This paper uses manumission as a lens through which to explore the financial lives of enslaved people in nineteenth-century Cape Town. Between 1825 and 1834, more than one thousand two hundred people were manumitted in the city, about a third of whom achieved that through (self-)purchase. Records of paid manumission marked the end point of what, in some cases at least, was a protracted dispute over the costs of freedom. Pairing quantitative analysis of the paid manumissions with close reading of disputed manumission cases, this paper centres enslaved people as financial actors. In so doing this paper contributes a new perspective to the growing literature on the financial side of slavery and emancipation.
WISER Seminar Papers
- WISER's TRUST seminar is hosted on-line every Monday afternoon from 16:00 - 17:00 SA time during the teaching semester. Forthcoming seminars are available here, and past events are detailed in our archive.
- Please register on Zoom in advance of the meeting on this link.
- Participants should please read the paper (below) prior to the seminar; it will typically be available by the Friday preceding the seminar.
In this semester, the Trust seminar will explore questions of credit and debt on the African continent. In contrast with the argument that trust and confidence are synonymous (most evident in the Edelman Trust Barometer and the reporting around it), some of the most convincing scholarship argues for the direct association of trust with credit. Other researchers, studying informal African institutions, have found credit everywhere on this continent, but little that can be associated with trust. Some state institutions (like SACCOs in Kenya) and simpler penalties, like efficient bankruptcy laws, seem also to be instrumental in shaping the politics of credit. One key driver of credit systems is a secondary market, which depends in part on institutions and information that derive from (and support) fiduciaries. These are especially important in the contemporary tensions between firm-based and individualised credit systems. The seminar series this semester will explore some of these dynamics, examining how they have shaped the cultures and politics of debt and credit from the precolonial to the contemporary period.
Presented by : Kate Ekama
2 Sep 2026 - 4:00pm
WISER Research Theme: