Dispossession and legal mentalité in nineteenth-century South Africa: Grotian and Lockean theories of property acquisition in the annexations of British Kaffraria and Natalia. (2nd January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Reid, Darren
• Is Part Of: Settler colonial studies. Volume 11:Number 1(2021)
• Page Start: 69
• Page End: 85
• Publication Date: 2021-01-02
• Subjects: Legal mentalité -- dispossession -- South Africa -- British Kaffraria -- Republic of Natalia -- property rights; Colonies -- Periodicals; Postcolonialism -- Periodicals; 325.3
• DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2020.1829423
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2201-473X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: British and Afrikaner governments used different types of legal arguments to legitimize their acquisition of African land in the early nineteenth century. Using Pierre Legrand's concept of legal mentalité, I explore the legal mythologies that conditioned Britons' and Afrikaners' methods of land acquisition. I adopt two instances of land acquisition to use as case studies: the British annexation of Kaffraria in 1835 and the Afrikaner annexation of Natalia in 1839. I show that the annexation of British Kaffraria was conditioned by a legal mythology influenced by Lockean ideas of property theory, in which property could be legally obtained through a framework of improvement. Meanwhile, I show that the annexation of the Republic of Natalia was conditioned by a legal mythology influenced by Grotian ideas of property theory, in which property could be legally obtained through a framework of conquest.