South Africa still affected by Britain's post-Napoleonic emigration policy [audio 1st 9min]

Nick Baker and the "Making History" team examine listeners' historical queries and get to the bottom of historical mysteries, local legends, family curiosities and architectural oddities. Listener Joan Mason has an ancestor who emigrated to the Eastern Cape of Southern Africa in 1820. It was a scheme sponsored by the British government to escape the poverty of post-Napoleonic Britain, but what Joan (and many others) didn't realise was that this was a underhand way of creating a human shield between British colonial forces and their African enemies. "Making History" consulted Professor Saul Dubow, University of Sussex; and Fleur Way-Jones, Curator of the 1820 Settlers Memorial Museum in Grahamstown, South Africa.