Labour Aristocracy - South Africa

What is it about?

This article aims to present an analysis of the labour aristocracy in the early twentieth century South Africa that goes beyond traditional conceptual and territorial boundaries created through a methodological nationalism and Eurocentrism since the emergence of labour history as an academic discipline. It identifies some key dimensions attributed to the labour aristocracy in mainstream approaches that focused on Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and attempts to illustrate how these could be considered in analysing the particular South African case. The article mainly focuses on how the understanding of labour aristocracy would be reconstructed by demonstrating an aristocracy of labour that merges with an aristocracy of colour in South Africa. While considering ‘race relations’ as a new dimension in the analysis of labour aristocracy, it also underlines the asymmetrical relation between class structure and racial stratification. Finally, by exploring the international mobility of Cornish miners and Chinese migrant labour, the article demonstrates how our understanding of labour aristocracy in South Africa would benefit from a transnational - indeed transcontinental perspective that connects the history of ‘white’ labour in Britain and Australia with that in South Africa in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. The information in this conceptually informed article is based on the review of the main literature on the notion of labour aristocracy.

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Why is it important?

Critique of Eurocentrism; a perspective and an example beyond traditional conceptual and territorial boundaries.

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