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Dispossession and legal mentalité in nineteenth-century South Africa: Grotian and Lockean theories of property acquisition in the annexations of British Kaffraria and Natalia

Reid, D; (2021) Dispossession and legal mentalité in nineteenth-century South Africa: Grotian and Lockean theories of property acquisition in the annexations of British Kaffraria and Natalia. Settler Colonial Studies , 11 (1) pp. 69-85. 10.1080/2201473X.2020.1829423. Green open access

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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.

Type: Article
Title: Dispossession and legal mentalité in nineteenth-century South Africa: Grotian and Lockean theories of property acquisition in the annexations of British Kaffraria and Natalia
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2020.1829423
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2020.1829423
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Legal mentalité, dispossession, South Africa, British Kaffraria, Republic of Natalia, property rights
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10129720
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