Children, Work and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Cape Town

Abstract: This article explores the intertwined issues of chronological age, work and freedom for enslaved children in the nineteenth-century Cape Colony. Regulations, registers, and interviews show that children’s age became more important in the 1820s–1830s and was closely related to work. Of the numerous enslaved children who were manumitted in Cape Town in that period, the majority were young girls manumitted by the Philanthropic Society. The final section focuses on the Society manumissions, tracing kin, and highlighting the role of work in these young girls’ lives. This article demonstrates the usefulness of chronological age as a category of historical analysis by focusing on a group of marginalized children in southern Africa. This work brings histories of children and childhood, labor, and slavery into conversation and lays a foundation for future research.