Creating the Cape Colony Runaway Advertisements Datasets, 1830-1842

Dataset CreatorKarl Bergemann, Stellenbosch UniversityContributorsKate Ekama, Stellenbosch UniversityJohan Fourie, Stellenbosch UniversityOriginally established in 1652 as a revictualing station for passing Dutch East India (Vereenigde Oostindische-Compagnie, or VOC) ships, the Cape Colony, located at the Southern tip of Africa in what is today South Africa, soon outstripped its initial modest imagined position in the VOC Empire. To cater for increased demand, groups of settlers were allocated land and with that came increased labor demands that ultimately led to the first wave of enslaved people being imported into the colony in 1658.1 By the nineteenth century, the Cape had been wrested from Dutch control by the British, who seized it as a military restaging point during the Napoleonic wars in 1806. Ironically, the British took control at the Cape just as the parliament was engaged in the drive towards total abolition throughout the empire, curtailing the supply of enslaved labor at the moment of increased demand to the displeasure of colonial settler farmers and tradesmen. For their part, enslaved people did not simply wait for amelioration laws and emancipation to be forced, but in hundreds of cases ran away to pursue freedom.“The phenomenon of the runaway,” writes Joseph Yannielli, “is an exceptionally fluid and recurring theme in the history of capitalist modernity.”2 That desertion featured as a cornerstone of the everyday acts of resistance to oppression on a global scale is well known by scholars of social and labor history. The runaway advertisement, recognized as a crucial constructive source of the archives of the enslaved and other coerced classes, has helped scholars to uncover the stories of runaways in myriad ways. Most work, especially as it pertains to the enslaved, however, centers around scholarship of the Americas, though recent shifts have taken place to understand more totalising forms of desertion and surveillance the world over, aiding comparative discourse. Still, most work in these fields focuses on places and periods where labour status was, for the most part, static.3 What sets the Cape Colony in the 1830s apart, with the end of slavery as an institution in British territories worldwide, was that labor and, with it, the status of those at the very bottom end of its scales were in a state of rapid transition.Thus, in the period 1830-42, the Cape experienced three distinct yet overlapping phases of labor status change in which different groups featured as the primary subjects of advertisement. Between 1830 and 1834, most runaway advertisements were for the enslaved; between 1834 and 1838, they were for apprentices (albeit a shift in nomenclature more than in actual labor status); and after December 1838, runaway advertisements featured indentured and contracted laborers. In this final phase, advertisement shifted primarily to the capture of so-called “Prize Negroes” (Recaptured Africans)4 as well as indentured “juvenile emigrants,”5 with few recontracted formerly enslaved individuals appearing in the notices.6 No one period contained notices exclusively for one group, however, as there was a small amount of overlap between which groups were advertised for in each phase. What tied all these groups together was that they were all forced laborers bound to coercive labor contracts and ownerships. This distinction was used to define the parameters of the datasets and the specific type of runaways investigated in them. Other types of runaway advertisements still featured in both publications, seeking, for example, runaway soldiers, convicts, children, and kin, as well as those who fled trade or commercial relationships and obligations. Investigating these other runaway groups would be valuable for future research.In an effort to centre the experience of enslaved people, Cape historians of the Cultural Turn made immense strides to overturn the previous erroneous concept of slavery at the Cape as being a “mild” institution. These include, but are not limited to the likes of Robert Ross, Nigel Worden, and Robert Shell, who blazed paths toward uncovering the brutalities of slavery at the Cape under both Dutch and British rule.7 These and other works paved revisionist theories that have held true for decades while newer research, such as which this article’s form of work contributes have, however, also aimed to center enslaved agency as a form of resistance to such regimes.The Cape Colony Runaway Advertisement datasets comprise advertisements from two of the Cape’s largest advertising platforms: De Zuid Afrikaan, the first Cape Dutch newspaper in the colony, established in 1830 in response to a perceived lack of sympathy towards Dutch colonists from the predominantly English press at the Cape, and the Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette, the mouthpiece of the colonial government, originally established as a government monopoly in 1800.8 In the wake of conflict between government officials and local press in the mid-to-late 1820s, press freedom was only attained in 1829, after which a string of new publications sprang forth to cater for the different colonial voices in the Colony.9 Although other publications also provided for runaway advertising, the fervor with which these two publications produced such notices was unmatched. Over the course of the thirteen-year temporal range of 1830-42, De Zuid Afrikaan published 551 instances of flight, while the Gazette published 330.10 There is some overlap in advertisements but because the two publications drew notices from primarily distinct advertiser pools and provide for different publication dates and different lag periods between advertisements, for example, they have been created as two separate sets of data, with the acronym ZA for Zuid Afrikaan and GG for Government Gazette.Despite several limitations such as population representation, skewed gender ratios, costs of advertisement precluding certain advertising groups, and limitations of geographic coverage, runaway advertisements are generally understood as useful and credible sources with a high level of information accuracy. Their accuracy is a function of their intention, to recapture a runaway. To achieve this goal advertisers needed to list the details in their advertisements as accurately as possible and had no reason to misinform or mislead readers, although they may have had reason to list only partial information so as not to advertise particular skills to would-be harborers, for instance. Advertisers often had insight into the lives of the runaways that the creators of other descriptive sources would not have been privy to. That said, there was an undeniable inherent bias of the advertising