Child Apprenticeship in the Cape Colony: The Case of the Children’s Friend Society Emigration Scheme, 1833–1841

by Rebecca Swartz

Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies (2020)

Abstract

This article examines the meanings of apprenticeship in the Cape colony in the wake of emancipation. It focuses on a small group of white child labourers brought to the Cape from England in the 1830s by a London-based philanthropic organisation, the Children’s Friend Society. The paper highlights how these children’s apprenticeships were described and understood in relation to other groups of labourers at the Cape. The children were compared with formerly enslaved people as they entered the period of apprenticeship after emancipation, as well as with indigenous Khoe and San labourers. The children’s status was difficult to define as they were neither free labourers nor enslaved people. Integrating this case study into discussions of apprenticeship at the colonial Cape highlights multiple understandings of apprenticeship circulating in that context. Further, a focus on age sharpens understandings of apprenticeship in the Cape and beyond.

Swartz, Rebecca. “Child Apprenticeship in the Cape Colony: The Case of the Children’s Friend Society Emigration Scheme, 1833–1841.” Slavery & Abolition Online (2020): 1–22.