126 New Contree, No. 68, December 2013 Portrait of a Slave Society: The Cape of Good Hope, 1717-1795 (Pretoria: Protea Book House, 2012, 1, 339 pp., illus., index, bibliography. ISBN: 978-1-86919-749-0) Karel Schoeman Michael Reidy Independant Scholar michael.charles.reidy@gmail.com Karel Schoeman’s Early Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1717 (hereafter, Early Slavery) was published in 2007. This was followed by Portrait of a Slave Society: The Cape of Good Hope, 1717-1795 (hereafter, Portrait of a Slave Society) in 2012. Schoeman states in his foreword to Early Slavery: “Awareness of and interest in slavery at the Cape Colony is steadily increasing, but most of the work that has been done on this subject is in Dutch or Afrikaans, and there are only five general surveys in English,1 of which the most accessible to the general reader, Those in Bondage by Victor de Kock, was published in 1950.” This is a slight sneer to all those who came after de Kock, who is regarded as an anecdotalist and is often criticised for his use of unreferenced material. Nevertheless, Schoeman’s diligent study credits, especially in his endnotes, Anna Böeseken’s Slaves and Freeblacks (1977), Robert Ross’s Cape of Torments (1983), Nigel Worden’s Slavery in Dutch South Africa (1985) and Robert Shell’s Children of Bondage (1994). Portrait of a Slave Society also makes pertinent references to the secondary works of Wayne Dooling, Gerald Groenewald, Hans Friedrich Heese, Suzanne Newton-King and Nigel Penn, among others. The structure of Portrait of a Slave Society is similar to Early Slavery. The opening chapters of Portrait of a Slave Society situate 18th century Cape slave society within the colonial “world” of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC). Schoeman makes appropriate comparisons in the opening two chapters between the Cape, the VOC’s Batavian headquarters, Ceylon, India and the Vereenigde West Indische Compagnie’s (VWIC) possession in Surinam. 1 It would be fair to say that the more comprehensive and academically sound works on slavery during the Dutch era are, in fact, written in English. The primary records are almost exclusively in Dutch. 127 Book reviews He describes the separation of VOC and VWIC’s trading interest, which turned the Cape authorities to Madagascar and the East for its supply of slaves in the latter part of the 17th century. Schoeman devotes lengthy chapters on slavery in Table Valley (present day Cape Town), the Stellenbosch and Drakenstein districts, the Boland and the colony’s eastern frontier. He explores various themes of slavery including work, violence, sexuality and resistance within his geographical framework. Each theme is generally discussed in a linear time- frame roughly ranging from 1717 to 1795, with discussions of the periods before 1717 and after 1795. Schoeman would have avoided repetition had he structured his chapters thematically, like Nigel Worden did in Slavery in Dutch South Africa, than repeat his themes (of violence, sexuality, slave occupations etc.) with every geographical area under discussion. Schoeman explains his preference for thematic discussion on page 513: “Just as the eighteenth century was no static period, neither was the world of Cape slaves during these hundred years, even though historians of slavery are inclined to treat the entire time from 1652 to 1795 as a solid, immovable wedge labelled ‘slavery’.” Which historians are guilty of this? We are not told. Schoeman definitely has a preference for the period after 1750. The chapters on urban and rural slavery are followed by three slave biographies and the final chapter, “The turning point,” looks at changing attitudes towards the institution of slavery by slaves and slave owners at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Sir John Barrow completed Sketches of the Political and Commercial History of the Cape of Good Hope, on behalf of George,1st Earl Macartney, in advance of the first British Occupation of the Cape, on 17 December 1796.2 English versions of the writings of OF Mentzel, JS Stavorinus, CP Thunberg and François Le Vaillant were made available to Barrow as well as dispatches on Cape affairs “received by Mr Dundas.” Macartney’s comments are pencilled in the margins. Portrait of a Slave Society reminds me of Barrow’s fact-finding tract. Barrow’s matter-of-fact report contains figures for grain production and population, as well as descriptions of slavery at the Cape. Unlike Barrow’s more general survey, Schoeman focuses exclusively on slavery. Schoeman makes a concerted effort to represent the voiceless slaves whose sketchy biographies appear between the lines of the archival record and the writings of European travellers. Portrait of a Slave Society makes a significant contribution to the literature on Cape slavery by re-drawing our attention to important primary sources like the Resolusies, the probate inventories and the criminal trials of 2 This report, BL MS 61, is housed in the Oppenheimer Collection at the Brenthurst Library in Parktown, Johannesburg. 128 New Contree, No. 68, December 2013 Trials of Slavery. Schoeman’s survey of the secondary literature is good and his scholarship is also up to date. Many of the introductory paragraphs of chapters, for example that of the freeburghers, are written with the panache of a novelist, adding to the readability of this magnum opus. Schoeman’s knowledge of Cape history is deep and his attention to detail is impressive. His indexes, which he has generously placed in the public domain, are legendary. While his footnotes acknowledge his sources, they do not always convey the extent to which he is dependent on the works of other historians. Portrait of a Slave Society is punctuated with insightful and delightful observations on Dutch words and their use in Cape colonial society (Schoeman has compiled an impressive lexicon of 17th and 18th century Dutch words and phrases). Schoeman’s discussions on the mandoors (“slave overseers”, p. 195), knechten (hired white labourers, p. 662) and the meaning of the word cagies comes to mind (p. 622). His discussion of vangeld (“catching money”), slotgeld (“imprisoning money”) and losgeld (“release money”) further attests to the depth of his lexicographic skills and knowledge (p. 559). For instance, he discusses the origins of the word amok—its use in historical sources and also its use in the Woordeboek der Nederlandsche taal (p. 983). Schoeman’s knowledge of Dutch is supported by his fluency in German and French—permitting him entrée into the original writings of contemporaries like F Le Vaillant and OF Mentzel. Schoeman draws from a wide range of sources, particularly the published Resolusies of the Council of Policy (the council that governed the Cape for most of the VOC rule), the published Plakkaatboeken (Dutch colonial proclamations), the probate inventories (inventories of deceased estates now published electronically) and the published writings of contemporary writers (e.g. O.F. Mentzel, Carl Peter Thunberg, Baron Carl Friedrich von Wurmb, Willem Stephanus van Ryneveldt and Lady Anne Barnard). Portrait of a Slave Society is well-researched and immaculately referenced. Most of Schoeman’s primary sources have been published online or in book form. As a senior librarian in the old South African Library,3 he would be most familiar with this formidable literature. His piecing together of disparate published primary sources into a fairly coherent narrative is welcome—especially for the uninformed reader. His creative use of the published Resolusies stands out in reference to passing French slave traffic during the latter part of the 18th century. His use of the published probate inventories and Worden and 3 Now the National Library of South Africa (Cape Town Campus). 129 Book reviews Groenewald’s Trials of Slavery, apart from shedding light on the remoter regions of the colony, does little more than embellish the arguments and selections of the existing secondary literature. Portrait of a Slave Society is valuable as an anecdotal compendium of slave life at the Cape during the 18th century but his use of unpublished sources is disappointing (See graphic below). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Chapters 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Manuscripts 3 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 Published primary 28 44 13 19 18 22 16 16 22 36 28 7 26 35 24 27 23 12 20 24 24 Secondary 36 25 33 28 22 22 21 21 20 20 24 3 22 35 21 23 37 8 26 32 45 Manuscripts 1.1% Published primary 47.5% Secondary 51.4% Portrait of a Slave Society is a lengthy commentary on slavery in the Cape during the 18th century. Schoeman’s biographies of the VOC slave traders or kommiesies—Hans Harmz, Cornelis Andriesz, FG Holtzappel, Constant van Nuldt Onkruijdt, Dirk Westerhoff, GF Goetz, Nicolaas Leij, Oloff Leij, and Francois Renier Duminy—are revealing. More so, because the slave trading activities of these individuals are conveniently omitted from their entries in the Dictionaries of South African Biography. Schoeman describes several Company-sponsored slave voyages in Early Slavery, e.g. the Voorhout (1676 and 1677), then writes: “It is not necessary to dwell on these individual expeditions, though that of the Eemland in 1682 deserves more than passing attention because of the fact that a revolt broke out amongst the slaves on board” [my emphasis].4 More could be said about these voyages. There are over twenty logbooks for Company-sponsored slave voyages between 1674 and 4 Early Slavery, p. 118. 