Friday, May 31, 2013

16th Century Portuguese Gunman in Benin Bronze


 Portuguese rifleman from 16th century Kingdom of Benin, made of a copper alloy despite the misleading titles of such pieces, "Benin bronzes." It shows a fascinating example of how a West African society's artists depicted Portuguese peoples in their local style and indicates the importance of Portuguese-Benin relations in what is now southern Nigeria, not too far from the modern city of Lagos, which began as a trading town under domination of the Edo peoples of Benin. The Kingdom of Benin, ruled by powerful obas who centralized the polity by the second half of the 15th century, impressed the Portuguese and other European travelers in the centuries to come. For instance, Dutch visitors were impressed by the palatial mini-city of the oba, comparing it in size to Haarlem in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the exquisite sculptural tradition of Benin impressed European observers and colonialists, particularly during the British conquest and sacking of Benin City in the end of the 19th century, ensuring plunder of priceless art pieces that would find its way into European museums and the hands of private collectors. Walls constructed of earth, well-designed and layed out city streets, and established, beautiful aesthetic values in sculpture indicate this was a powerful, relatively prosperous kingdom which had inherited aspects of ancient Yoruba "lost wax" method sculptural traditions (look up Yoruba city-states in earlier centuries in southwestern Nigeria, which some argue may follow an even earlier sculptural tradition of the Nok culture, dating back as far as a few centuries before the present era). Moreover, the Yoruba influence on the Edo peoples is likely evident in some of their religious practices, as well as founding myths which link them to Yoruba antecedents, though, of course, ethnic identities such as Yoruba were not firmly written in stone in ancient precolonial West Africa. Note the features of this Portuguese male, with a European-styled helm and a gun, yet barefoot. Perhaps as soon as the Portuguese traders reached this part of West Africa, they shed all their excessively warm clothing for the comforts of tropical West Africa and Central Africa.
Benin was, after the Wolof and Mali empires in the northwestern West Africa, the most centralized coastal polity the Portuguese encountered in the 15th and 16th centuries. Moreover, as an expanding, centralizing state, the oba did not initially participate in the slave trade, wanting to retain young male captives and slaves for labor within the confines of the kingdom. In fact, if I remember correctly, Benin initially imported slaves while exporting Malaguetta peppers, ivory, and other tropical exports. Soon enough, the kingdom would engage in slave trading from the export side of things and Lagos, the beautiful trading town along the fort with a centuries-long history of local and regional trade of salted fish and other products would become a center of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and, by the second-half of the 19th century, British imperialism. Here are some other beautiful pieces of Benin art that deserve universal acknowledgement, which also show a West African visualization of white Europeans rather than the more typical European representation of Africans in art, as well as providing an illustrative history of the kingdom, European visitors, and its kings. Afro-Portuguese ivories also show cultural mixing through a combination of European and local styles as well as Portuguese Christian iconography appearing with Benin motifs and symbolism, a form of cultural creolization that could be found further south in the Kingdom of Kongo, whose king converted to Christianity before the end of the 15th century. The nkangi kidatu, or Kongo crucifix show a fusion of locally-derived forms of Christianity as well as Iberian Catholicism.

Cuban-Nigerian Musical Exchanges: Fela Kuti and Beny Moré


Cuban legend of 1950s music, Beny Moré, recorded "Babarabatiri," a song meant to evoke Cuba's African musical and cultural heritage, also covered by Tito Puente. The horn line sounds very similar to a particular Fela Kuti song from his afrobeat, period, "Shakara," which has a remarkably similar horn line. It's very likely a coincidence, but given the considerable influence of Cuban son, mambo, and son montuno in West Africa, I wouldn't be surprised if Fela Kuti had perhaps heard of Beny Moré and, consciously or unconsciously, borrowed the rhythmic horn line (later played on guitar throughout the song). Who knows, perhaps I am just being overly imaginative...you tell me what you think?             

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Afro-Asian Studies: An Important Understudied Field


A new area of interdisciplinary study I must learn more about is African-Asian encounters and exchange, both historically and in the present. Perhaps growing up with a half-Chinese brother was an influence on my interest in the subject, but taking a course with professor Michael Thornton at UW about mutual perceptions and intergroup relations of people of color in the United States, which focused on African-American relations with Latinos and Asian/Americans, was an even larger influence. Prior to that course, I had already developed a keen interest in African diasporic studies in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, as well as a special interest to Africa, particularly pre-colonial Africa. Moreover, the field of African-Asian Studies is particularly relevant to our post-colonial (even if neocolonialism obviously perpetuates the older set of relations between the Global South and the North) world as diasporic communities of Africa and Asia mingle in the metropolitan centers of the former hegemonic powers as well as increasing trade, collaboration, and cultural encounters among African, Asian, and Latin American states increases. In addition, within the centers of former (and current) empire, such as the U.S., interactions between and among people of color may alter the white-black binary in upcoming decades (unless you adhere to black exceptionalism in U.S. racism), as one can see in the case of certain cities in the U.S. in California or New York, as well as London (I am thinking of the collective 'blackness' of South Asians and Africans/Afro-Caribbeans in the UK, who at times are both referred to as 'black,' as well as evidence of Japanese-Americans and African-Americans engaging in anti-racist organizing and radical political coalitions through organizations such as the Black Panthers, etc.). 

Besides social, political, and economic ramifications of increased global exchange between and among people of African and Asian descent both at home and in the diaspora from North to South, Afro-Asian studies is useful for academic inquiry into the presence, history, cultural creolization, and bidirectional influence Africa and Asia exchanged before, during, and after formal European colonial rule. These relations, of course, increased exponentially during and after the rise of European hegemony, against the will of some Africans and Asians while, in some cases, with direct participation of others, but, for me, the pre-colonial relationships are more interesting since so little is known or understood. As the above map indicates, Chinese porcelain and other products found their way well into the interior of Eastern Africa, stretching from the Sudan to what is now South Africa. The map also indicates possible locations along the East African coast that Chinese records occasionally alluded to, some dating back as far as the 8th or 9th centuries. To me, this is particularly interesting as it, well, for instance, indicates African agency, long-distance trade, and cultural and material interactions of local communities from the East African coast to the hinterland and deep into the interior or southeastern Africa, several centuries before the establishment of Portuguese and other European traders along the eastern coast of Africa. Furthermore, it contributes to the dismantling of white supremacist, Eurocentric historical narratives which, unfortunately, persist to this day. Evidence of Asian/African encounters also includes the presence of African slaves, pilgrims, traders, and travelers in Asia, such as potential Aksumite-affiliated traders in Sri Lanka and South Asia, enslaved African-descendants in India and Iran, cultural mixing in some Swahili architecture along the East African coast, and, in the case of Christian Ethiopia, influences from Indian Hindu art and religious symbolism in the Churches of Lalibela and triptychs of a religious nature. Naturally, Chinese and Asian silks, innovations, and artistic and religious symbolism likely impacted many parts of North Africa, too.
Image from a post by Eccentric Yoruba, possible depiction of an African "kunlun" slave in China

As I have blogged about here, East Asian regions such as the archipelago of Japan acquired substantial direct contact with Africans, through Portuguese, Dutch, and, eventually, American racist lens. Thus, the colonial period illustrates the spread of Western European racial theories, perceptions of Africa and African-descendants, and a "West is best" outlook of world cultures and civilizations (despite waves of Sinophilia or Japanophilia in places like France, for instance, other other parts of western Europe) spread to parts of Asia where some cultures in East and Southeast Asia had very little to no conception of experience with Africa, the ramifications of which persist through the recycling of Western European and North American-derived stereotypes, racist films and marketing, and old-fashioned, outdated racial pseudoscience. My aforementioned blog post endeavors to illustrate this rather nasty development through images of dark-skinned and African peoples in Japan from the 16th century to the 20th century, which undoubtedly adopt more Western sambo and racist depictions of Africa, Africans, and the African diaspora, which survives in Japanese popular culture's anime and manga, advertizing, and Japanese ethnocentrism. I am confident a similar analysis could be made in the case of China, or other parts of Asia, such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, and other Southeast Asian nations (particularly during and after WWII, where Black soldiers from Africa and the US served). So, one can analyze relations and mutual perceptions between the two regions under the aegis of white supremacist world empire within Africa and Asia, as well as the relationships that existed between the two continents and their peoples in terms of the colonized Americas.

