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Introduction: Colonial South Africa, Mineral Revolutions and Finance

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Gold, Finance and Imperialism in South Africa, 1887–1902

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies ((CIPCSS))

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Abstract

According to the Ghanaian historian Albert Adu Boahen, by as late as 1880, as much as 80% of the continent of ‘Africa was ruled by her own kings, queens, clan and lineage heads, in empires, kingdoms, communities and polities in various sizes and shapes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Boahen, Albert Adu. “Africa and the Colonial Challenge.” In: Boahen, Albert Adu, ed. General History of Africa: Vol. VII Africa Under Colonialism 1880‒1935. Paris: UNESCO. 1985. p. 1.

  2. 2.

    De Kiewiet, Cornelius William. A History of South Africa: Social & Economic. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. 1941. p. 89.

  3. 3.

    Ronald, Robinson, James Gallagher and Alice Denny. Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism. London: Macmillan. 1981. pp. 1‒26.

    See Table 29. In: Stone, Irving. The Global Export of Capital from Great Britain, 1865‒1914: A Statistical Survey. London: Macmillan. 1999. pp. 322‒331.

  4. 4.

    See: Eldredge, Elizabeth A. “Sources of Conflict in Southern Africa, c. 1800–30: The ‘Mfecane’ Reconsidered.” The Journal of African History 33, no. 1 (1992): 1‒35.

    Etherington, Norman. “A Tempest in a Teapot? Nineteenth-century Contests for Land in South Africa’s Caledon Valley and the Invention of the Mfecane.” The Journal of African History 45, no. 2 (2004): 203–219.

  5. 5.

    Tamarkin, Mordechai. Cecil Rhodes and the Cape Afrikaners: The Imperial Colossus and the Colonial Parish Pump. London: Frank Cass and Co. 1996. pp. 6–12.

  6. 6.

    Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism: 1688–2015. pp. 344–345.

  7. 7.

    See: Laband, John. The Transvaal Rebellion: The First Boer War, 1880–1881. London: Routledge. 2014.

  8. 8.

    Giliomee, Hermann Buhr and Bernard Mbenga. New History of South Africa. Cape Town: Tafelberg. 2007. p. 194.

  9. 9.

    Ross, Robert. A Concise History of South Africa (2nd Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2008. p. 65.

  10. 10.

    See: De Kiewet, C. W. A History of South Africa: Social and Economic. 1941. p. 114.

    Trapido, Stanley. “The South African Republic: Class Formation and the State, 1850–1900.” Collected Seminar Papers. Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Vol. 16. London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies. 1973.

  11. 11.

    Witwatersrand (Dutch: White water’s ridge) refers to the low-lying hills in today’s Gauteng province. The name was also often used to refer to Greater Johannesburg, the centre of the South African gold mining industry.

  12. 12.

    Iliffe, John. Africans: The History of a Continent (2nd Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007. p. 272.

    See also: Iliffe, John. “The South African Economy, 1652–1997.” The Economic History Review 52, no. 1 (1999): 87–103.

  13. 13.

    Giliomee, Hermann Buhr and Bernard Mbenga. New History of South Africa. 2007. p. 200.

  14. 14.

    Meredith, Martin. Diamonds, Gold, and War: The Making of South Africa. London: Simon & Schuster. 2008. p. 201.

  15. 15.

    Henry, James A. The First Hundred Years of the Standard Bank. 1963. p. 94.

  16. 16.

    Ibid. pp. 91–93.

  17. 17.

    SBA. GMO 3/1/21, 8 August 1887. p. 616.

  18. 18.

    Ibid.

  19. 19.

    ‘Speculation.’ The Diggers’ News, 23 November 1889. p. 3.

  20. 20.

    SBA. GMO 3/1/20. Special Report, 2 August 1886. p. 151.

  21. 21.

    For nineteenth century financial globalisation, see: Flandreau, Marc, and Frederic Zumer. The Making of Global Finance. Paris: OEcD. 2004.

