Laura J. Mitchell (University of California, Los Angeles)

Submitted: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 07:40:16 +0200


Laura J. Mitchell
Ph.D. candidate
History Department
University of California--Los Angeles
P.O. Box 951473
Los Angeles, California  90095-1473

phone:   310-825-4601
fax:     310-206-2250
e-mail:  ljmitch@ucla.edu

My primary research focus is South Africa in the VOC period.  I am
particularly interested in questions surounding slavery and other forms of
un-free labor.  My dissertation explores the links between property
holding and labor control, looking at the ways colonial power, with
varying degrees of success in a frontier context, attempted to limit
access to land and to mediate labor relations between settlers, imported
slaves, and indigenous people in a growing labor market.

I am currently trying to define or delimit the extent to which slaves and
Khoisan laborers participated in this property-labor nexus as both workers
and occasional holders of land title, challenged it, or withdrew from it. 

Dissertation title: Landscapes of Power and Authority:  Property and Labor
on a Colonial Frontier in Eighteenth-Century South Africa.