Plantations, Passes and Proletarians: Labour and the Colonial State in Nineteenth Century Natal

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Patrick Harries (1987). Plantations, Passes and Proletarians: Labour and the Colonial State in Nineteenth Century Natal. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3. Taylor & Francis / Oxford University Press.

Type	journal article
Scope	Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method	archival narrative
Period studied	1849–1897
Regions	Natal, Zululand, Southern Mozambique (Delagoa Bay, Inhambane), Northern and eastern Transvaal, Kimberley diamond fields, Witwatersrand
Themes	origins segregation, mining migrant labour, agriculture land, labour markets wages, business and state
Citation key	harries1987

Argument

Harries examines how the Natal colonial state responded to coastal sugar planters' demand for labour. The state was pulled between the planters and its own dependence on revenue from the African peasantry and reserves. It therefore resisted breaking up the reserves and relied instead on foreign (mainly amatonga/Mozambican) migrants. It grew more involved from the 1870s, with state-aided recruitment, feeding stations and treaties with the Zulu and Portuguese, and a pass system in 1876 and 1884 meant to cut wages and recruiting costs and to prevent desertion and an 'uncontrolled proletariat'. The foreign-migrant scheme collapsed in the 1880s because of desertion to better-paid Cape and diamond-field work, war, drought and smallpox. The planters then turned to indentured Indians and to local and Zulu labour as the peasantry was squeezed. The state is presented as neither a pliant instrument of one capitalist interest nor a neutral umpire. Natal's recruiters, pass laws and labour agreements are traced as models for the Witwatersrand mining system.

Evidence and method

Natal colonial archives (Secretary for Native Affairs, Colonial Secretary's Office, Immigration files), Colonial Office despatches (CO 179), Natal Blue Books, legislative council sessional papers, Natal Mercury and Natal Witness, Portuguese and Mozambican sources (Boletim Oficial), and the author's own PhD thesis on Mozambican labour migration. Secondary works include Slater, Etherington, Bundy, Leverton and Manson.

Place in the debates

• Shepstone's role and the Natal reserve system (liberal defender vs economic interest) (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Rejects the liberal reading of Shepstone as principled protector of Africans. Argues that protecting the reserves and squatting served the colonial treasury's interest in African tax revenue.
• Nature of the colonial state: instrument of capital vs autonomous umpire (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Argues the state was neither. Its actions responded to changing local conditions and the need to develop the colony's productive resources.
• Was the Natal sugar industry built on Indian labour? (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Challenges this belief. Foreign African migrants were important, even preponderant, in establishing sugar between 1866 and 1874.
• African peasant production for the market in the reserves (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Challenges the orthodox view that little was produced for the market in the reserves. Argues the reserves and Crown lands were centres of market production and that the peasantry responded strongly to price signals.
• Origins of the South African pass laws and migrant labour system (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Locates their origins in Natal and the Cape, alongside the Witwatersrand. Sees them as products of a nineteenth-century bourgeois discourse on controlling a rootless proletariat, and of capitalism's inability to dissolve pre-existing modes of production.

Findings

• Natal's state faced a basic contradiction: planters needed labour while the treasury depended on African peasant taxes, which led it to protect the reserves. (p. 2)

  On the one hand, export-producing sugar planters demanded labour; on the other hand, the colonial government was dependent on African agriculturalists for an important part of its revenue.

• The state is analysed as neither a pliant tool of one capitalist interest nor an objective arbiter. (p. 3)

  the colonial state was neither the automatically pliant instrument of one dominant capitalist interest nor an objective umpire;

• African taxation was a major source of colonial revenue, which explains official reluctance to push Africans off the land. (p. 4)

  In the early 1850s, direct African taxation contributed over a third of all Natal's revenues.

• Sugar expansion in the 1866-74 period rested substantially on foreign African migrants rather than Indian labour alone. (p. 9)

  Yet over the period 1866-1874, sugar production rose by 51 per cent.

• Foreign African migrants suited planters because they were a temporary proletariat who could be removed and accepted lower wages than Indians. (p. 12)

  While in Natal, foreign Africans constituted a temporary proletariat because they had no alternative means of livelihood.