130 New Contree, No. 68, December 2013 1785 at the National Archives in Cape Town and the Nationaal Archief in the Hague. Nearly two thirds of the logbooks remain, constituting a uniform and comprehensive source for the history of VOC slave trading between the Cape and Madagascar (and, to a lesser degree, the east coast of Africa). Though Schoeman makes only fleeting reference to these logbooks in Early Slavery, their omission does not disturb the flow of his narrative. Schoeman pays more attention to the VOC’s slave voyages during the latter part of the 18th century in Portrait of a Slave Society. He highlights Hemmy’s three voyages on the Brak in 1740, 1741 and 1742 (pp. 127-31) and a later voyage on the Zon in 1775, fully edited by Robert Ross. Descriptions of the Cape-Madagascar slave trade are provided through the voyages of the Leidsman (1715), Schuilenberg (1756), Zon (1769), and Snelheid (1773). Schoeman’s descriptions of these voyages is not as self-contained as Armstrong and Westra’s work on the Leidsman’s logbooks. The VOC logbooks, however, only deal with the Company’s slave trade to the Lodge. There is no systematic discussion of the slave trade from returning India ships, particularly from foreign nations. This chapter would have benefitted from a graph or a table showing how the sources are tied together. The concerns of senior VOC official Egbertus Bergh and Secunde J.J. Rhenius’s report to the Heeren XVII (1789) concerning the profiteering of the Company’s slave traders is a welcome addition to the history of slave importation in the last years of VOC rule (pp. 154-6). Schoeman’s description of the VOC’s 1767 ban on the importation of eastern slaves to the Cape elaborates on the existing literature. His later explanation of the ban should not have been repeated on pages 894-95, but included in his earlier discussion on the subject from pages 282-87. Schoeman recognises the potential of the Resolusies as an historical source in his description of passing French slave traffic at the Cape in the 1770s. His description of the disembarkation and victualling of slaves from Le Jardiniere in 1774 is a good example of this. Schoeman’s explanation of VOC Commissioners SC Nederburgh and SH Frijkenius’s reforms of 1791 fleshes out Worden and Armstrong’s curt observations in their chapter “The slaves” in Elphick and Giliomee’s The Shaping of South African Society. The Commissioners visited the Cape to determine the extent of the Cape’s financial woes and to apply fiscal reforms where they could. Again, Schoeman could have described these “drastic economies” in isolation, rather than scatter them throughout Portrait of a Slave Society (pp. 241, 248, 260, and 1044). On page 313, Schoeman describes the connection between the Commissioners reforms and the 131 Book reviews Council of Policy’s endorsement of private slave trading in some detail with his discussion of the Dankbare Afrikaan (1793) and the Eliza (1795). These spotlighted episodes are useful, of course, but one hankers after an overview. Schoeman’s description of slave auctions, based largely on secondary literature, in Chapter 15, is easy to follow. He makes the valid point that auctions of large numbers of slaves only began to take place during the 1780s, which is suggestive of a change in the internal slave market during the rise in French slave traffic that took place after the privatisation of French maritime trade in 1769. Chapter 19—detailing the coercion of the Khoe into unfree labour during the 1770s and the introduction of so-called bastaard apprenticeship in 1775—is more balanced in its use of case studies. Schoeman makes several references to Viljoen’s work on the subject, but does not say much about Candy Malherbe’s writings or other writings on the inboekstelsel system. Portrait of a Slave Society would be an easier read if more of its chapters were structured like this. Schoeman could have dealt with the labour shortage of 1797, given his wide reading of secondary writings (p. 710). A uniform and systematic chapter on slave violence would be easier to follow than the plethora of similar incidents we are presented with in the different geographic locations of the colony (e.g. the breaking of slaves on the cross on page 109). Chapter 11, “The Table Valley: The Slaves and Their Leisure” is inappropriately titled, since it deals more with the subculture of slave drunkenness, crime and violence than “leisure.” Most of