George Webb Hardy's the Black Peril and the social meaning of ‘Black Peril’ in early twentieth-century South Africa

Cornwell, Gareth D N

Title: George Webb Hardy's the Black Peril and the social meaning of ‘Black Peril’ in early twentieth-century South Africa
Creator: Cornwell, Gareth D N
Date Issued: 1996
Date: 1996
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: vital:6116
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004240
Identifier: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057079608708504
Description: preprint
Description: The 'Black Peril' — the threatened rape of white women by black men — was an important factor in the moral economy underpinning colonial debate about the 'Native Question' in early twentieth-century South Africa. This essay gives sympathetic consideration to studies which have attempted to link the recurrence of Black Peril panics with specific disturbances in the economy or body politic, before offering symptomatic readings of two pieces of writing by George Webb Hardy, the article 'The Black Peril' (1904) and the novel The Black Peril (1912). These readings suggest that the rape threat was essentially a rationalization of white men's fear of sexual competition from black men. The imagery of purity and contagion, in terms of which the 'endogamous imperative' is typically represented in such texts, suggests that the idea of caste may usefully be invoked in attempts to explain the seemingly irrational public hysteria surrounding the Black Peril phenomenon.
Format: 17 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Journal of Southern African Studies
Relation: Cornwell, D.G.N. (1996) George Webb Hardy's The Black Peril and the social meaning of 'Black Peril' in early Twentieth-Century South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 22 (3). pp. 441-453
Relation: Journal of Southern African Studies volume 22 number 3 441 453 1996 1465-3893
Rights: Cornwell, Gareth
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Journal of Southern African Studies Self-archiving Policy

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Cornwell, David Gareth Napier (Prof Emeritus)

RU Department of Literary Studies in English

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