masterclass to describe subjects in certain ways that should always be kept in mind. Generally, however, historians agree that the source can be interpreted as largely objective.11This work hopes to add to the ongoing efforts around the world to transcribe, collect and make digitally available the information contained in runaway advertisements in different locales and across different time periods. These include, but are not limited to, the likes of the Freedom on the Move12 and the Glasgow University-based Beniba Centre for Slavery Studies’ Runaways London projects.13 Some 40,000 advertisements collated from North-American and Caribbean newspapers representing five collation projects that have run since at least 2003, have also been curated online for public dissemination.14 Other projects, such as the Legacies of British Slavery database, frame the narratives of enslaved lives through research that encompasses additional sources.15Advertisements should also be read as depictions, whether symbolic or real, of runaway agency and avoidance of control. Details of how runaways fashioned themselves in an effort to blend into their environment, of their movements and their supposed intentions, as well as other pieces of information advertisers alluded to, sometimes unintentionally, allowed runaways to, as historian Antonio Bly writes, “co-author” advertisements in numerous ways. The choice of words used in advertisements, beyond the usual descriptions, was often directed by how enslavers perceived their chattel, sometimes because of their gestures and general demeanor or because of the relationships they had formed with them over time. In effect, Bly posits that how runaways were described was as much a reflection of this relationship as it was of the details of their actual flight.16 Historian Shane White, however, cautions that advertisements may have been full of “loaded meaning” not discernible to the modern reader and that, considered tools of a slave society, they were freighted with cultural nuances – something he warns scholars to be mindful of in their interpretations.17 As products of colonial discourse, advertisements from this period are fraught with pejorative terminology, making data transcription a difficult task for the modern scholar. However, to prevent simply perpetuating these negative connotations, an effort has been made to correct problematic language used in them in the datasets themselves. For the most part, these are most obvious in the variables describing ethnicity and resemblance, where imputed vocabulary has been placed alongside original terms to show both historical use with assigned contemporary variants. Of course, it is not always possible to impute terminology to show the exact meanings they had in their original context but I have tried to do so with as much accuracy as possible.18The cultural subtleties in advertisements, however, are important reminders of what these notices were beyond methods of identification. In this vein Bly writes that the silences in the texts should also form part of their interpretation. In other words, he suggests that the reader reflect as much upon what either is not said, or the inferred implications that such flights had for both owners and enslaved persons. He argues for a “tension and dramaturgical energy” inherent in advertisement, noting how, through inference, one is able to identify the frustration felt by the advertiser, the anxiety or fear felt by a runaway, and so on.19 It is therefore important that historians, as observers, read the subtleties and nuances present in these advertisements and not just rely on the overt descriptive details contained in them. In so doing, suggests historian Simon Newman, scholars will be better able to remediate the inherent shortcomings of a piece of text that aimed to deny the humanity and agency of the subject it portrayed and to reimagine identities in ways that reassert these values again.20Runaway advertisements at the Cape, like elsewhere in the world, generally contained a collection of identifiers that included runaways’ names, ages, sex, ethnicities, and physical and non-physical descriptors, as well as descriptions of clothing and other items they stole away along with their precarious freedom. The example below, an advertisement placed for the enslaved man Joumat by Daniel Pieter Rossouw in 1831, although not necessarily typical in the sense that it shows many of the less common database variables, is useful to demonstrate the way runaway advertisements appeared to the reader.The advertisement (Fig. 1) can be decoded in terms of the following markers: ABSCONDED, on the 7th April last {Flight Date}, a slave {Status} named JOUMAT {Name} (formerly belonging to Mr Theunis Dirkse Van Schalkwyk) {Supposition – former employer}, a Wheelwright {Occupation/Skill}; short stature, broad shoulders, large mouth, thick lips, squints with both eyes, woolly hair, a round bald spot on his head, a long mark on the inner part of his left leg or calf; brown complexion {Physical Descriptors}, resembles a bastard Madagascar {Resemblance/Presentation}; had on a pair of leather trowsers, checked shirt, drab hat, striped waistcoat, blue cloth jacket, with yellow buttons {Clothing Descriptors}, and had with him a spring-buck knapsack {Other Items}; he was last seen in Cape Town {Actual Sighting}, and it is supposed that he harbours himself there, or perhaps has enlisted as a soldier in the Cape Corps {Supposition} - Whoever lodges him in a public Prison shall receive a reward of Thirty Rix dollars {Reward} and those harbouring him, must abide the consequences {Threat}. Tulbagh {Location Information}, 8th June, 1831 {Date of writing}. Daniel Pieter Rossouw {Owner/Advertiser Information}.Thus, the original datasets used to make the first inferences of investigation included eighteen variables each. The advertisement for Joumat contains almost all of these, including his name, sex/gender (through pronouns), physical descriptors, clothing, other items, occupation and skills, resemblance and presentation descriptors, flight and writing/advertising dates, advertiser suppositions, actual sighting, location information, reward and owner/advertiser information. The only database variables his advertisement does not present are age, ethnicity, and non-physical descriptors.The database variables are thus the following: Advertorial information (publication the advertisement appears in and date of publication, including year, month, and day); runaway name; age; sex/gender; ethnic descriptors (usually a reference to where the runaway was born or of specific descent/lineage); resemblance and presentation descriptors ( markers and suppositions made by the advertiser about the ethnic groups and labor classes a runaway could pass