Schoeman’s key themes—violence, the voicelessness of slaves in Cape society and the development of racial consciousness—are not analysed with academic rigour despite an impressive secondary literature. The section describing the VOC’s trading outpost at Delagoa Bay from 1721 to 1731, structured around Dan Sleigh’s research in Die buiteposte: VOC-buiteposte onder Kaapse bestuur, 1652-1795, is lucid and engaging. So too is his use, on page 938, of the plakkaaten (Dutch colonial laws). The VOC administrative hierarchy, from lowly veldkornetten to Governor, is well explained by Schoeman, though his descriptions of the Fiscal’s role and responsibilities in relation to slaves are unnecessarily repetitive (pp. 230, 232, 238, 476-77, and 941). These functions would have been better described when the Fiscal W.S. van Ryneveldt’s “Replies” (1797) and “Description” of the Cape colony (1805) were introduced. Van Ryneveldt’s biographical details are only given on 132 New Contree, No. 68, December 2013 page 939, yet his writings are interspersed throughout the book. Schoeman makes many references to Van Ryneveldt’s well-known “Replies” to Governor Macartney’s questions on the slave trade and slavery at the Cape, yet he does not pay much regard to Van Ryneveldt’s personal participation within the slave society. Van Ryneveldt owned a large number of slaves at the turn of the 18th century. He also wielded considerable power over the lives of the Company’s slaves and the so-called caffer police force in his capacity as Fiscal. Schoeman (p. 10) expresses an aversion to the “dismaying” methods of academic historians who “tend all too often to think and to express themselves in terms of statistics, tables, graphs, discourses, arguments, debates, trends, patterns, nodes, networks, grids, spaces, landscapes, frontiers, hidden transcripts and registers of experience” in academic journal articles. This is a somewhat disparaging remark in the light of Schoeman’s reliance on academic journal articles, surprising too when we consider that Anna J Böeseken used graphical apparatus as early as 1943.5 Academic rigour and statistical analysis enable historians to understand the patterns and processes of history. Reliance on anecdotal events and circumstances results in the historian being led by his sources and the opinions and selections of others, rather than forming his or her own conclusions in a detached manner. Historians appear to be gullible when they use anecdotes as historical proof. More importantly, the reader, at one remove from the sources than the historian, is entirely at the mercy of the historian’s poor judgment. Historians have not developed a systematic technique to determine whether a common or rare event is being recorded and, most importantly, whether it is representative. It is fair, therefore, to accuse Schoeman of relentless cherry-picking in his 1300-page book – the same flaw we find in Victor de Kock’s Those in Bondage. The privileging of anecdote over analysis gives rise to statements like: “On the whole it may probably be said that the condition of the slaves changed less between 1717 and 1795, the seventy-eight years covered by the present book, than over the subsequent thirty-nine years immediately preceding emancipation” (p. 10). I beg to differ. The Dutch and British periods were substantively different from one another in terms of what a slave society was and how the authorities dealt with the institution of slavery. Schoeman also attributes the low slave population from 1796 to 1806 to “a decline in the importation of slaves in the past decade.” (p. 370). This statement gainsays everything else he says about slave importation to the 5 Archives Year Book 1943(2), p. 62. 133 Book reviews Cape in the late 18th century and constitutes a serious contradiction. How many times do we encounter statements in Portrait of a Slave Society like, “the examples quoted…been chosen at random” (p. 259), “these chance data” (p. 565), and “random information” from the “inventories” (in the Boland) on page 621? Schoeman further explains at one point, that: “These chance data, spaced with remarkable symmetry in time, are mentioned for what they are worth, in the course of a book that hopes to convey something of colonial life at the Cape in the eighteenth century by merely listing data as far as possible, without necessarily trying to prove or demonstrate anything.” (p. 621). Declaring historical sources to be “random” is a scientistic (a false appeal to science) or worse, what Immanuel Kant described as an assertoric substitute for a more rigorous dialectic. “Random” has two common usages: one informal as in “the event was random,” i.e. unexpected; the other meaning is scientific and belongs to the science of statistics, meaning one number has the same chance of being chosen as the next. Schoeman’s “random” vignettes are a perfect example of this. The vignettes become the narrative and not merely the illustrative evidence. Schoeman makes reference to one particular slave’s life as a “fragmentary biography.” (p. 840). One “fragmentary” biography is one thing; a thousand pages of fragmentary biographies is another! We sometimes get the impression that we are looking at genealogical lists, which pay no regard to representivity or randomness in the scientific sense. The use of these “random” events strikes a false note, surprising for a person so sensitive to language. Schoeman embellishes his narrative based on secondary literature with illustrative case studies and portraits from Nigel Worden and Gerald Groenewald’s faithfully transcribed, edited and translated Trials of Slavery. The crime records are a special type of source. Crime records do provide useful vignettes of slave life, like clothing, eating and drinking habits, but they exert a strong gravitational pull on historians, not always with good results. The criminal cases are mostly concerned with violence and extreme justice. Crime records involving slaves need to be understood in relation to other kinds of primary sources, since most Cape slaves were not criminals. It would be appropriate to compare criminal trials involving slaves to criminal trials involving Company employees like soldiers and sailors, for example. Robert Shell’s thesis on the “creolisation” (i.e. the self-reproduction of the slave population) of the Cape slaves from about 1780 in Children of Bondage is a fine example of how a convincing argument can be developed from a 134 New Contree, No. 68, December 2013 systematic analysis of primary source material. Schoeman, surprisingly, neither mentions nor challenges Shell’s important argument. Schoeman revisits Böeseken, Heese and Shell’s work on slave transactions, but looks at these studies in isolation and not in terms of the entire period of his book, e.g. Shell’s analysis of slave transactions from 1701 to 1731 which looks at slave purchases amongst the free coloured community (p. 395). Schoeman, in another instance, introduces another theory on the pronounced awareness of racial differences which had begun to become noticeable by the 1780s (pp. 409, 536. 679, 683, 774, and 886). He posits that the distinction between “heathens” and Christians existed before colour differences (which is given some attention in the “coda” of Early Slavery). This is hardly a new characterisation, and can be traced back to ID MacCrone.6 This subject is examined extensively quantitatively and analytically in Elphick and Shell’s “Intergroup Relations” in Shaping of South African Society. This argument is never dealt with at length or in a systematic manner—but is alluded to from time to time in Portrait of a Slave Society and presented as “new”! Schoeman’s allusions to the concept of a “Baroque era” or the emergence of a “Cape Gentry” during the 18th century are, similarly, not supported by argument (pp. 971 and 1030). Schoeman exhibits the novelist’s sense of drama in his description of the Landdrost’s bias in favour of “white” owners (p. 943). His description of Table Valley’s streets and buildings, based on Hans Heese’s article “Die inwoners van Kaapstad in 1800”,7 complements his reconstruction of slave life from the probate inventories. The passage on the plight of the slaves during the British occupation in September 1795 should appeal to the general reader (pp. 574 and 583). These episodes are indicative of the impressive “portrait” Schoeman tries to evoke—though the portrait is prone to repetition. Marie Josephine Focus’s touching story is an example of this. Her voice was one of the few individual slave voices to emerge out of the historical void of Cape slavery. It is of interest to scholars and lay readers alike. Her indictment of Sir John Truter’s brutal treatment of her owns a unique place in the social history of the Cape. The story of Josephine Focus and Sir John Truter—like accounts through the eyes of slave owners like JN von Dessin, Hendrik Cloete and Johanna Nöthling—is more decorative than incisive. The banishment of the 6 ID MacCrone, Race attitudes in South Africa: Historical, experimental and psychological studies (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1957). 7 HF Heese, “Die Inwoners van Kaapstad in 1800”, Kronos 7 (1983), pp. 42-59. 