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THE SPINNING JENNY AND THE SORTING TABLE: E. P. THOMPSON AND WORKERS IN INDUSTRIALIZING EUROPE AND SOUTHERN AFRICA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2017

JOHN HIGGINSON*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts

Abstract

The most compelling aspect of E. P. Thompson's work for labor historian of Southern Africa is his contention that class is a fluent group relationship or ‘happening’ – something workers do, in addition to what employers and the state impose upon them. However, by the 1970s, Thompson recognized that his earlier claim also had to resonate with other key assumptions about working class aspirations; especially the need of a shared group consciousness to be more meaningful for individuals than the laws of the state. The principal weakness of Thompson's for African historians, however, is the absence of a more explicit discussion about the demise of the English peasantry in his work.

Type
JAH Forum: E. P. Thompson in African History
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Joye Bowman, Mwangi wa Githinji, Bruce Laurie, Zhongjin Li, Toussaint Losier, Leonce Ndikumana, Traci Parker, and two anonymous readers for their invaluable suggestions. The remaining errors are my own. Author's email: jeh@history.umass.edu

References

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3 See Higginson, J., A Working Class in the Making: Belgian Colonial Labor Policy, Private Enterprise and the African Mineworker, 1907–1951 (Madison, WI, 1989), 35 Google Scholar.

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5 See E. P. Thompson's account of rural litigation in seventeenth-century Wiltshire: ‘“Rough music”: le charivari anglais’, 288.

6 See the chapter of Alan Macfarlane's The Origins of English Individualism (Oxford, 1978) entitled ‘When England ceased to be a peasant society: Marx, Weber and the historians’, 34–61.

7 See Hill, C., The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (London, 1972), 14, 118, and 226Google Scholar; see also Thompson, E. P., Witness against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (Cambridge, 1993), 6575 Google Scholar.

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11 See Thompson, E. P., ‘Patrician society, plebeian culture’, Journal of Social History, 7:4 (1974), 382405 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common, 260–2.

12 Drawing on Amartya Sen, Diana Wylie rightly claims, ‘During their industrial revolution, black South Africans obtained only the most restricted “exchange entitlements”.’ Badly put, but correct nevertheless. See Wylie, D., Starving on a Full Stomach: Hunger and the Triumph of Cultural Racism in Modern South Africa (Charlottesville, 2001), 3544 Google Scholar; see also Beinart, W. and Bundy, C., Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa (Berkeley, 1987), 21–30, 142–4Google Scholar; see also Phimister, I. R., ‘Peasant production and underdevelopment in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1914’, African Affairs, 73:291 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Darch, Colin, ‘Notas sobre fontes estatísticas ofíciais referentes à economia colonial Moçambicana: uma critíca geral’, Estudos Moçambicanos, 4 (1983–5), 103–25Google Scholar; Iliffe, J., ‘The organization of the Maji Maji Rebellion’, The Journal of African History, 8 (1967), 495512 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crais, Poverty, War and Violence in South Africa, 67–121.

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19 National Archives of Zimbabwe (hereafter NAZim) S 138/106 1923–128, Wankie: Confidential 238/712, ‘To Superintendent of Natives: Bulawayo’.

20 For the most comprehensive explanation of the cheap labor thesis, see Wolpe, H., ‘Capitalism and cheap labour-power in South Africa: from segregation to apartheid’, Economy and Society, 1:4 (1972), 425–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Burawoy, M., ‘The functions and reproduction of migrant labor: comparative material from South Africa and the United States’, American Journal of Sociology, 81:5 (1976), 1050–87Google Scholar.

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24 See P. Johnson, ‘Colonialism's back – and not a moment too soon’, New York Times Magazine, 15 Apr. 1993, 22–6; see also Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. A., Why Nations Fail: The Origin of Power Prosperity and Poverty (New York, 2012), 4569 Google Scholar.

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26 See Bradford, H., ‘Highways, byways and cul-de-sacs: the transition to agrarian capitalism in revisionist South African history’, Radical History Review, 46/7 (1990), 7585 Google Scholar; see also Higginson, A Working Class in the Making, 124–30.

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29 Native Grievances Commission, ‘Testimony of Alfred Weston Stockett’, 1914; Native Grievances Commission, ‘Testimony of Charles Walter Villiers’, Magistrate's Court, Johannesburg, 3 Mar. 1914, 1–7.

30 Humphries, D., Thomas, D. G., Cowley, A., and Matheson, J. E., Benoni (Benoni, South Africa, 1968), 1233 Google Scholar; see also Native Grievances Commission, ‘Testimony of Charles Walter Villiers’, 1–7.

