Kirsten McKenzie

The daemon behind the curtain: William Edwards and the theatre of liberty

Abstract In 1824 the Capes Collector of Customs was accused of corrupt practices in the distribution of Prize Slaves. A key player in bringing the charges was a notary calling himself William Edwards, later exposed as an escaped convict from New South Wales. Edwards was arrested for libel, and the colonys first independent newspaper was suppressed for reporting his trial. Much of the established historiography on this incident has treated Edwards as a maverick troublemaker, a bit player in the main drama of establishing ‘the liberty of the press’ in South Africa. This article uses previously neglected sources to argue that the Edwards case was in fact bound up in popular conceptions of slavery, British identity and governance. In order to extricate himself, Edwards took on the performative role of a ‘patriot’ (as he put it) defending British abolition and attacking a corrupt alliance with local Dutch notables. His strategy was designed to tap into networks and agendas that spread well beyond the colony and (for Edwardss purposes) it almost worked. For the historian, it illuminates both the fractured nature of British national and personal identity and the importance of situating these debates in a global context.

Dogs and the Public Sphere: The Ordering of Social Space in Early Nineteenth Century Cape Town

During the 1820s and 1830s, the readers of Cape Town’s South African Commercial Advertiser were much discomforted by the packs of stray dogs which infested their city. The local bourgeoisie considered both the dogs and the means used to control them a threat to health and safety and a source of disorder on the streets over which they were seeking to assert the principles of rational improvement. As the Cape Colony’s first independent newspaper, the Advertiser was selfconscious in its promotion of a particular kind of discourse, one that was based on enlightenment principles of the public sphere. The ultimate aim of the newspaper and its supporters was the establishment of representative government in the colony. This would place the destiny of the community in the hands of the ‘respectable’, defined in this instance as propertied men. Dogs, and their control, played an ambiguous role in the mental map of order and disorder being drawn across the city by its respectable inhabitants. This article traces concerns about stray dogs in the letters written to the Advertiser as a route towards understanding an emergent bourgeois culture in Cape Town. The concepts of social improvement and political rights articulated by the Advertiser were intimately connected to the control of social space and the material world. The worries over dogs, however, confirm that the colonial bourgeoisie was by no means in control of their city. The Advertiser is a somewhat uneasy record of bourgeois anxiety juxtaposed with bourgeois self-confidence. The ideal is constantly disrupted by the real, and the shores of the ordered world are continually lapped by a surrounding sea of perceived disorder. Throughout this contrast enacted within the pages of the newspaper, the physical landscape of the city is intimately connected to its moral landscape. This article argues that dogs were a lightning rod for a whole series of contemporary concerns in colonial Cape

Women's talk and the colonial state: The Wylde scandal, 1831-1833

Between 1831 and 1833 the Chief Justice of the Cape Colony, Sir John Wylde, was involved in a scandal surrounding anonymous accusations of incest resulting from the alleged pregnancy of his unmarried daughter. The rumours led to an official inquiry by the secretary of state. The resulting political crisis took place against a background of social tension over impending slave emancipation. The records of the inquiry, together with contemporary comment, form the basis for a discussion of how gender roles, gossip and a separation between public and private spheres informed the operation of Cape colonial politics and society.

Of convicts and capitalists: honour and colonial commerce in 1830s Cape Town and Sydney

This comparative history examines the importance of notions of credit and honour in new definitions of masculinity that gained ground in New South Wales and the Cape Colony in the 1830s. The argument draws on an analysis of two defamation actions brought by auctioneers in this period and discusses the role of masculine occupation in colonial bourgeois identity. The diffusion of a culture of respectability through the British Empire was a global phenomenon, and a necessary precursor to the establishment of representative political institutions in the colonies by the middle of the nineteenth century.

Exit pursued by a bear: Oliver the Spy and the imperial context of British political history

Abstract In the wake of the Pentridge uprising of 1817, the notorious agent provocateur known as ‘Oliver the Spy’ disappeared from the political scene. Or did he? In fact controversies over the alleged spy had a prolonged afterlife at the Cape of Good Hope. This article considers the way in which Oliver’s career has been separated into two phases, and treated separately in two historiographies – one South African and one British. In Oliver’s own lifetime, however, no such easy divide was made. These connections allow us to explore the relation between British and colonial politics in the early nineteenth century. This article has been peer reviewed.

‘The Laws of his Own Country’: Defamation, Banishment and the Problem of Legal Pluralism in the 1820s Cape Colony

In 1824 the Cape colony was rocked by three criminal libel trials brought by the colonial administration against settlers who had criticised its officials. To further silence their critics, a recently established colonial newspaper was suppressed and an order banishing its editor was issued by executive decree without judicial process. While these actions are well known to historians of South Africa, the important legal and constitutional issues they raised have not been properly recognised. In tracking the controversy that these trials unleashed in London, Cape Town and other colonial localities, this article argues that these events must be situated within a broader crisis of legal pluralism playing out within the British Empire. The confusion between English and Dutch law highlighted by these cases and their aftermath reveals constitutional debates that underscore the deep contingency of conquest law at a highly unstable legal and political moment. The political disputes inspired by these actions demonstrate that conflicts between variants of European law need to be more clearly recognised as instrumental to the strengthened implementation of British imperial legal hierarchies in colonial localities through the 1820s and 1830s.