The Caribbean's post-emancipation societies in Trinidad, Guyana, and other parts of the Americas sought to exploit "coolie" labor to ensure the survival of the plantation system and/or cheap labor (the U.S. and the exploitation of Chinese workers for the continental railroad expansion, for instance, stands out, especially since the history of relations between the Chinese and African-Americans in the 19th century is mostly ignored and understudied (except for a great essay on the Chinese-American community in Mississippi that worked so hard to assimilate itself into the White, Anglo-Southern identity of the state). Interactions between Afro-Caribbean and Indian indentured labor in the Caribbean are also of interest for Afro-Asian studies, particularly regarding politics, anti-colonial movements in Trinidad and Guyana, race, and music, such as Trinidadian soca, which blends Indian and Afro-Caribbean influences such as calypso. Or perhaps in Peru and Brazil, where some small Japanese groups settled, provide another case study in Afro-Peruvian and Afro-Brazilian interactions with Japanese and other Asian-descended communities, another area of Afro-Asian exchange understudied. Of course, their movements around solidarity, racial justice, and cultural métissage
in other 'former' imperial centers, such as Desi hip-hop in Chicago or New York, or Trinidadian and Guyanese dougla and other "Blasian" peoples of the world, such as Malagasy, some South African coloureds (at least half of all slaves from the Cape were from Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka, the other half mostly from Mozambique, East Africa, Madagascar, the latter a zone of Afro-Austronesia/Asian interactions throughout it's human history).

As for the present, China's increasing economic exchanges with Africa is of note, as well as relations between various African regions and India, or the current experiences and struggles of India's Siddis and Sri Lanka's "Kaffirs," minority populations descended from Africans over the last several centuries, mostly slaves. One can also look at the influence of Bollywood in Africa, such as the Senegalese groups of Indophiles or the depiction of Africa and African-descended peoples in Indian film and popular culture. Alternatively, one could focus on youth culture and identities, particularly in the case of "Blasians" in prominent positions or well-known (Tiger Woods, that's you!) or Asian rappers from India, Japan, or anywhere across the globe. Indeed, one could focus on a multitude of various cultural, musical, political, economic, religious, social, and linguistic encounters and mixing that have impacted Afro-Asian relations from ancient history to the unequally 'globalized' 21st century. That's why I love Afro-Asian studies as an academic field, because it challenges the Eurocentric mainstream narratives of world history and race, as well as troubling the narrowly focused lens of African Studies, Chinese Studies, etc. It reveals the intersectional framework's suitability for integrating area studies while illustrating the need for interdisciplinary collaboration and revision of established schools of thought on intergroup relations, race and critical race theory and studies, sociology, ethnomusicology, hip-hop and jazz, slavery studies, and economic and political theory.

Good suggestions for reading are the following:
1. India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms
2. Vijay Prashad has written extensively on the subject
3. A book entitled Bengali Harlem tells the unknown story of South Asian immigrants in early 20th century urban American communities who married African-American and Puerto Rican women.
4. This link is quite useful and includes images on Africans in the Indian Ocean world
5. Julie Wilensky wrote a brilliant essay on the subject, "The Magical Kunlun and “Devil Slaves”:
Chinese Perceptions of Dark-skinned People and Africa before 1500."
6. Various articles by sociologists, Asian-American studies academics and researchers, Africanists, African-American Studies specialists, and historians focusing on Africans and African-Americans in the imperial wars of Europe and the US, particularly those who analyze the mixed-race children of African-American soldiers and local Asian women in Korea, Vietnam, or Japan, for instance.
7. John Russell has written a lot on Japanese perceptions of blackness, I highly recommend him!
8. Wagatsuma, a Japanese sociologist, has written about Japanese perceptions of blackness, too, as well as Michael Thornton.
9. Learn more about the Swahili coast of East Africa, perhaps starting with my post on it, here!
10. A potentially useful starter for South Asian/American relations with people of African descent in the US can be found here, in a collaborative effort I wrote with an Indian-American colleague.
11. Literature also offers several interesting directions for Afro-Asian studies. Zadie Smith's White Teeth fuses the families of Bengali-Londoners with those of a mixed-race, Jamaican and white English family, with some useful insights on race relations between and among people of color and whites in the UK. Likewise, V.S. Naipaul, an Indo-Trinidadian-Briton, has written extensively on the Caribbean, Africa, and India, and some reviews of two of his novels by me may be of interest, particularly A Bend in the River. Check out A House for Mr. Biswas, too, if you want to read an epic about an Indian-Trinidadian male in the colonial British West Indies.
12. Keep looking for more, I have come across various academic articles on depictions of Asian/Americans and African-Americans in 'mainstream' (you know, white) films, including Rush Hour, and various blogs, such as "The Blasian Narrative."