  22. 22.

    Cassis, Youssef. Capitals of Capital: The Rise and Fall of International Financial Centres 1780–2009. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2010. p. 2.

  23. 23.

    See: Preda, A. The Sociological Approach to Financial Markets. Journal of Economic Surveys 21, no. 3 (2007): 506–533.

  24. 24.

    See: Poitras, Geoffrey, ed. Handbook of Research on Stock Market Globalization. Edward Elgar Publishing. 2012.

  25. 25.

    Quoted in: Hodgson, Geoffrey M. “What are institutions?” Journal of Economic Issues 40, no. 1 (2006): p. 9.

  26. 26.

    Tsa Lichaba Johannesburg. Leselinyana La Lesutho, 15 January 1896. pp. 1–2.

  27. 27.

    Cain, Peter J. and Anthony G. Hopkins. British Imperialism: 1688–2000. London: Pearson Education. 2002. p. 337.

  28. 28.

    Ally, Russell. 1994. p. 14.

  29. 29.

    See: Dumett, Raymond E. “Introduction: Exploring the Cain/Hopkins Paradigm: Issues for Debate; Critique and Topics for New Research.” In: Dumett, Raymond E. Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire. Routledge, 2014. pp. 1–43.

    Porter, A. “Gentlemanly Capitalism’ and Empire: The British Experience Since 1750?” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 18, no. 3 (1990): 265–295.

  30. 30.

    Bowen, H. V. “Gentlemanly Capitalism and the Making of a Global British Empire: Some Connections and Contexts, 1688–1815.” In: Akita, Shigeru, ed. Gentlemanly Capitalism, Imperialism and Global History. Springer, 2002. p. 20.

  31. 31.

    See: Dilley, Andrew. “‘The Rules of the Game’: London Finance, Australia, and Canada, c. 1900–14.” The Economic History Review 63, no. 4 (2010): 1003–1031.

    Attard, Bernard. “From Free-Trade Imperialism to Structural Power: New Zealand and the Capital Market, 1856–68.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 35, no. 4 (2007): 505–527.

    Hopkins, A. G. “Gentlemanly Capitalism in New Zealand.” Australian Economic History Review 43, no. 3 (2003): 287–297.

  32. 32.

    Phimister, Ian. “Empire, Imperialism and the Partition of Africa.” In: Akita, Shigeru, ed. Gentlemanly Capitalism, Imperialism and Global History. Springer. 2002. p. 79.

  33. 33.

    Cain, Peter J., and Anthony G. Hopkins. British Imperialism: 1688–2000. 2002. p. 325.

  34. 34.

    Cain, Peter J. and Hopkins, Anthony G. British Imperialism: 1688–2000. 2002. p. 325.

  35. 35.

    See: Schreuder, D. M. The Scramble for Southern Africa, 1877–1895: The Politics of Partition Reappraised. 1980.

  36. 36.

    See, for example:

    Phimister, Ian. “Markets, Mines, and Magnates: Finance and the Coming of War in South Africa, 1894–1899.” Africa: Rivista semestrale di studi e ricerche 2, no. 2 (2020): 5–22.

    Kubicek, Robert V. Economic Imperialism in theory And Practice: The Case of South African Gold Mining Finance 1886–1914. Durham. Duke University Press. 1979.

    Jeeves, Alan. “Aftermath of Rebellion—The Randlords and Kruger’s Republic after the Jameson Raid.” South African Historical Journal 10, no. 1 (1978): 102–116.

  37. 37.

    Feinstein, Charles. An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination, and Development. 2005. pp. 91–97.

  38. 38.

    Richardson, Peter and Jean-Jacques Van-Helten. “The Gold Mining Industry in the Transvaal 1886–99.” In: Warwick, Peter. The South African War: The Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902. Longman. 1980 p. 20.

  39. 39.

    Burt, R. The London Mining Exchange 1850–1900. Business History 14, no. 2 (1972): 124–143.

  40. 40.

    See: Rönnbäck, K. and O. Broberg. Capital and Colonialism: The Return on British Investments in Africa 1869–1969. Springer. 2019.

  41. 41.

    Farnie, Douglas Anthony. “The mineral revolution in South Africa.” South African Journal of Economics 24, no. 2 (1956): 128.

  42. 42.

    See: Rosenthal, Eric. On change through the Years; a History of Share Dealing in South Africa. Cape Town: Flesch Financial Publications. 1968.

  43. 43.

    For First Era of Financial Globalisation, see: Bordo, Michael and Marc Flandreau. “Core, Periphery, Exchange Rate Regimes, and Globalization.” In: Bordo, Michael D., Alan M. Taylor, and Jeffrey G. Williamson, eds. Globalization in Historical Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2007. pp. 417–472.

  44. 44.

    Magee, Gary B., Lorraine Greyling and Grietjie Verhoef. “South Africa in the Australian Mirror: Per Capita Real GDP in the Cape Colony, Natal, Victoria, and New South Wales, 1861–1909.” The Economic History Review 69, no. 3 (2016): 900.

  45. 45.

    Orhangazi, Özgür. “Finance, Finance Capital, Financialisation.” In: Ness, Immanuel, and Zak Cope, eds. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Vol. 1. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. pp. 103–107.

  46. 46.

    For excellent review of literature, see: Mommsen, Wolfgang J. Theories of Imperialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1980.

  47. 47.

    Cain, Peter. “JA Hobson, financial capitalism and imperialism in late Victorian and Edwardian England.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 13, no. 3 (1985): 1–27.

    See also: Landes, David S. Bankers and Pashas: International Finance and Economic Imperialism in Egypt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1958.

  48. 48.

    Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Empire: 1875‒1914. London: Abacus (Time Warner Books UK). 1987. p. 168.

  49. 49.

    Porter, Andrew. “The South African War and the Historians.” African Affairs 99, no. 397 (2000): 633–648.

  50. 50.

    Kynaston, David. City of London: The History. London: Random House. 2011. p. 181.

  51. 51.

    Katz, Elaine. “Outcrop and Deep Level Mining in South Africa Before the Anglo‐Boer War: Re‐examining the Blainey Thesis.” The Economic History Review 48, no. 2 (1995): 304.

  52. 52.

    Jeeves, Alan. “The Rand Capitalists and the Coming of the South African War 1896–1899.” South African Journal of Economic History 11, no. 2 (1996): 60.

  53. 53.

    Hobson, John Atkinson. Capitalism and Imperialism in South Africa. London: Tucker Publishing Company. 1900.

  54. 54.

    Ibid. pp. 69‒70.

  55. 55.

    Ibid. p. 70.

  56. 56.

    Jeeves, Alan. “Hobson’s the War in South Africa: A Reassessment.” In: Cuthbertson, G., Grundlingh, A. M. and Suttie, M. L., eds. Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899‒1902. 2002. p. 233.

    See, also: Etherington, Norman. “Theories of Imperialism in Southern Africa Revisited.” African Affairs 81, no. 324 (1982): 385‒407.

  57. 57.

    Hobson, John Atkinson. Capitalism and Imperialism in South Africa. 1900.

    Hobson, John Atkinson. Imperialism: A Study. London: J. Pott. 1902.

  58. 58.

    Jeeves, Alan. “Hobson’s the War in South Africa: A Reassessment.” In: Cuthbertson, G., Grundlingh, A. M. and Suttie, M. L., eds. Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899‒1902. 2002. pp. 233‒234.

    Cowen, Michael, and Robert W. Shenton. Doctrines of development. Taylor & Francis, 1996. pp. 259‒261.

    See, also: Coleman, William Oliver. “Anti-semitism in Anti-economics.” History of Political Economy 35, no. 4 (2003): 759‒777.

    Lowry, Donal. “‘The Play of Forces World-Wide in their Scope and Revolutionary in their Operation [JA Hobson]’: The South African War as an International Event.” South African Historical Journal 41, no. 1 (1999): 83‒105.

