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

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.