19th century – 19th century
Southern Africa
The nineteenth-century integration of the Cape Colony into the capitalist world-economy under expanding British hegemony. British shipping, colonization, and commercial sheep-rearing transformed the colony into a significant production center by the mid-1840s. Emancipation, African tenant agriculture, Boer migration, and conflict over land and labor accompanied this economic restructuring.
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The Story
Southern Africa followed a different path into the capitalist world-economy because it lacked a slave-exporting economy and contained a substantial white-settler population. After the Napoleonic Wars, Britain increased shipping, introduced new British settlers, and encouraged commercial sheep-rearing. By the mid-1840s, the Cape Colony had become a significant locus of production for the expanding world-economy.
This transformation altered labor relations and the political geography of the region. Earlier white farmers had used Khoi-Khoi and Coloured labor, often in slave form, while British rule brought formal emancipation. Economic change contributed to the Great Trek of the Boers, British expansion, and active movements among Zulu and other Nguni peoples.
The resulting struggle centered on control of land and labor in production oriented toward international markets. In the Cape Colony, African peasant agriculture developed alongside white-owned farms that employed African tenant-laborers. The region therefore combined settler expansion, African agricultural adaptation, and increasingly market-oriented production.
19th century – 19th century
Southern Africa
The nineteenth-century integration of the Cape Colony into the capitalist world-economy under expanding British hegemony. British shipping, colonization, and commercial sheep-rearing transformed the colony into a significant production center by the mid-1840s. Emancipation, African tenant agriculture, Boer migration, and conflict over land and labor accompanied this economic restructuring.
Continue exploring
The Story
Southern Africa followed a different path into the capitalist world-economy because it lacked a slave-exporting economy and contained a substantial white-settler population. After the Napoleonic Wars, Britain increased shipping, introduced new British settlers, and encouraged commercial sheep-rearing. By the mid-1840s, the Cape Colony had become a significant locus of production for the expanding world-economy.
This transformation altered labor relations and the political geography of the region. Earlier white farmers had used Khoi-Khoi and Coloured labor, often in slave form, while British rule brought formal emancipation. Economic change contributed to the Great Trek of the Boers, British expansion, and active movements among Zulu and other Nguni peoples.
The resulting struggle centered on control of land and labor in production oriented toward international markets. In the Cape Colony, African peasant agriculture developed alongside white-owned farms that employed African tenant-laborers. The region therefore combined settler expansion, African agricultural adaptation, and increasingly market-oriented production.