ABSTRACT
In July 1823, the Commission of Eastern Inquiry arrived on the shores of the British Cape Colony. Forming part of a greater metropolitan effort to realign and assess a sprawling empire, this investigative commission was charged with collecting information on the Cape's bureaucracy. By 1827 however, the Commissioners had also collected an archive of petitions from the Cape’s labouring classes who approached them to raise their grievances. This article focuses on the testimonies delivered by recaptured Africans - formerly enslaved individuals seized by the British navy from illegally operating slave ships after the passing of the Abolition Act of 1807. At the Cape, recaptives were apprenticed for periods of fourteen years, during which time they were meant to be taught a trade. The petitions of these formerly enslaved people reveal the ways in which they drew on an understanding of humanitarian laws to contest their treatment and demand that their rights as free British subjects be recognized. For recaptives, this freedom was fundamentally understood in terms of maintaining social ties. While not always legally successful, these petitions reveal tangible moments of resistance and suggest that recaptives at the Cape formed a more coherent community than was previously thought.
