The Economy of the Cape Colony in the Eighteenth Century (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Cape ofGoodHope and the world economy, 1652-1835
at the very least, substantiaJ villages. Though by no means at the end of its development, the coiony of the 1830s was close enough to maturity for its settlers to begin to agitate for a Parlament. In genend, historians have tended to consider this qualitative and quantitative change as natura! and self-explanatory, and as puny in comparison with the socioeconomic revolution which followed on the mineral discoveries of the late nineteenth Century. After all, such growth was characteristic of colonies of white settlement and of slave societiesand the Cape was both. Indeed, the Cape's success story was far less spectacular than those of, for instance, British North America or the West Indies. All the same, the economie history of the pre-industrial Cape Coiony needs to be written in terms which are comparable to those, of other colonies, concentrating on the increase of production, die, "' development of export crops, and the establishment of Instruments of^l v '-c °! < ' r trade~äncTcommerce. These are the important issues in the economie" '"J':"3 v '"'" history óf the Cape, rather than the much discussed trekboers, and the alleged subsistence economy. 11 * This last should more strictly be described as a monopsony.
Ship Traffic and the Economy of the Cape Colony
2008
Most historians regard the Cape Colony of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as an impoverished and destitute settlement, primarily because of the many restrictions and prohibitions enforced by the Dutch East India Company, who founded the Cape settlement as a refreshment station for its ships. The mercantilist thinking of the time ensured that the free burghers in the Cape were to comply with the demands of the Company, dependent on the number of passing ships, for a market, and with little economic incentive to expand production. This assumption of poor economic performance only came to be challenged in the late 1980s. Using new data collected from the so-called opgaaf rolls (tax return records) in The Hague, argue that, in fact, the Cape economy grew signi…cantly throughout the eighteenth century. However, these authors emphasise that local demand played the dominant role in the development of the economy and dismiss the traditional argument that passing ships were essential to the welfare of the Cape Colony. Using new empirical evidence on the number of ships in combined with techniques from business cycle theory, this paper tests whether ship tra¢ c had any signi…cant relationship with agricultural production in the Cape Colony and, if so, the direction and size of association. The results suggest a strong systematic co-movement between wheat and ship tra¢ c in , with less evidence for wine production and stock herding activities.
How comfortable was the life of the average settler in the Dutch Cape Colony of the eighteenth century? The generally accepted view is of a poor, subsistence economy, with little progress being made in the 143 years of Dutch rule (1652-1795). In this article I show that new evidence from probate inventory and auction roll records contradicts earlier historical accounts. These documents bear witness to a relatively affluent settler society, comparable to some of the most prosperous regions of eighteenth-century England and Holland. This detailed picture of the material wealth of the Colony should inspire a revision of the standard accounts. I also briefly consider the causes and consequences of this prosperity.
GDP in the Dutch Cape Colony: The national accounts of a slave-based society
2012
New estimates of GDP of the Dutch Cape Colony (1652-1795) suggest that the Cape was one of the most prosperous regions during the eighteenth century. This stands in sharp contrast to the perceived view that the Cape was an "economic and social backwater", a slave economy with slow growth and little progress. Following a national accounts framework, we find that Cape settlers' per capita income is similar to the most prosperous countries of the time -Holland and England. We trace the roots of this result, showing that it is partly explained by a highly skewed population structure and very low dependency ratio of slavery, and attempt to link the eighteenth century Cape Colony experience to twentieth century South African income levels.
Cape Town at the advent of the mineral revolution (c. 1875): economic activity and social structure
1987
Cape Town In 1875 was the capital of Britain's Cape Colony. Located on the Cape Peninsula, by the • shores of Table Bay, 1 this small town of 33 000 people was contained within a natural amphitheatre of approximately six and a half square miles formed and dominated by Table Mountain and Signal Hill. In the sixteenth century the Table Bay area, relatively flat and well watered, had been a place of barter between the Peninsula's Kholsan inhabitants and crews of ships passing between Europe and 2 the East Indies. In establishing a settlement at the Bay in 1652 the directors of the Dutch East India Company were primarily 3 concerned, it would seem, to maintain the status quo ante. The settlers' and Khoisan's failure to achieve this aim has been well documented and led to the inexorable growth of a Dutch colony at the Cape, complete with imported slaves as well as subjugated 4 Khoisan. In this process the settlement in Table Valley, Cape Town, continued to serve first and foremost as a trading centre between land and sea; between hinterland and port, port and passing ships. The extent of such trade underpinned the economic and demographic fortunes of the town. Demographic expansion in turn increased opportunities for retail trade and manufacture for local consumption. But the town's economy also drew nourishment from Cape Town's further roles as administrative capital and military headquarters, and the concomitant expenditure. Such nourishment, and indeed the extent of exchange, remained meagre before the nineteenth century, meagre while the Cape Colony was 5 under the control of the monopolistic D.E.I.C. Under the British the Cape was for the first time, brought within the ambit of a powerful industrialising economy. The British had both the inclination and the ability to change the nature and capacity of colonial production, with the consequent implications for the accumulation of capital and urbanisation in her new colony. Khoisan labour, under the Dutch reduced to serf status, was liberated, mobilised and made responsive to market forces by 1828. Slavery was abolished in 1834 and the ex-slave apprentices 6 freed four years later. Yet for economic growth, for the growth of Cape Town and other places of exchange to take place, there needed to be more than a transformation in conditions of production at the Cape. The Cape had still to find the product or products that the world