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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Wife, the Farmer and the Farmer's Slaves: Adultery and Murder on a Frontier Farm in the Early Eighteenth Century Cape |
Author: | Penn, Nigel |
Year: | 2002 |
Periodical: | Kronos: Journal of Cape History |
Issue: | 28 |
Pages: | 1-20 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | South Africa The Cape |
Subjects: | slaves colonists Europeans extramarital sexuality homicide history 1700-1799 Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Ethnic and Race Relations History and Exploration Law, Human Rights and Violence Women's Issues Historical/Biographical Law, Legal Issues, and Human Rights |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/41056480 |
Abstract: | As the only white woman to be executed at the Cape (South Africa) during the 18th century, Maria Mouton (1690-1714) has long enjoyed a unique notoriety. Her crime - inciting her slave lover to the murder of her husband - has been noted by historians and preserved in the folk memory of a district. The Maria Mouton case, examined in this paper, provides details which help to illuminate early Cape colonial attitudes towards marriage, adultery and sexual relationships between masters, mistresses and slaves. Furthermore, it provides a glimpse of farming and labour practices in the Cape frontier zone in the early years. The story unfolded in a particularly interesting time and place - the beginning of the 18th century in the Vier en Twintig Rivieren and Waveren districts, just when the colony began to expand into the interior. Amongst the more significant revelations of the case is the absolute centrality of slaves in the frontier zone, both as labourers and as runaways, as intimate members of the colonial farms and as potential enemies. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |