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Thomas Pringle’s “The Emigrant’s Cabin” and the Invention of Settler Colonialism
Abstract
Although Thomas Pringle produced a significant body of work during his
residence in the Cape Colony, he also wrote extensively about this
experience from a metropolitan vantage heavily invested in his public role as
the secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society and an active campaigner in
parliamentary pressure groups concerned with colonial reform. Any
appraisal of Pringle’s work which fails to take into account these shifting
perspectives, and reads it as a continuum rather than as divided by different
locations and intentions, runs the risk of simplifying. This simplification
tends to construct Pringle’s work as a telos of liberal development when it
was very often conjunctural and improvised, responding to circumstances
(often entirely novel) as they arose or retrospectively refashioning them.
residence in the Cape Colony, he also wrote extensively about this
experience from a metropolitan vantage heavily invested in his public role as
the secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society and an active campaigner in
parliamentary pressure groups concerned with colonial reform. Any
appraisal of Pringle’s work which fails to take into account these shifting
perspectives, and reads it as a continuum rather than as divided by different
locations and intentions, runs the risk of simplifying. This simplification
tends to construct Pringle’s work as a telos of liberal development when it
was very often conjunctural and improvised, responding to circumstances
(often entirely novel) as they arose or retrospectively refashioning them.