market required. One such product seemed, by the 1840's, to be wool. The rapid rise of British demand for wool took place between 1840 and 1870. With it came a rise in the price of that commodity. Cape merchants and farmers responded by concentrating their attention 7 on the possibilitis of maximising this new source of profit. One problem, from Cape Town's point of view, was that Port Elizabeth and East London, founded by the British, had developed as rivals in competing for expanding agricultural output. Geographical determinism should have ensured that Cape Town was eclipsed as the Midlands and Eastern Cape became the heartlands of wool production, the logical hinterlands of the other two ports. Indeed logic seemed to be winning the day as Port Elizabeth's exports, chiefly wool, took premier position over 8 those of any other Cape port in 1854. Despite this challenge Cape Town retained its commercial pre-eminence in the late nineteenth century. This was partly made possible by the town's function as seat of government. This put Cape Town's mercantile elite [organised since 1822 in a commercial exchange], at something of an advantage when competing for the favours of the colonial state. Representative government, granted in 1S63, accentuated the advantage by giving the Western Cape, and thus Cape Town, a majority in the legislature. Competition between East London and Port Elizabeth merchants only led to their greater mutual inability to counter dominant Western interests, a factor still very much alive after responsible government in 1872 had effectively diffused a simple East versus West divide. So it was Cape Town that secured government money, in part gleaned from Port Elizabeth's enlarged custom, to build a proper harbour between I860 and 1870 and continued to attract large sums on further Improvements until the severe depression of the 9 1900's. With Cape Town remaining the first potential Cape port of call for ships on their way from Europe, such expenditure and such facilities gave the economy of the town a sound foundation in the late nineteenth century as this potential was realised. But continued government money, and the continued economic well
Slaves as capital investment in the Dutch Cape Colony, 1652-1795
Working Papers, 2011
The Cape Colony of the eighteenth century was one of the most prosperous regions in the world. This paper shows that Cape farmers prospered, on average, because of the economies of scale and scope achieved through slavery. Slaves allowed farmers to specialise in agricultural products that were in high demand from the passing ships -notably, wheat, wine and meat -and the by-products from these products, such as tallow, skins, soap and candles. In exchange, farmers could import cheap manufactured products from Europe and the East. Secondly, the paper investigates why the relative affluence of the early settlers did not evolve into a high growth trajectory. The use of slaves as a substitute for wage labour or other capital investments allowed farmers to prosper, but it also resulted in severe inequality. It was this high inequality that drove the growthdebilitating institutions posited by . The immigration of Europeans was discouraged after 1717, and again during the middle of the century, while education was limited to the wealthy. Factor endowments interacted with institutions to create a highly unequal early South African society, with long-term development consequences.
Recession and its aftermath: The Cape Colony in the eighteen eighties
2011
The urban and industrial transformation of South Africa is commonly considered to have begun with the discoveries of diamonds in 1867 and of gold in 1886. Among the components of that transformation were the reorientations on two occasions of the economies of the coastal colonies of the Cape and Natal towards 'emerging economic centres of gravity 1 at Kimberley and Johannesburg.(1) The diversion to the interior of capital investment in the late nineteenth century has been paralleled by the focus of much late twentieth century historiography, which haswith exceptions (2)-been concerned more with events after than before the opening of the Witwatersrand gold fields, and which has seldom explored the economic conditions prevailing in the coastal colonies prior to that moment. It seems to be taken for granted that the mineral 'discoveries' should have been followed by so unusual a reorientation of the pre-existing geography: not once,' but twice: first to the diamond fields, then to the Transvaal. The geological occurrence or geographical location of minerals substitutes for explanation of movements of money, people and materials.(3) Yet as Atmore and Marks hinted, following a theme suggested by Blainey, minerals were discovered 'by no means entirely accidentally' at particular moments in the sixties and the eighties.(4) The timing and the geography of the economic expansions of which mineral discoveries and development formed a part are subjects which both history and historical geography have left uncharted. This paper is concerned with the economic conditions prevailing in the Cape Colony in the early eighties, immediately prior to the opening of the Witwatersrand mines. Its first section charts the course of recession from 1881 to 1886. The remainder of the paper considers the consequences of the depression in the Cape Colony and its association with certain other factors in South African development at the time. Its last two sections analyse the various forces, arising before and during the recession, which both encouraged and opposed northward expansion from the Cape Colony.
I have only uploaded Chapter 1 & 2: The full document can be accessed in the Unisa Repository http://hdl.handle.net/10500/24549 (Link below) The collections-based research reported upon in this dissertation focuses on three sites in the Eastern Cape: Huntley Street in Grahamstown, Farmerfield, a nearby Wesleyan mission station, and Fort Double Drift, a British fortification on the Great Fish River. The collection, which is housed in the Albany Museum, derives from Patrice Jeppson’s excavations, completed in the 1980s. Analyses of the excavated glass and metal, augmented by a close reading of tender and shopkeepers’ advertisements in The Graham’s Town Journal, chronicle how merchants, settlers, soldiers, missionaries and local African communities were involved in, and affected by, trade between 1820 and 1860. The study explores aspects of the mercantile economy, consumerism and military provisioning relating to a wide range of imported glass and metal merchandise. The burgeoning trade linked various enterprises, groups and individuals through monetary and social transactions, reflecting the steady incorporation of the Eastern Cape into the British colonial trading network. Keywords: Eastern Cape, Grahamstown, Huntley Street, Farmerfield, Fort Double Drift, trade networks, historical archaeology, agency, glass, metal.