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Dissertation Information for Laura Jane Mitchell

NAME:
- Laura Jane Mitchell

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (2001)

ADVISORS:
- William H. Worger

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Edward A. Alpers
- Jan de Vries
- Robert S. Kirsner

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Contested terrains: Property and labor on the Cedarberg frontier South Africa, 1725--c.1830

Abstract: This dissertation is a social history of southern Africa. It explores the nexus between land and labor that underpins agrarian society, while striving not to lose sight of the environment in which people lived and the ways in which the landscape was a part of their daily lives. The dissertation is based on original archival research in the collections of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, the British Colonial Office, in addition to published and unpublished archaeological data.

The labor market at the Cape of Good Hope in the Eighteenth Century was tightly controlled and based predominantly on slave labor. My dissertation examines the relationship between slaves and indigenous indentured servants, refuting recent scholarship that seeks to include all forms of bonded labor under the category of "slave." I argue instead for the importance of economic and social distinctions between slavery and indenture.

Access to land was also strictly regulated under VOC rule. The dissertation provides a detailed examination of land tenure patterns on the colonial frontier in the eighteenth century. I uncovered records of Khoisan loan farm permit holders in the Cedarberg region of the Western Cape, the fact of which overturns the prevailing notion that formal land tenure was white prior to Ordinance 50. The existence of these loan farms also contradicts a race-based categorization of VOC land policy. This dissertation further challenges previous racial divisions in historiography by looking at Khoisan and settler land use practice in a single perspective, thereby bridging the disjuncture between pre-colonial and colonial. By incorporating archaeological data with archival evidence I am able to situate hunters, herders, and settlers in the Cedarberg at the same time, often at the same sites.

The dissertation concludes with a discussion of periodization that questions the notion that any single event or process is an acceptable date for closing a colonial frontier

MPACT Scores for Laura Jane Mitchell

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calculated 2008-09-03 21:43:18

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Students under Laura Jane Mitchell

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None