Twenty years after apartheid was formally abolished it continues to shape South African society. Its legacy persists over and above interest in it as a perverse phenomenon. We therefore find it timely, as part of our introduction to this special issue, to review some important studies of the...

Using newly digitized and transcribed attestation records, we provide a detailed description of the composition of the South African Constabulary, a volunteer force of mostly English recruits during and after the Second South African War. These records contain personal particulars, such as age,...

This paper investigates the causes and consequences of colonial Africa’s first financial crash, which happened in South Africa’s Dutch Cape Colony. The 1788–1793 crisis followed a common sequence of events: trade and fiscal deficits were monetized by printing money, credit...

Infrastructure investment, especially in South Africa, is currently at the forefront of policy and public debate. But the term 'infrastructure' has a variety of definitions and interpretations; the reason for the various definitions is related to infrastructure's various impacts and incidence....

One reason for the relatively poor development performance of many countries around the world today may be the high levels of inequality during and after colonisation. Evidence from colonies in the Americas suggests that skewed initial factor endowments could create small elites that owned a...

The stylized view of the Dutch Cape Colony (1652-1795) is of a poor, subsistence economy, with little progress in the first 143 years of Dutch rule. New evidence from probate inventory and auction roll records show that previous estimates about wealth at the Cape are inaccurate. In contrast to...

This note reviews the state and future of South African economic history. We argue that although new techniques, archival sources, international interest and a greater propensity to collaborate within and across disciplines have stimulated new research over the last decade, overcoming our...

What we know about the material culture of eighteenth century Cape Colony settlers is mostly limited to qualitative evidence found in official documents, letters, travel accounts and other correspondence. This paper uses a new quantitative source – the MOOC probate inventories – to ascertain...

Die tradisionele beskouing van die agtiende eeuse Kaap as ‘n armoedige bestaans-ekonomie moet heroorweeg word. Deur van 2577 onlangs gedigitaliseerde boede-linventarisse gebruik te maak, toon hierdie artikel dat die gemiddelde Kaapse setlaars-huishouding relatief wel-af was aan die begin van...