In this biography of the Khoikhoi Jan Paerl (1761-1851) light is being shed on a new form of resistance against colonial domination in Cape society. It emphasizes Khoikhoi colonial encounters and incorporates themes such as millenarian beliefs, identities, master-servant relations, indentured labour and the appropriation of mission Christianity.

Microhistory unlocked new avenues of historical investigation and methodologies and helped uncover the past of individuals, an event, or a small community. Reclamation of “lost histories” of individuals and colonized communities of colonial South Africa falls within this category. This study provides historical narratives of indigenous Khoikhoi of modest status absorbed into Cape colonial society as farm servants during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Based on archival and other sources, the author illuminates the “everyday life” and “lived experience” of Khoikhoi characters in a unique way. The opening chapter recounts the love-loathe drama between a Khoikhoi woman, Griet, and Hendrik Eksteen, whose murder she later orchestrated with the aid of slaves and Khoikhoi servants. The malcontent Andries De Necker, arrested for the murder of his Khoikhoi servant, attracted much legal attention and resulted in a protracted trial. The book next features the Khoikhoi millenarian prophet-turned-Christian convert Jan Paerl, who persuaded believers to reassert the land of their birth and liberate themselves from Dutch colonial rule by October 25, 1788. The last two chapters examine the lives of four Khoikhoi converts immersed into the Moravian missionary world and how they were exhibited by missionaries and sketched by the colonial artist, George F. Angas.

"Based on a decade of research, Belongings describes the contours of conflict among Dutch East India Company officials, settlers, indigenous Khoisan, and Indian-Ocean slaves. It intricately details the ways in which settlers themselves-rather than Company policy or an imperial army-brought a distant frontier first into a colonial orbit, then gradually under colonial control." -- provided by publisher.

"Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa" examines the rural Cape Colony from the earliest days of Dutch colonial rule in the mid-seventeenth century to the outbreak of the South African War in 1899.