• During the 1867-71 depression African farmers expanded cereal acreage while European farmers contracted, which shows peasant responsiveness to the market. (p. 13)

  had increased the acreage of maize and sorghum by 28 per cent and 47 per cent respectively.

• The 1876 pass law was designed to cut wages and recruiting costs by checking desertion and competition between employers. It was not an influx-control measure. (p. 19)

  The object of this law was to push down wages and recruiting costs by controlling desertion and restricting competition between employers and recruiters.

• The state-aided overland amatonga scheme, which brought almost 20,000 workers, ended in 1884 because of Zululand's wars, the difficulty of controlling workers and rising costs. (p. 24)

  the overland labour importation scheme, responsible for bringing almost 20,000 amatongas into Natal, had ended.

• Higher taxes did not force African producers into wage labour. They deepened market production until falling cereal prices in the 1880s squeezed peasants onto the labour market. (p. 26)

  But instead of pushing African maize producers onto the labour market, the increased taxation drove them deeper into market production.

• By the early 1890s the decline of African strength dismantled the state's protective policies and cleared the way for settler control of local labour. (p. 27)

  By the early 1890s the military and economic strength of the Natal African population had declined to such an extent, in relation to that of the settlers, that the state's protective policies had almost disintegrated.

• Mozambican workers formed the bulk of the early Witwatersrand mine workforce. (p. 28)

  On the gold mines of the Witwatersrand, up to 75 per cent of a total labour force of 15,000 in 1889, 50,000 in 1895 and 97,000 in 1899, was drawn from southern Mozambique.

• Natal's pass laws were direct models for Witwatersrand pass laws and labour institutions. (p. 28)

  The Witwatersrand pass laws of 1895-96 drew direct inspiration from the Natal pass laws of 1876 and 1884.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Natal Blue Books ('Agriculture' and 'Native Affairs' sections)	official statistical series	c.1850s-1889	Supplies crop production and acreage, maize/sorghum prices, sugar prices, wages, implement counts and magistrates' reports on African farming.
Natal Archives, Secretary for Native Affairs (SNA) files (e.g. SNA 1/1/7-1/1/135, 1/3, 1/6, 1/7)	state archives	1855-1890	Correspondence of magistrates, planters, Dunn and the SNA documents recruiting, refugees, labour policy and pass laws.
Public Record Office, Colonial Office series CO 179 (Natal despatches)	state archives	1863-1876	Despatches of Keate, Musgrave, Wolseley and Colonial Office annotations establish policy of protecting peasant revenue and imperial caution on labour importation.
Natal Colonial Secretary's Office (CSO) files	state archives	1871-1890	Supports figures on migrant entries and exits, Dunn's agency, planter complaints and recruiting.
Natal Indian Immigration (II) files and Protector of Immigrants records	state archives	1874-1901	Source of counts of amatonga entering and leaving Natal via the Lower Tugela ferry and by sea.
Natal Government House (GH) papers	state archives	1871-1880	Humanitarian lobby letters, consul reports and Dunn correspondence on labour schemes.
Natal Legislative Council Sessional Papers and Select Committee reports (e.g. SP no. 12, 1872; no. 4, 1874; no. 38, 1877; SP 1884 no. 12)	commission or official report	1857-1884	Documents debate and recommendations on importing African labour, estimates of labour numbers and Shepstone's memoranda.
Natal Parliamentary Papers, Select Committee Report no. 8 of 1857 and Votes and Proceedings of the Natal Legislative Council 1874	parliamentary debates	1857; 1874	Shows up-country opposition to public financing of labour importation.
Natal legislation: Ordinances 2 and 4 of 1855, Laws 13 of 1859, 15 of 1871, 41 and 48 of 1884, 52 of 1886, Immigration Notice no. 1 of 1876, NGG notices	legislation gazette	1855-1886	Establishes the legal framework of labour importation and the successive pass laws.
Natal Native Affairs Commission 1852-53	commission or official report	1852-53	Shows early settler demands to break up locations and import foreign labour.
Natal newspapers: Natal Mercury, Natal Witness	newspapers periodicals	1857-1888	Evidence for planter opinion, labour supply, wages, desertion and settler fears of amatonga proletarians.
Boletim Oficial de Mocambique (BO)	official statistical series	1861-1876	Slave populations and numbers of 'black passengers' embarking at Lourenco Marques, plus Portuguese regulations.
Portuguese archives: AHU Moz., Ministerio dos Negocios Estrangeiros (MNE) Lisbon	state archives	1871-1878	Portuguese policy on embarkation and the governor's report of the 1878 return exodus.
British Foreign Office files (FO 63, FO 84) and Parliamentary Papers C. 1137 (1875)	commission or official report	1873-1888	Consular reports on labour shipments and Shepstone's report on the Cetshwayo expedition.
Despatch book of Melmoth Osborne, British Resident in Zululand	state archives	1880	Documents Zulu labour entering Natal after the Anglo-Zulu war and chiefs' role.
SNA 'Return of Natives entering and leaving the colony', 1881	official statistical series	1881	Source for the figure of over 3,500 Zulu workers entering Natal in 1881.
Transvaal Archives, State Secretary, Foreign Affairs (Ra 4047, Ra 607)	state archives	1897	Supports the claim that Witwatersrand pass laws and labour agreements drew on Natal models.
Unpublished theses and compilations: Leverton (Government Finance in Natal), Young (Native Policy of Benjamin Pine, SAAYB 1951), Manson (Hlubi and Ngwe), Turrell (Kimberley), Axelson (taxation), Harries PhD 1983	secondary literature compilation	1850s-1880s	Used for revenue and tax figures, acreage in reserves, recruit costs, and Shangaan numbers at Kimberley.