Monday, May 27, 2013

Solange's Sandcastle Disco

My jam. "I'm just a sandcastle, baby don't blow me away."

 Who would've known, the wind and the sunshine
Would oh baby, baby
Build up these walls of mine
And I can't see you or breathe you
Cause there's trouble right beneath you
It's all in the night
But oh baby, baby
Come pick me up in your ride

I'm a cool low Jane
with the skip on my feet
I play tough as nails
With my heart on my sleeve
I'm nothing but a sand castle
Baby don't blow me away, away

Baby I know, you do that to all the girls
You know that I'm fragile, Ooh
Bay ba ba ba baby, don't blow me away
Baby I know, you do that to all the girls
You know that I'm fragile, Ooh
Bay ba ba ba baby, dont blow me away

Who would've known, the storm of my past time
Would oh baby, make me
Losing the song of the eye
And I can't believe you or read you
Cause there's pleasure in your preview
It's all in your eyes
But oh Mr. Dj, baby
Can you meet me outside

You're an old school dude
With the kick on ya shoes
You've got groove in ya hands
The way you spend those tunes
I'm nothing but a sandcastle
Baby don't blow me away, away

Baby I know, you do that to all the girls
Baby I'm fragile, Ooh
Bay ba ba ba baby, don't blow me away
Baby I know, you do that to all the girls
You know that I'm fragile, Ooh
Bay ba ba ba baby, don't blow me away

Ooh, and just like the ocean
Lays right there behind me
Look over my sandcastle
And there's a sight to see
Don't blow me away
Don't blow me baby

Ooh baby I know, you do that to all the girls
You know that I'm fragile, Ooh
Bay ba ba ba baby, don't blow me away
Baby I know, you do that to all the girls
You know that I'm fragile, Ooh
Bay ba ba ba baby, please don't blow me away

Away, away
Away, away
Away, away

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Transvaal Boer-African Relations in the 19th Century

Paul Kruger

            The Voortrekker state in the Transvaal, the South African Republic (SAR), possessed tenuous control at best of many parts of the region. The Voortrekkers’ arrival in the 1830s and 1840s as well as subjugation of some African societies never resulted in the defeat of the largest or most powerful chiefdoms.[1] Consequently, relations with African neighboring societies were a mixture of collaboration and cooperation versus outright war, slave raiding, and hostility. Moreover, the importance attached to race and class in determining social status, as well as the widespread practice of slavery through captive women and children from surrounding African societies, reveals an increasingly important attachment to European-descended authority in the Transvaal, but weakened by the SAR’s dependence on African allies for labor, aid, and economic vitality.[2] Thus, Boer-African relations in the Transvaal varied, depending on economic, political, and social factors such as the subjugation or alliance of African polities with the SAR, or mutually beneficial trade and slaving to commando raids, war, and African dispossession and flight in the face of further colonial encroachment. The diversity of Boer relations with their African neighbors illustrates the dangers or anachronistic historical perspectives that posit an unchanging landscape of racial relations between the ancestors of Afrikaners and Black South Africans.
            The positive elements of Transvaal Boer relations with their African neighbors primarily revolved around mutually beneficial trade. Chiefly concerning Boer relations with African neighbors in the ivory and skins trade, for instance, led to Boers selling guns to Africans as well as linking African communities with the global economy through the Cape Colony, Natal, and Delagoa Bay.[3] In addition to hunting and the ivory trade, African and Boer traders, besides providing some access to firearms for Africans, also engaged in slave trading with African societies. The AmaSwati, who targeted the BaPedi, for instance, a mutual enemy of Boers and AmaSwati, sold captives to the Boers.[4] African allies and armed auxiliaries of Boer commando raids procured the “black ivory” of women and children captives, legally inboekelinge, or “apprentices,” not only from the BaPedi, but also in the north, in Zoutpansberg, from VhaVenda chiefdoms in the 1850s and 1860s.[5] From slave trading, African allies and auxiliary forces gained slaves, as women to marry and incorporate into their societies, and additional labor.[6] This was all in spite of the SAR’s prohibition on slavery and the slave trade after the 1852 Sand River Convention with Britain.[7]
Furthermore, the BaTswana groups who stayed in the Transvaal under the authority of the Transvaal Boers often acquired additional wealth and power through their alliances. They collaborated with the Boers against Mzilikazi, joining commandos largely comprised of Griqua, Tswana, and Korana, paving the way for Boer land grants and entrenchment of whites.[8] Those men and their followers who joined Boer commando raids on African societies outside of the Transvaal or control of the Republic often acquired followers, captives, wealth in cattle, other booty from raids, and, in some cases, attained a higher material standard of living than most Boers.[9] Boer leaders, unsurprisingly, protected the interests of prosperous BaTswana chiefs who supported their rules, in exchange for labor of some BaTswana on Boer farms, participation in the commando raids, and acceptance of Boer authority in the Transvaal.[10] Some of these BaTswana chiefs, such as Chief Kgamanyane, whose Kgatla dependents lived on a farm that would become property of Commandant Paul Kruger, increased the sizes of their towns and settlements, accumulated more cattle and dependents, gained access to new, industrial tools and manufactured goods, and, in some cases, acquired European skills and influences in the construction of homesteads and buildings.[11]  These men, dikgosi, BaTswana chiefs who profited through their relationship with Boers, prove local African agency since they chose alliances with Boers for their material, political, or personal interests against other African societies.[12]
In addition, others living within the boundaries of the SAR were often able to negotiate favorable contract agreements with white landholders who gradually acquired more and more of the land.[13] As a result, some Africans became relatively prosperous through some of their landlord-tenant agreements with Boers landholders, and, like the aforementioned BaTswana chiefs, could attain further wealth through trade and alliances with Boers against other African societies. The Transvaal Republic was too weak, unwilling, and unable to introduce effective measures to compel African peasants to work or redistribute African labor from the largest white landholders to small, white farmers, so Africans could take advantage of their position with influential white landholders, usually in political power as field-cornets, commandants, and presidents, since the SAR paid government officials with land due to its debts and lack of cash.[14] Indeed, some large landholders offered higher wages to Black African workers than poor whites for their labor, because the latter were perceived as superior laborers and producers.[15] Moreover, Boer dependence on the swart skuts, armed African receiving guns from the Boers, illustrates the degree to which mutual relations between the two in terms of expanding the hunting and commercial activities linking the Transvaal, their African neighbors, other Boer states, and the global economy.[16]
Increasing class divisions among the white population also cautions 21st century assumptions about race and class in the Boer republic. The class divide, exemplified by officials such as Paul Kruger and other field-cornets, commandants, and presidents, though elected, invariably arose from landed elite. Transvaal Boer elites, who, as mentioned previously, received their salaries in the form of land payments from the state, as well as through their privilege of engagement in commando raids and deals with local African communities, distanced themselves from what would become the “poor white problem”. White elites’s reluctance to redistribute African labor for small farmers, partly due to their dependence and alliances with Africans, as well as their own economic interests, symbolized the growing divides within white society.[17] As a result, any shared common cultural, racial and religious background in the Transvaal could not override the existence of growing class divide among Boers while some Africans in their midst became wealthier than most whites. Even important figures such as Kruger, Pretorius, and other Transvaal white elites, despite a shared view of African societies as savage or heathen and believing in white supremacy, were capable of acts of benevolence and mutually agreeable relations with African workers, neighbors, and chiefs.[18] In some ways, class rather than race emerged as a signifier of status, since some aforementioned African chiefs and communities retained their land, power, acquired further wealth. Others escaped to the nascent mining centers at Kimberley for wage labor or refusing to work for whites altogether in the Transvaal remained viable options for most of the second half of the 19th century.[19] Whites, like their Black African neighbors, were divided, perhaps not along ethnic lines as the African polities in the region were, but class divisions among Boers facilitated the position of wealthy Black chiefs.
