Portrait of a Slave Society

In this book, based on published sources, both primary and secondary, the available information on Cape slavery during the eighteenth century is placed in the wider context of Dutch colonial society during this period. The result, which is a sequel to Early slavery at the Cape of Good Hope by the same author, is probably the fullest and most detailed survey of the subject to date.

'Slavery was to have a very long afterlife in South Africa, and subtly but profoundly to affect the further development of the country. The investigation of slavery in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is therefore by no means an irrelevant exercise.'