antebellum South Carolina," 19. The debate remains vigorous. William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), is but the latest attempt to move slave studies beyond notions of paternalism.
63. Daniel, Breaking the Land, 242, xii; Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Random House, 1974), 3; Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race, 19. Fredrickson, of course, raised questions about Genovese's paternalism thesis and its applicability to "the living and breathing aristocrats of antebellum South Carolina," 19. The debate remains vigorous. William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), is but the latest attempt to move slave studies beyond notions of paternalism.
64. Daniel, Breaking the Land, 242, xii; Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Random House, 1974), 3; Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race, 19. Fredrickson, of course, raised questions about Genovese's paternalism thesis and its applicability to "the living and breathing aristocrats of antebellum South Carolina," 19. The debate remains vigorous. William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), is but the latest attempt to move slave studies beyond notions of paternalism.
65. Daniel, Breaking the Land, 242, xii; Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Random House, 1974), 3; Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race, 19. Fredrickson, of course, raised questions about Genovese's paternalism thesis and its applicability to "the living and breathing aristocrats of antebellum South Carolina," 19. The debate remains vigorous. William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), is but the latest attempt to move slave studies beyond notions of paternalism.
66. For more on indebtedness, see Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972).
67. New York Times, 11 July 1865, cited in Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861-1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 275; Southern Cultivator, July 1865, cited in Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 41; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 110, citing Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 252; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 130.
68. New York Times, 11 July 1865, cited in Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861-1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 275; Southern Cultivator, July 1865, cited in Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 41; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 110, citing Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 252; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 130.
69. New York Times, 11 July 1865, cited in Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861-1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 275; Southern Cultivator, July 1865, cited in Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 41; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 110, citing Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 252; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 130.
70. New York Times, 11 July 1865, cited in Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861-1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 275; Southern Cultivator, July 1865, cited in Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 41; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 110, citing Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 252; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 130.
71. New York Times, 11 July 1865, cited in Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861-1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 275; Southern Cultivator, July 1865, cited in Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 41; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 110, citing Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 252; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 130.
72. New York Times, 11 July 1865, cited in Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861-1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 275; Southern Cultivator, July 1865, cited in Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 41; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 110, citing Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 252; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 130.
73. New York Times, 11 July 1865, cited in Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861-1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 275; Southern Cultivator, July 1865, cited in Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 41; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 110, citing Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 252; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 130.
74. Van Onselen, "Social and Economic Underpinnings," 138, 145, 152. In the South African example, Van Onselen suggests "the conditions under which such [paternalistic] relationships are eroded becomes fairly predictable." They start to wane, he argues, "wherever the structural inequalities of colonialism are either challenged or destroyed, where there is a marked acceleration in the development of capitalist relations of production, a fairly sudden diversification in the range of crops being farmed and/or there is a significant increase in the rate at which agricultural production is being mechanized," 145.
75. Van Onselen, "Social and Economic Underpinnings," 136.
76. Ibid., 147. For more on the ICU, see Helen Bradford, A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924-1930 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988).
77. Ibid., 147. For more on the ICU, see Helen Bradford, A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924-1930 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988).
78. Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 381.
79. Flynn, White Land, Black Labor, 18, quoting Philip Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freedman (New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1889), 44-48; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 148, quoting Robert Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in Publications of the American Sociological Society (Chicago: American Sociological Society, 1913), 76; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 5. "After Reconstruction," says Vernon Burton, "Edgefield whites came into contact with fewer and fewer individual blacks. Moreover, the legacy of Reconstruction violence prevented reestablishment of many 'positive' dimensions of paternalism even after the planters had regained hegemony," Burton, "Race and Reconstruction," 229.
80. Flynn, White Land, Black Labor, 18, quoting Philip Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freedman (New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1889), 44-48; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 148, quoting Robert Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in Publications of the American Sociological Society (Chicago: American Sociological Society, 1913), 76; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 5. "After Reconstruction," says Vernon Burton, "Edgefield whites came into contact with fewer and fewer individual blacks. Moreover, the legacy of Reconstruction violence prevented reestablishment of many 'positive' dimensions of paternalism even after the planters had regained hegemony," Burton, "Race and Reconstruction," 229.
81. Flynn, White Land, Black Labor, 18, quoting Philip Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freedman (New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1889), 44-48; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 148, quoting Robert Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in Publications of the American Sociological Society (Chicago: American Sociological Society, 1913), 76; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 5. "After Reconstruction," says Vernon Burton, "Edgefield whites came into contact with fewer and fewer individual blacks. Moreover, the legacy of Reconstruction violence prevented reestablishment of many 'positive' dimensions of paternalism even after the planters had regained hegemony," Burton, "Race and Reconstruction," 229.
82. Flynn, White Land, Black Labor, 18, quoting Philip Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freedman (New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1889), 44-48; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 148, quoting Robert Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in Publications of the American Sociological Society (Chicago: American Sociological Society, 1913), 76; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 5. "After Reconstruction," says Vernon Burton, "Edgefield whites came into contact with fewer and fewer individual blacks. Moreover, the legacy of Reconstruction violence prevented reestablishment of many 'positive' dimensions of paternalism even after the planters had regained hegemony," Burton, "Race and Reconstruction," 229.
83. Flynn, White Land, Black Labor, 18, quoting Philip Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freedman (New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1889), 44-48; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 148, quoting Robert Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in Publications of the American Sociological Society (Chicago: American Sociological Society, 1913), 76; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 5. "After Reconstruction," says Vernon Burton, "Edgefield whites came into contact with fewer and fewer individual blacks. Moreover, the legacy of Reconstruction violence prevented reestablishment of many 'positive' dimensions of paternalism even after the planters had regained hegemony," Burton, "Race and Reconstruction," 229.
84. Flynn, White Land, Black Labor, 18, quoting Philip Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freedman (New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1889), 44-48; Wayne, Reshaping of Plantation Society, 148, quoting Robert Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in Publications of the American Sociological Society (Chicago: American Sociological Society, 1913), 76; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 5. "After Reconstruction," says Vernon Burton, "Edgefield whites came into contact with fewer and fewer individual blacks. Moreover, the legacy of Reconstruction violence prevented reestablishment of many 'positive' dimensions of paternalism even after the planters had regained hegemony," Burton, "Race and Reconstruction," 229.
85. Percy, Lanterns on the Levee, 276; Bradford, A Taste of Freedom, 43. Recalling the negotiations with the Freedmen, Percy wrote, "If the price of cotton is good, we shall both make something. If it is bad, neither of us will make anything, but I shall probably lose the place and you will lose nothing because you have nothing to lose. It's a hard contract these hard times for both of us, but it's just and self-respecting and if we both do our part and have a little luck we can both prosper under it," 275.
86. Percy, Lanterns on the Levee, 276; Bradford, A Taste of Freedom, 43. Recalling the negotiations with the Freedmen, Percy wrote, "If the price of cotton is good, we shall both make something. If it is bad, neither of us will make anything, but I shall probably lose the place and you will lose nothing because you have nothing to lose. It's a hard contract these hard times for both of us, but it's just and self-respecting and if we both do our part and have a little luck we can both prosper under it," 275.
87. Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth-Fox Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 398; Keegan, Rural Transformations, 157.
88. Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth-Fox Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 398; Keegan, Rural Transformations, 157.