As for the African communities who remained at odds with Boer expansion and migration, relations were, unsurprisingly far more negative.  Boer commando raids against the VhaVenda in the north with African auxiliaries and allies, for instance, illustrated the decidedly negative relations between the two groups in Zoutpansberg.[20] Becoming targets for slave raiding for inboekelinge, or indentured child and female labor, turned into a reality for African societies beleaguered by Boer raids to the north and eastern Transvaal, in contradiction of the 1852 Sand River Convention and various ZAR legislation acts prohibiting slavery.[21] These children and women were traded between and among the various Boer republics and their African allies, such as the captive women among the VhaVenda who were taken by VaTsonga men participating in Boer raids in Zoutpansberg in the 1860s.[22] Contrary to the expressed abolitionist decrees of the Transvaal, both Boers and British observers knew of the vast internal slave trade among Boer republics, reaching proportions wherein nearly ten percent of the entire Boer population was indentured or enslaved women and children from African societies.[23] Their abuse was rampant, manumission seldom, and cases of torture and killings of inboekelstel often went unpunished. Upon adulthood, these slaves often married other slaves, became acculturated, speaking Dutch, converting to Christianity and, in many cases, losing all connection to their parents’ societies and African cultures. The racist epithet for such individuals, Oorlam Kaffers, implying that their conversion to Christianity, learning of Dutch, and acquiring skills Boers wanted them to gain, endowed a civilized status, nonetheless did not change their social status as a multi-generational servile class to Boer families.[24]
Besides slave raiding and abduction of African children for their labor, Boer relations with African neighbors became negative in some attempts to regulate, control, and demand labor of those within the confines of Boer authority while also manipulating disunity and conflicts among their African neighbors for their own interests. The case of the exodus of the Mokgatle Thethe, located on Kruger’s farm, Saulspoort, motivated by increased demands in the 1870s for taxation and labor, indicates how Boer landlords and the Transvaal government overstepped their bounds and made demands they could not enforce from Africans.[25] Boer floggings of African chiefs likewise contributed to problems with African neighbors, since public corporal punishment of African leaders, such as the flogging of Kgamanyane in 1870, was remembered well into the twentieth century by descendants of the Bakgatla in modern Botswana.[26] Such acts not only served to humiliate and enforce Boer authority over subject African chiefs, but disgraced his entire people.
The mid-1860s marked worsening relations between Tswana groups and Boers, when the latter increased pressure for payment of taxes in the form of cash, livestock, labor, and plans for irrigation farming led to more labor demand for dams.[27] So, Boer relations with their allies, such as some Tswana groups, deteriorated over time, or as in the case when closer British inspection lowered the scale of slave raiding and trading, Boer demand for necessary African labor meant expectations of additional labor and taxation from subject Africans within SAR.[28] Boer attempts at controlling and regulating Africans’ labor and access to land were enshrined within the SAR’s legislation prohibiting Africans from purchasing land, as well as the 1871 Commission on African Labour.[29] The inability to meet African labor by Boers, despite the discriminatory and racist Native Act of 1870[30] and decades of land dispossession since 1839, when land was accumulated in the hands of a relatively small group of white land barons, such as Kruger and Piet Joubert, prompted the Commission.[31] The discriminatory laws of the Native Act against black ownership of freehold farms, blacks carrying passes, and the interpretation of to what degree should these laws be enforced were open to interpretation to different officials, so some opposed the compulsory labor component, whereas others saw it as a necessity as the diamond fields of Kimberley attracted laborers away.[32] Measures taken by the state to ensure African subservience according to Articles 15, 16, and 17 focused on the use of taxation for coerced African labor, labor contracts imposed on those violating pass laws, and higher taxes on Africans not employed on white-owned farms.[33] White employers often failed to remunerate their African laborers, though the Africans sent petitions and complaints, another example of conflicts and negative relations between Africans within the Transvaal and Boers.[34]
Racist laws and dispossession withstanding, Boer attempts to completely subjugate and control or regulate African movement, labor, and power in the Transvaal was limited because of their dependence on African allies, the cash-strapped central government, and African access to Kimberley for better wages in later decades, thereby reducing the degree to which the SAR could be too strict with subjugated natives, since they could also flee to autonomous societies near and outside the Transvaal.[35] Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, Transvaal Boer-African relations were complex, dynamic, depended on location and other factors, and illustrate the fallacy of inserting racial notions and conflict of the twentieth century into the past. Undoubtedly, the ZAR was a white supremacist state as enshrined in the 1858 Constitution, declaring white supremacy in terms of church and state, and explicitly designated as such through the exploitation and equating of Africans with slave labor as subservient peoples.[36] But their dependence and mutually beneficial relations with some Tswana and other African societies indicates more fluid relations contingent upon economic interests, political conflict with and among African polities, and the class divisions among whites.
Some Africans attained higher living standards and wealth then most Boers, and the intensification of class stratification amongst Transvaal Boers suggests the importance of multiple factors and personal motives in the interactions of Boers and African chiefdoms. Similarly, that relations could begin with alliance and end poorly, as in the case of some Tswana chiefdoms and the SAR, whereas others remained negative throughout the period, such as the Transvaal Boer and allies expulsion of the Ndebele, or the series of commando raids against the VhaVenda led by commandos under Albasinia in Zoutspanberg ending with Boer flight from the region by the 1870s, reveals the dynamic nature of political and economic interactions between Boers and Africans. In summation, Boer-African relations, in flux during the second half of the 19th century, defies singular reduction.

Bibliography
Bergh, J.S. “S.J.P. Kruger and the Transvaal Hardliners on Race Policies and Practices in the  Early 1870s”, South African Historical Journal 58 (2007): 142-173.

“To Make Them Serve”: The 1871 Transvaal Commission on African Labour as a Source for Agrarian History”, History in Africa 29 (2002): 39-61.

“(To) Reserve to the Native Tribes Such Location as They May Be Fairly and Equitably Entitled To”: The Transvaal Location Commission (1881-1899)”, South African Historical Journal 54 (2005): 1-15.

Boeyens, J.C.A. “Black Ivory: The Indenture System and Slavery in the Zoutpansberg, 1848-1869”, in E. Eldrige and F. Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Pietermaritzburg, 1994).

Bruyn, J. du. “Early Transvaal—A Historiographical Perspective”, South African Historical Journal 36 (1997): 136-144.

Giliomee, H. “Processes in Development of the South African Frontier”, in H. Lamar and L. Thompson (eds), The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Compared (New Haven, 1981).

Mbenga, B.K. “Forced Labour in the Pilanesberg: The Flogging of Chief Kgamanyane by Commandant Paul Kruger, Saulspoort, April 1870”, Journal of Southern African Studies 23:1, (1997): 127-140.

Morton, F. “Captive Labour in the Western Transvaal after the Sand River Convention”, in E. Eldrige and F. Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Pietermaritzburg, 1994).

“Female Inboekelinge in the South African Republic, 1850-1880”, Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, 26:2, (2005): 199-215.

Trapido, Stanley. “Reflections on Land, Office and Wealth in the South African Republic, 1850-1900”, in Marks and Atmore (eds), Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa (Longman, 1980).


