Who, Where, and When were the Cape Gentry?

Gavin Williams

Economic History of Developing Regions, 2013, vol. 28, issue 2, 83-111

Abstract: The "Cape gentry" has come to be conventional in descriptions and in analyses of the south-western Cape during the rule of the VOC ( Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie ). Implicit in the idea of a "Cape gentry" are ownership of land and of slaves, degrees of inequalities, tenure and exercise of political office, and recognition of status honour, which were perpetuated over generations in networks of intermarried kin. This paper emphasizes the relevance of published statistics for interpreting changes over time in economic inequalities and social relations among the districts of the Colony. It sets out Mentzel's account of the four "classes" of rural society and ends by bringing into question the deployment of the idea of "Cape gentry" in analyses of the social structure in the Cape for lacking geographic and historical specificity.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/20780389.2013.866383 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rehdxx:v:28:y:2013:i:2:p:83-111

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rehd20

DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2013.866383

Access Statistics for this article

Economic History of Developing Regions is currently edited by Alex Klein and Alfonso Herranz-Loncan

More articles in Economic History of Developing Regions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().