for); physical descriptors; non-physical descriptors (usually demeanor or other descriptors such as speech impediments); clothing; other items; skill/occupation; intention/supposition (usually of locations runaways may have run to, of family or kinship networks that might aid their escape or of the types of work they may be doing); actual sightings (when the runaway was seen after escaping and the advertiser alerted); flight details (month and year of flight); length of absconsion (determined from flight details and date of writing advertisement or, in the absence of a date of advertisement writing, publication date;.beyond seven days, these were rounded to the nearest week or month); location detail (usually of the return address for the advertiser but sometimes also specific reference to a separate place of escape); rewards (monetary are in Cape and and the datasets this several fields have been included in an effort to both and provide for in with are the following: date sets and should be that there could be much from one advertisement to The information included on the of each advertiser and, not have a specific form or have contained an exact list of contained at least the and information of names, sex, ages, and ethnicity, as well as physical descriptions and descriptions of This would have been the most important information for the public of runaways and was, an obvious for certain advertisers to more or less information in their advertisements is though may have been one Runaway advertisements were with a flight, such as or in the of Dutch often including the reward or the in the these variables there are numerous ways the advertisements could be interpreted and they valuable into how flights on the The data for different than those by Cape historians for periods of Runaways were often in and than in the and common of the This has been one of the of escape in this though still more is to be in the advertisements were as part of a to of the Cape The of an by the and with as was to uncover and historical data that had been or The aimed to in the historical by methods to such as and of to task historical newspapers as an source for of enslaved escape and as well as the of in South Africa, for By these largely the to provide a more and of the on and groups South of the enslaved were a part of the Ekama, Fourie, and the Dataset from three and slave from the Cape and data from data and in the the information from these sources in a data on enslaved individuals belonging to This was useful in with runaway advertisements where information between the two could be In used in the Cape in the These into the way in which networks were in the Colony the of commercial the use of enslaved individuals as after the end of slavery through the period of in work most to that of the runaway and used the Zuid Afrikaan to a of enslaved that will for future research to the locations of by or to on the and of the The data from of the newspaper between April 1830 and December 1834, advertisements and that to enslaved people for or runaway advertisements have also some from the To a short has been produced to this work as well as some of the work in the The also provided for a curated collection of between and In with and and information from the runaway datasets was used to the The aimed to remediate runaway advertisements through a These advertisements were alongside the descriptions in the advertisements in much the way as a would use and by the original historical and were able to a collection of The have been well from an initial five to five more were by the Dutch in Cape Town for at the of Good the total collection to collection as a at the Stellenbosch a on a alongside the how the came to The final was alongside the work of in a used runaway advertisements from the South to descriptive words in the advertisements to make the work was at the of as part of their is and to South Africa as part of the held in The has around the of between and and on the reflection of what is with them in both and public and of being mindful of the for such have been and for the of has also used the runaway advertisements in these datasets as for short stories as well as a The of in which an runaway on the run in the period of the is to be in Colony Zuid Afrikaan, April of Good Hope Government Gazette, data collection for this took place during the and therefore on online and of the in part, had a on which publications were used to the the advertisements, initial full were made in by publication As the database did the in the as more were on in the This that the data over time as the of advertisements initial at text was used on some of the however, since the of sources was not always an of original text or of to advertisements and For this a of the advertising was the research was to only on the period of between December 1834 and December with the initial of with emancipation were apprentices still making the to However, the advertisements for this initial period had been the of whether could be in the periods and after the datasets to the full temporal range of The data for the Zuid Afrikaan could only be as as April 1830 to the only in that The first advertisements for enslaved runaways appeared in this publication on April The Government Gazette the full temporal with the first runaways advertised for on Although the Zuid Afrikaan was a Dutch language it contained English of both the and There however, some advertisements for which no of both Dutch and English of this newspaper were to such with no have been in the in the original Cape Dutch with in The Gazette was a the database variables were used to make in there was for to The variables of physical descriptions and clothing, for different items and descriptions in the these could be into separate fields for different of is that not is to in no information for a particular it is in the with a and, on the type of could be from the by the has that these of limitations can be through the use of he was able to accurately the skills and of runaways in the datasets for in this may an of the datasets to accuracy of included over this could be a for uncovering pieces of information in a Cape and could be on of the variables the data such as location information, ethnicity, resemblance, ages, and so investigated of runaway places of escape and places of the of and, to a advertiser These were made of variables that were together to make distinct in each on each other to an of runaway advertisement at the Cape in the emancipation can still be from this There is also the of the datasets to temporal both and after the temporal as well as the of through other publications, such as the South large advertising present in the Cape in the temporal range of an Stellenbosch for the of Stellenbosch