Inference

Quantification: Descriptive tables.

Archival narrative history combining a chronological reading of colonial despatches, magistrates' and SNA correspondence and newspapers with scattered series (Blue Book prices, wages, revenues, acreage, migrant counts) to trace state labour policy; argued by periodisation and interpretation of state interests and settler factions, not statistical testing.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
The Natal state protected African reserves and squatting because direct African taxation was a major share of colonial revenue, which limited coercion of local labour. (p. 374)	Revenue figures from Young and Leverton, hut-tax figures and Keate's despatches (CO 179).	Partial data
Migrant African workers from Mozambique and the Transvaal, not only Indians, were important in establishing the sugar industry in the 1860s-70s. (p. 379)	Estimates from newspapers, Select Committee reports, SNA memos and Sessional Papers; no systematic count.	Partial data
African peasants in the reserves produced substantially for the market and out-produced Europeans in cereals, responding to price rises. (p. 383)	Natal Blue Books acreage and price series, magistrates' comments, Manson's thesis.	Systematic data
The 1876 Natal pass law was designed to push down wages and recruiting costs by controlling desertion of imported amatonga workers, not for influx control. (p. 389)	Immigration Notice 1/1876, planter letters in the Natal Mercury, SNA and PI files.	Partial data
The overland scheme under John Dunn brought large numbers of amatonga but high desertion and exodus, and ended in 1879-84 amid war and competition from Kimberley. (p. 388)	Protector of Immigrants returns, CSO/SNA correspondence and the Lourenco Marques governor's report.	Partial data
By the 1880s falling sugar prices, smallpox, overcrowded reserves and falling cereal prices shifted Natal to Indian indenture and local African labour. (p. 395)	Natal Blue Book price, implement and export series, magistrates' reports, SNA/CSO files, Richardson on centralised mills.	Partial data
Natal's migrant labour and pass-law system served as a model for the Witwatersrand labour system. (p. 398)	Transvaal Archives correspondence, Natal-Mozambique agreements, and the movement of Natal recruiters; asserted largely without detailed evidence.	Illustrative or anecdotal

The author's caveats

Notes that knowledge of the Natal peasantry is limited and 'much work still needs to be done'; labels the estimate of 2,500 amatongas annually a 'guesstimate'; states the figures for amatonga leaving the colony are incomplete; migrant numbers are described as estimates.

Gaps in the evidence

There are no systematic employment records for plantations (estate payrolls, sugar company books) to test the migrant and Indian shares of the labour force; numbers rest on newspaper estimates and official guesses. Reserve production claims rely on a few magistrates' remarks and Blue Book aggregates that do not distinguish reserves from tenant farms. The diffusion of Natal practice to the Witwatersrand is asserted on thin documentary links; Chamber of Mines and Transvaal records could test it and existed then.

Replicability: Data described but not public.