  59. 59.

    Hobson, John Atkinson. Imperialism: A Study. London: J. Pott. 1902. p. 63.

    For conceptual history of white-collar crime, see: Berghoff, Hartmut, and Uwe Spiekermann. “Shady Business: On the History of White-collar Crime.” Business History 60, no. 3 (2018): 289‒304.

  60. 60.

    Karatasli, Sahan Savas, and Sefika Kumral. “Financialization and International (Dis) Order: A Comparative Analysis of the Perspectives of Karl Polanyi and John Hobson.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology (2013): 43.

  61. 61.

    Flandreau, Marc. Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange. 2016. p. 9.

  62. 62.

    Phimister, Ian. “Late Nineteenth-Century globalization: London and Lomagundi Perspectives on Mining Speculation in Southern Africa, 1894–1904.” Journal of Global History 10, no. 1 (2015): 27‒28.

    See, also: Phimister, Ian. “Markets, Mines, and Magnates: Finance and the Coming of War in South Africa, 1894‒1899.” Africa: Rivista Semestrale Di Studi e Ricerche 2, no. 2 (2020): 5–22.

    Phimister, I. Speculation and Exploitation: The Southern Rhodesian Mining Industry in the Company Era. Historia 48, no. 2 (2003): 88–97.

  63. 63.

    Jeeves, Alan. “Hobson’s the War in South Africa: A Reassessment.” In: Cuthbertson, G., Grundlingh, A. M. and Suttie, M. L., eds. Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902. 2002. pp. 234–236.

  64. 64.

    Van den Bersselaar, Dmitri. “Business records as sources for African history.” In: Thomas Spear, ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Historiography: Methods and Sources. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press. 2019.

  65. 65.

    Stoler, Ann Laura. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. p. 27.

  66. 66.

    See: Cassis, Youssef. Capitals of Capital: The Rise and Fall of International Financial Centres 1780‒2009. 2010. pp. 83‒84.

  67. 67.

    See: O'Sullivan, Mary A. “Yankee Doodle Went to London: Anglo‐American Breweries and the London Securities Market, 1888–92.” The Economic History Review 64, no. 8 (2015): 1366.

    Knorr-Cetina, Karin and Urs Bruegger. “Global Microstructures: The Virtual Societies of Financial Markets.” American Journal of Sociology 107, no. 4 (2002): 905‒950.

    Davis, Lance and Larry Neal. “Micro Rules and Macro Outcomes: The Impact of Micro Structure on the Efficiency of Security Exchanges, London, New York, and Paris, 1800‒1914.” The American Economic Review 88, no. 2 (1998): 40‒45.

  68. 68.

    Flandreau, Marc. Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange. 2016. p. 8.

  69. 69.

    See: Kubicek, Robert V. “The Randlords in 1895: A Reassessment.” The Journal of British Studies 11, no. 2 (1972): 84‒86.

  70. 70.

    See: Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. The Randlords. 1987.

    Denoon, Donald. “Capital and Capitalists in the Transvaal in the 1890s and 1900s.” The Historical Journal 23, no. 1 (1980): 111‒132.

    Kubicek, Robert V. “The Randlords in 1895: A Reassessment.” The Journal of British Studies 11, no. 2 (1972): 84‒103.

    Emden, Paul Herman. Randlords. 1935.

  71. 71.

    See: Kubicek, Robert V. “The Randlords in 1895: A Reassessment.” The Journal of British Studies 11, no. 2 (1972): 84‒103.

  72. 72.

    For methodological concerns, see for example: Stone. Irving. The Global Export of Capital from Great Britain, 1865‒1914: A Statistical Survey. 1999. pp. 3‒4.

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    Mariusz Lukasiewicz

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Lukasiewicz, M. (2024). Introduction: Colonial South Africa, Mineral Revolutions and Finance. In: Gold, Finance and Imperialism in South Africa, 1887–1902. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51947-5_1

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