come a slaveholding society.6
By the early eighteenth century, slavery at the Cape had acquired dis-
tinctive characteristics. First, the Cape slaves came from more diverse
linguistic, religious, and social backgrounds than those in the Americas.
Indeed, most of the Cape slaves were not even from Africa, which was the
source of all the American slaves.A few came from Mozambique, but more
from Madagascar, and more again from Indonesia, India, and Ceylon (Sri
Lanka), including a large minority of Muslims. Second, from 171 I onward
there were rather more slaves than free burghers in the colony. In 1793,
there were 14,747 slaves (9,°46 men, 3,590 women, and 2,111 children),
compared with the 13,830 free burghers. Third, the augmentation of the
slave population was a result of continual imports rather than natural
increase. The Cape slaves never became a self-reproducing population.
Until 1765, there were always more than four times as many male as female
slaves, and in 1793 there were still two-and-a-half times as many men as
women. Moreover, although the overall mortality rate is not known, it was
usually high, especially among the company slaves.It was very high indeed
during intermittent epidemics of smallpox and other diseases.