135 Book reviews Indonesian exile, Achmet Prince van Ternate, to cite him as one example of the same phenomenon, is mentioned on at least four occasions by Schoeman (pp. 401, 444, 516, and 958). The account of slave women gossiping about their mistress in the kitchen (calling her a “bitch”), conveys Schoeman’s intention to bring to life slave experience—but repetition of this “vignette,” at least three times, kills its dramatic and illustrative effect (pp. 855 and 882). Portrait of a Slave Society is not an easy read. There are many eloquent passages and colourful “vignettes” in the book. The heavy use of examples becomes distracting, since they are seldom accompanied by supportive explanation. The description of Robert Jacob Gordon’s picnic party on Table Mountain, in 1777, is an example of a vignette of slave musicians and parasol-bearers clustered, in servitude, around their masters and mistresses (p. 459). See, for example, the account by the VOC officer Paravacini di Capelli of a woman in the far interior (in Nieuweveld, near Beaufort West) who violently declared to her slaves, “here I am absolute ruler” and “the Fiscal doesn’t know how to deal with you people as well as I do.” (pp. 782 and 785). There is also the anecdote of the priest who tried to impress his friends into being thankful to God for having not been born into slavery. Schoeman’s use of the probate inventories and the criminal trials of Trials of Slavery on the whole tends towards overkill. Schoeman’s repeated use of the phrase “vivid vignettes” is evidence of this stylistically awkward repetition (pp. 558, 712, 761, 826 (a ‘vivid idea’), 857, and 869). Again and again, we are offered “a vivid insight into the life” (p. 663) or “a concentrated, but extremely vivid idea” (p. 826). or a “vivid little vignette.” Repeated citation of “vignettes” fails to convince us, to use Schoeman’s own words, that “the most effective way of conveying some idea of the everyday reality of the slave-owning society at the Cape is probably by means of probate inventories, as has been illustrated in the course of this book.” (p. 737). Please note we are only 387 pages into the book at this point. By page 737, it appears that even Schoeman has also tired of the case studies of Trials of Slavery (which he says could be “multiplied over”), when he says: “All of these incidental cases of cruelty to slaves have been cited here not so much to prove anything, as merely by their monotonous repetition, with only minor variations, to give some idea of the constant undertone of violence in colonial society….” Robert Fogel and Stanley Engermann warned historians in 1976 about the dangers of imputing a trend from an anecdote: “The real question is whether such cases [of whipping] were common events that were rarely reported, or whether they were rare events that were 136 New Contree, No. 68, December 2013 frequently reported.”8 Historians relying on anecdotal evidence have no way of answering that question. The probate inventories and the criminal trials could have been better managed to make this portrait more accessible to the lay reader. Sometimes we are left feeling that the vignettes are the dominant text, and the narrative a lengthy footnote. Schoeman often leaves the reader to second-guess his arguments through passive illustration in the form of anecdotes. Schoeman makes heavy use of Armstrong and Worden’s descriptions of the wheat and grain harvests in both Early Slavery and Portrait of a Slave Society and cites illustrative examples from Penn and Boucher’s Britain at the Cape at least three times in his footnotes. Schoeman quotes Carl Peter Thunberg and Hendrik Cloete at length on the wheat and wine harvests in Portrait of a Slave Society. These descriptions appear more anecdotal than analytical. The VOC slave trader Francois Duminy’s apparent humanitarianism is borrowed from Andrew Duminy, who found this in Lorraine Maritz’s MA thesis (p. 1049). François Duminy was requested by the Council of Policy to present them with a report on the slave trade shortly after his retirement from the slave trade. His response, written in 1788, discusses various aspects of the slave trade, including the mental and physical well-being of slaves aboard slave ships and causes of slave mortality. Duminy describes how kind treatment by the crew, regular recreation and dancing on the upper deck and the washing of the hold where the slaves were kept with vinegar would keep the slaves being transported healthy. These practices were also quite common practice on Transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave ships. It is not, therefore, appropriate to single out Duminy as humanitarian when he was, more likely than anything else, defending his loss of 150 slaves to dysentery on the Meermin’s last