Running Towards: Labour Market Incentives for Runaway Slaves in the British Cape Colony, 1830–1838

Karl Bergemann (), Gabriel Brown () and Johan Fourie
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Karl Bergemann: Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University
Gabriel Brown: Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University

No 03/2026, Working Papers from Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Recent scholarship on slave escapes has increasingly emphasised economic motivation, but few studies have empirically investigated how market incentives influenced the decision-making of enslaved individuals during transitions from coerced to wage labour. This paper fills that gap by exploring whether runaway slaves at the British Cape Colony were driven by the desire to improve their labour market opportunities as slavery gave way to emancipation. To answer this question, we construct a novel dataset of 689 runaway advertisements published between 1830 and 1838, drawn from two major colonial newspapers, and link these records to individual-level valuations compiled at the time of de jure emancipation in December 1834. Using both difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity in time analyses, we find that escapes increased markedly among higher-valued, more productive enslaved individuals immediately after de jure emancipation, rising by over 100 per cent relative to the pre-emancipation average. These escape attempts gradually declined, however, as de facto emancipation approached in 1838. Our results suggest that enslaved individuals responded rationally to shifts in labour market conditions, challenging the conventional view of escape as solely a reaction to harsh treatment. By quantifying the relationship between institutional change and labour coercion, this paper contributes directly to theoretical debates on how market incentives shape behaviour under conditions of economic unfreedom.

Keywords: Slavery; desertion; labour market; runaway; Cape Colony; emancipation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 J15 J47 N37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-lma
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