Impending Ruin' or 'Remarkable Wealth'? The Role of Private Credit Markets in the 18th-Century Cape Colony
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4603429 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Johan Fourie (0000-0002-7341-017X, Stellenbosch University, corresponding author), Christie Swanepoel (0000-0003-0906-8995, Stellenbosch University) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 7-25 |
| Publication date | 2018-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Southern African Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0305-7070 • E-ISSN: 1465-3893 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/03057070.2018.1403218 |
| OpenAlex | W2769219249 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 16 |
Credit markets develop hand in hand with a market economy. Pre-industrial credit markets, like credit (and capital) markets today, developed in order to smooth consumption, ease trade, and enable long-term investment. Yet in the 18th-century Cape Colony, a Dutch settlement at the southern tip of Africa, commentators of the day were sceptical about what an active credit market could contribute to the economy: for them, borrowing was a sure sign of poverty. Historians have expressed the same view. We present a different picture of the Cape Colony. We use 4,160 probate inventories, listing 12,637 credit transactions and 12,580 debt transactions, to show that the main reason for borrowing was long-term capital investment in land through bonds, and that a particular driver of the Colony’s extensive use of credit was slave ownership. We also show that those who benefited from the Colony’s thriving credit market were rich, not poor
Bond market · Business · Capital market · Credit crunch · Credit enhancement · Credit history · Credit reference · Credit risk · Debt · Economics · Financial system · Installment credit · Investment (military · Settlement (finance · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · South African History and Culture · Finance
Creating the Cape Colony
Prices and living standards
Wheat productivity in the Cape Colony in 1825
The South African Families Database
Colonial Elites in The Eighteenth-Century Cape Colony
The depth and breadth of capitalism at the Cape
Macroeconomic history in South Africa
Unobtrusively into the ranks of colonial society’
The substitutability of slaves
Emancipation and the Business of Compensation in the Cape Colony
Slavery and Bondage in Asia, 1550–1850
Fertility responses to short-term economic stress
Legacies of loss
When Cape slavery ended
Did it pay to be a pioneer? Wealth accumulation in a newly settled frontier society
Institutions for the taking
| Unique citing works | 16 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,29 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 16 |