slave voyage. Schoeman’s cover illustration depicts Captain Hendrik Storm, commander of the Cape garrison, with his son and daughter and his domestic slaves, with Table Mountain looming in the background (pp. 376 and 652). The widely used portrait, belonging to the Stellenbosch Museum, was painted by an anonymous artist c.1762. It is described by Schoeman on pages 376 and 377. Schoeman singles out the portrait as “unique” for its time because it provides, “visual information not only on the way of life of senior officials around the middle of the century, but also on their slaves.” (p. 376). His choice of cover is suggestive of the Cape gentry. There are fifteen black-and- 8 RW Fogel and SL Engerman, Time on the cross: The economics of American Negro slavery (Boston, Little, Brown, 1974), pp. 131-132. 137 Book reviews white illustrations in the middle of the book (pp. 608 and 609).9 Schoeman’s choice of illustrations is puzzling given his dismissal of historical comparisons between Cape rural slavery and North American plantation slavery. Only two of the illustrations fall within the period 1717 to 1795 (the rest were all rendered well after 1795)—and most are not from the Cape. Illustration 3 is a picture of an English transatlantic slaver c.1780, and illustration 12 is “a dance by slaves from West Africa on a North American plantation during the late eighteenth century.” Only four of the fifteen illustrations chosen by Schoeman are of the Cape. But these are taken from the period “after” 1795. Illustrations 7, 8 and 9 depict slaves in urban Cape Town during British rule and are dated 1824, 1834 and 1832 respectively. Lady Anne Barnard’s portrait of a young slave woman, Teresa, at Ganzekraal (near present-day Darling) is the only picture that has any direct relation to Schoeman’s period and subject, and it was drawn in 1799. The other illustrations of slaves aboard transatlantic slave ships (British, American and Danish), slaves bearing a palanquin in a Brazilian street and punishments being meted out to North American and Brazilian slaves were neither produced in the 18th century nor at the Cape. In short, Schoeman’s illustrations have little to do with his subject and appear as an afterthought perhaps prompted by an anxious publisher (See figure 1). A list of illustrations does not feature in the front-matter. This is even more noticeable considering Schoeman’s repeated criticisms (“facile comparisons of Cape slavery with that of the Caribbean and North America” – p. 601) of comparative history between the Cape and places outside of the VOC colonies. One cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Figure 1: What has this demeaning illustration of a convict and the Cape Town jail, dated 1832, to do with 18th century slavery? Source: Portrait of a Slave Society, illustration no. 9, pp. 608-609. 9 Sources are credited on p. 1219. 138 New Contree, No. 68, December 2013 Portrait of a Slave Society is comprehensive in a populist sense. It should draw readers to the more significant writings of Anna J Böeseken, Wayne Dooling, Susan Newton-King, Robert Shell, and Nigel Worden. Portrait of a Slave Society’s fresh use of published Dutch sources should prove useful to the history-reading public. Schoeman loses the professional historian, however, with his over-reliance on illustrative vignettes, sparse explanatory narrative, and the evasive eschewing of all quantitative analysis, historical change, and historical argumentation. New perspectives on the Anglo-Boer War / Nuwe perspektiewe op die Anglo-Boereoorlog (Bloemfontein, War museum of the Boer Republics, ca 2013, 274 pp. ISBN: 1-874979-46-4) RJ Constantine (Ed./Red.) Pieter L Möller North-West University (Vaal Triangle Campus) Pieter.Moller@nwu.ac.za Hierdie tweetalige publikasie is ’n keur van agt bydraes (waarvan sommige in Afrikaans en ander in Engels). Al die bydraes is gebied deur ekspert navorsers wat al in eie reg bekendheid verwerf het deur individueel oor fasette van die Anglo-Boereoorlog te publiseer. Hulle is RAS Atwood, André Wessels, Jaco de Bruin. Johan Henning, Johan Hattingh, Elizabeth van Heyningen, AWG Raath en Peter Donaldson. Nuwe perspektiewe op die Anglo-Boereoorlog handel oor ’n wye reeks van onderwerpe wat op die oog af nie noodwendig ’n verbandhoudende eenheid in tema vorm nie, maar weliswaar verbind word deur dieselfde tydgleuf en dieselfde Oorlog. Die eerste hoofstuk deur RAS Atwood handel oor die alombekende Sir Redvers Buller as Britse bevelvoerder tydens die Anglo-Boereoorlog. Atwood se bydrae kenmerk ’n besonderse aanslag en prikkelende leeswerk. Onder meer word spesifiek gewys op die rol van Buller as bevelvoerder van die Britse