31 See J., H. and Simons, R. E., Class and Colour in South Africa, 1850–1950 (London, 1969), 230–3Google Scholar; see also Krikler, J., White Rising: The 1922 Insurrection and Racial Killing in South Africa (Manchester, 2005)Google Scholar; Higginson, J., ‘The formation of an industrial proletariat in southern Africa: the second phase, 1921–1949’, in Wallerstein, I. (ed.), Labor in the World Social Structure (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1983), 130–1Google Scholar; Higginson, J., ‘A world briefly upended: an examination of Jeremy Krikler's White Rising: The 1933 Insurrection and Racial Killing in South Africa ’, Journal of the Historical Society, VII:1 (2007), 134 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 A large number of men who fought on the Boer side in the South African War and who also participated in the failed white rural uprising of 1914 were concentrated at a number of the key deep-level mines of the Far East Rand such as Modder B, Knights Deep, New Kleinfontein, and Van Ryn Deep. They called themselves the ‘Backvelders’ or ‘Free State Artisans’. See D. Humphries et al., Benoni, 191–3; see also W. A. Murray, The Poor White Problem in South Africa (Carnegie Commission: Health Report), Volume IV (Stellenbosch, 1932), 107–19.

33 See Native Grievances Committee, ‘Testimony of Stanley Archibald Markham Pritchard’, 26 Jan. 1914, before H. O. Buckle, Magistrates’ Court, Johannesburg, 2–3; see also Moodie, T. D., ‘Maximum average violence: underground assaults on the South African gold mines, 1913–1965’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 31:3 (2005), 553–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 See Moodie, ‘Maximum average violence’, 563; see also Native Grievances Committee, ‘Testimony of Alfred Weston Stockett’, 6 Feb. 1914, before H. O. Buckle, Magistrates’ Court, Johannesburg, 1–9.

35 South African Industrial Federation (hereafter SAIN) AH 646, Bd 3.30, Historical Papers, William Cullen Library, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, ‘Conference: Between Representatives of the Executive Committee of the Mining Department of the South African Industrial Federation and the Chamber of Mines … Thursday, 20th Dec. 1921’, 6; see also Rickard, T. A., ‘The strike on the rand’, Mining and Engineering Journal, 113:18 (1922), 757 Google Scholar.

36 See Krikler, White Rising, 199–200; see also SAIN AH 646, Bd 6.3.17 to Bd 6.3.22, Historical Papers, William Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, ‘Criminal Cases of Public Violence associated with the Rand Rebellion of 1922: Instructions to Counsel on Defence, Testimony of William Jacobus Stoltz (accused), Testimony of Pieter Jacobus Nel (policeman)’.

37 By the evening of 7 March 1922, and for at least a full week afterward, the corner of Sixteenth Street and Delarey Street in the Vrededorp section of Johannesburg became one of the most dangerous places in South Africa for a non-white person to be: See Anon., ‘Starting trouble: systematic attempts to provoke natives: important affidavits’, Sunday Times, 19 Mar. 1922; see also, SAIN AH 646, Bd 6.3.22, ‘Public Violence …’, 1922 (various testimonies).

38 Native Grievances Committee, ‘Testimony of Herman Melville Taberer’, 6 Feb. 1914, before H. O. Buckle, Magistrates’ Court, Johannesburg, 2–4.

39 See, for example, the correspondence of T. Holcomb, the American Ambassador to South Africa entitled ‘SA Communists on Trial, 6–20 January 1947’, Confidential: U. S. State Department Central Files, South Africa, 1945–1949 (Scholarly Resources).

40 See Berg, M., ‘What difference did women's work make to the industrial revolution’, History Workshop, 35 (1993), 30–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also, E. P. Thompson, The Making of the Working Class, 194–5; Samuel Thorne Papers MS1193, folder 4, ‘The Mining Industry and the Economy of South Africa’, Sterling Library Special Collections, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

41 See Chakrabarty, D., Provincializing Europe (Chicago, 2000), 4962 Google Scholar; see also Lewis, W. A., Growth and Fluctuation, 1870–1914 (Boston, 1965), 1924 Google Scholar.

42 For a particularly egregious example of this oversight, see the chapter ‘Filling in the boxes’, in Smelser's, N., Social Change in the Industrial Revolution, An Application of Theory to the British Cotton Industry (New York, 1965), 2445 Google Scholar.

43 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 191.

