 Subverting the standard view of the Cape economy: Robert Ross’s cliometric contribution and the work it inspiredNo 16/2014, Working Papers from Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics Abstract: In the late 1980s Robert Ross and co-author Pieter van Duin reversed the widely accepted view of the Cape economy as a ‘social and economic backwater’ of widespread subsistence farming and overall poverty, scattered with small islands of relatively affluent farmers. Exploring the rich quantitative records kept by Dutch East India Company officials, they argued that the Cape had been more dynamic and progressive than earlier historians had assumed and that the market for Cape agricultural produce had been ‘much larger, more dynamic and quicker growing’ than previously thought, so that ‘a very considerable rate of agricultural growth’ had been possible. While their work was not immediately recognised, research conducted over the last decade using new archival sources and econometric techniques have largely confirmed their empirical observations. Yet, despite these rapid advances in our understanding of the Cape economy, the image that the early Cape Colony was a ‘sleepy colonial backwater whose unpromising landscape was seemingly devoid of any economic potential’ persists. Keywords: Cape Colony; cliometric; economic history; slavery; wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers221 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.