[1] Johannes du Bruyn, “Early Transvaal—A Historiographical Perspective,” South African Historical Journal 36 (1997), 142.
[2] Johan S. Bergh, “To Make Them Serve”: The 1871 Transvaal Commission on African Labour as a Source for Agrarian History”, History in Africa 29 (2002), 59.
[3] Jan C.A. Boeyens, “Black Ivory: The Indenture System and Slavery in the Zoutpansberg, 1848-1869”, in E. Eldrige and F. Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Pietermaritzburg, 1994), 198.
[4] Fred Morton, “Female Inboekelinge in the South African Republic, 1850-1880”, Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, 26:2, (2005),  201.
[5]Jan C.A. Boeyens, “Black Ivory: The Indenture System and Slavery in the Zoutpansberg, 1848-1869”, in E. Eldrige and F. Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Pietermaritzburg, 1994), 196.
[6] Ibid, 199.
[7] Fred Morton, “Captive Labour in the Western Transvaal after the Sand River Convention”, in E. Eldrige and F. Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Pietermaritzburg, 1994), 167.
[8]Bernard K. Mbenga, “Forced Labour in the Pilanesberg: The Flogging of Chief Kgamanyane by Commandant Paul Kruger, Saulspoort, April 1870”, Journal of Southern African Studies 23:1, (1997), 130-131.
[9] Fred Morton, “Captive Labour in the Western Transvaal after the Sand River Convention”, in E. Eldrige and F. Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Pietermaritzburg, 1994), 175.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid, 176-177.
[12] Ibid, 177.
[13] Hermann Giliomee, “Processes in Development of the South African Frontier”, in H. Lamar and L. Thompson (eds), The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Compared  (New Haven, 1981), 110.
[14]  Stanley Trapido, “Reflections on Land, Office and Wealth in the South African Republic, 1850-1900”, in Marks and Atmore (eds), Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa (Longman, 1980), 352.
[15] Hermann Giliomee, “Processes in Development of the South African Frontier”, in H. Lamar and L. Thompson (eds), The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Compared  (New Haven, 1981), 111.
[16] Ibid, 92.
[17] Ibid, 108.
[18] Johan S. Bergh, “S.J.P. Kruger and the Transvaal Hardliners on Race Policies and Practices in the  Early 1870s”, South African Historical Journal 58 (2007), 168.
[19] Johan S. Bergh, “To Make Them Serve”: The 1871 Transvaal Commission on African Labour as a Source for Agrarian History”, History in Africa 29 (2002), 58.
[20]   Jan C.A. Boeyens, “Black Ivory: The Indenture System and Slavery in the Zoutpansberg, 1848-1869”, in E. Eldrige and F. Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Pietermaritzburg, 1994), 193.
[21] Ibid, 192.
[22] Ibid, 199.
[23]Fred Morton, “Captive Labour in the Western Transvaal after the Sand River Convention”, in E. Eldrige and F. Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Pietermaritzburg, 1994), 173.
[24] Ibid, 178.
[25]Johan S. Bergh, “S.J.P. Kruger and the Transvaal Hardliners on Race Policies and Practices in the  Early 1870s”, South African Historical Journal 58 (2007), 165.
[26] Bernard K. Mbenga, “Forced Labour in the Pilanesberg: The Flogging of Chief Kgamanyane by Commandant Paul Kruger, Saulspoort, April 1870”, Journal of Southern African Studies 23:1, (1997), 129.
[27] Johan S. Bergh, “S.J.P. Kruger and the Transvaal Hardliners on Race Policies and Practices in the  Early 1870s”, South African Historical Journal 58 (2007), 148.
[28] Johan S. Bergh, “To Make Them Serve”: The 1871 Transvaal Commission on African Labour as a Source for Agrarian History”, History in Africa 29 (2002), 54-55.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid, 59.
[31] Ibid, 44-45.
[32] Ibid, 58.
[33] Ibid, 54-55.
[34] Ibid, 53.
[35] Ibid, 59.
[36] Bernard K. Mbenga, “Forced Labour in the Pilanesberg: The Flogging of Chief Kgamanyane by Commandant Paul Kruger, Saulspoort, April 1870”, Journal of Southern African Studies 23:1, (1997), 131.