44 Ibid . 189–93.

45 van Onselen, C., The Small Matter of a Horse: The Life of ‘Nongoloza’ Mathebula, 1867–1948 (Johannesburg, 1984), 37 Google Scholar.

46 See Thompson, E. P., ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past and Present, 50 (1971), 7683 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 See de Morogues, B., De la misère des ouvriers et de la marche à suivre pour y remédier (Paris, 1832), 2931 Google Scholar; see also Smith, A., The Theory of Moral Sentiment (Indianapolis, 1982), 30–3Google Scholar (see particularly the chapter entitled ‘Of propriety’); Turrell, R. V., White Mercy: A Study of the Death Penalty in South Africa (Westport, CT, 2004), 151–8Google Scholar.

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49 van Onselen, C., The Fox and the Flies: The World of Joseph Silver, Racketeer and Psychopath (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007)Google Scholar.

50 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 62 and 90; see also Calhoun, Craig, The Question of Class Struggle (Chicago, 1982), 3460 Google Scholar; Higginson, J., ‘Liberating the captives: independent Watchtower as an avatar of colonial revolt in southern Africa and Katanga, 1908–1941’, Journal of Social History, 26:1 (1992), 55–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 H. Bradford, A Taste of Freedom; see also van Onselen, C., ‘The witches of suburbia: domestic service on the Witwatersrand, 1890–1914’, Studies in Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 2 (London, 1982), 173 Google Scholar.

52 W. A. Lewis, Growth and Fluctuation, 1870–1914, 28.

53 N. Smelser, Social Change in the Industrial Revolution, 1770–1840, 43.

54 See Chakrabarty, D., ‘Translating life-worlds into labor and history’, in Chakrabarty, D. (ed.), Provincializing Europe (Princeton, 2000), 7291 Google Scholar.

55 Moodie, ‘Maximum average violence’.

56 Foucault, M., Essential Works of Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, Volume I , ed. Rainbow, Paul (New York, 1994), 1535 Google Scholar. For example, E. Picard, a petit bourgeois member of the Parti Ouvrier Belge, was quick to blame ‘foreign elements’ such as the Senegalese railway workers who, from his vantage point, were subverting indigenous Congolese workers by example because of their discussions of rights and the political franchise: See Picard, Edmond, En Congolie (Bruxelles, 1896), 93–4Google Scholar.

57 South African National Archives, SAB PM, vol. 1/1/251, file 120/33/1913, ‘Closed Compounds: Black Peril Commission's Report: Testimony of Theodore Etienne Navroord, Deputy Commissioner of Police’, Friday, 25 Oct. 1912; see also Sheila T. van der Horst, ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’, paper read in January, 1954, at the Annual Meeting of the Council of the South African Institute of Race Relations, 6–7.

58 See AG 2738, Historical Papers, William Cullen Library, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, Sharecropping and Tenancy Project, ‘Interview with Mr. M. Moloko [interviewer: Mr. B. Moeketsi]’, Sekama/ Mathopestad, Boons, 20-11-79, Tape Numbers 78A/B and 79A/B; see also ‘Interview with Mrs. R. M. Mogoai [interviewer: M. S. S. Ntoane], 884 Ikageng Location, Pochefstrom, 06-11-1979, Tape Number 72 A/B.

59 See AG 2738, Historical Papers, William Cullen Library, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, Sharecropping and Tenancy Project, ‘Interview with Mr. Joe Mahlako [interviewer: M. M. Molepo]’, Tape 81, Aa 14.

60 See Higginson, J., Collective Violence and the Agrarian Origins of South African Apartheid, 1900–1948 (New York, 2015), 187–90Google Scholar; see also van Onselen, C., ‘The witches of suburbia’, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914, Volume II: The New Nineveh (New York, 1982), 173 Google Scholar.

61 Lloyd, ‘Africa and Hobson's imperialism’, 137–8.

62 After years of research and surveying African mineworkers at Anglo Platinum, Nhlanhla Thwala concluded that more than 60 per cent of the workers at Anglo Platinum would support the banning of Fanakalo at the workplace. Moreover, 40 per cent of them believed that Fanakalo was the source many of fatal accidents on the mines: See N. Thwala, ‘The mining sector in South Africa and the search for a workplace language: is Fanakalo still relevant in South Africa?’, Articles on Language: Wits Language School (1 Jul. 2008), 1–4 (http://www.witslanguageschool.com/NewsRoom/ArticleView/).

63 See E. P. Thompson's, ‘Outside the whale’, in Thomson, E. P. (ed.), The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (London, 1978), 25 Google Scholar.