Between the Covers

Unbound. Broadside. Approximately 8¼" x 12¼". Printed on one side only of a sheet of laid paper with a watermark of seated and crowned Britannia. Text in Afrikaans. Small stain in lower left corner, small nicks and tears in the margins only, else near fine. King William's Proclamation explaining the terms of Emancipation of enslaved persons in the Cape Colony, who were technically to be freed on December 4th, 1833, along with other slaves freed in the British Empire, but here transmitted from the King by the Colony's Governor T. F. Wade and J. G. Brink, Secretary on January 6th, 1834, in order to explain the somewhat confusing terms of the "Emancipation." In practice, the freed slaves were immediately apprenticed to their former enslavers for periods of between two and four years, and this broadside explains the details of that mechanism. Both *OCLC* (accession # 558687051) and *Copac* locate only a single copy, at the British Library.

Item #598476