The 132,974 items on the Changing Hands CD are unified by a theme of ownership and change of ownership. Changing Hands is a second generation research aid, where reference books and archives are first generation sources. Slaves, property and the colony changed ownership often between 1588 and 1888, hence our title, Changing Hands. Many of the important documents discussing ownership of are inaccessible to foreign, upcountry or overseas researchers of the Cape because of their obscure location, or difficult original handwriting. The series we (the many contributors) present here is a selection of those documents which we have found most useful in our own work on the colonial Cape. The items included comprise perhaps less than a small percentage of all documents in the Cape archives in this period so there is no pretence at completeness. Download the intro to this product.

Every item on the CD is indexed. Names and words e.g. “transfer” can be searched, but so too can dates or numbers. For example, one can place the date “1807” in the search box and the FastfFolios© search engine will find every document with that number.

This new electronic version includes many new databases, such as the archives’ contracts and testaments; Leonard Guelke’s and Scott Macfarlane’s loan farm database, Linda Duvenage’s and Nigel Worden’s Lodge deaths database; Anthony Whyte’s manumissions, and the compiler’s own slave transfer database, to name the biggest new additions. There are over forty databases and a further twenty documents. It would talk 45 days to print these out at six pages a minute. Do not attempt this!

I hope scholars, history students, genealogists, property developers and generally people who are passionate about history will enjoy this innovative new research tool. It is fun. To download the booklet click here:

Author Prof. Robert Shell