BACKGROUND
The Cape of Good Hope Panel is a series of annual tax censuses (or opgaafrolle) collected by the colonial authorities in the seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Cape Colony. The censuses contain information not only about the complete settler population – by the end of the period, a total of more than 50 000 individuals – but also the enslaved and indigenous Khoesan population that lived and worked within the colonial economy.
Thanks to a generous grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (The establishment, growth and legacy of a settler colony: Quantitative panel studies of the political economy of Cape Colony – Dnr: M20-0041), the purpose of this project is to transcribe the full series of tax censuses, match households across censuses, match census households to other sources (like probate inventories and auction rolls) and match census households across generations (using genealogical records). This would allow us to investigate questions about the evolution of living standards and economic development, inequality and social mobility, networks and elite formation and slavery and labour coercion.
We aim to, ultimately, combine the wealth of data with innovative techniques to analyse and understand the economic development of this pre-industrial, colonial society.
NEWS
Calumet Links presents Cape Panel research at MIT
As part of the Cape Panel project, Stellenbosch University’s Calumet Links recently presented at MIT alongside Marjoleine Kars and Anne McCants, discussing new approaches to economic history. Links also collaborated with McCants on a related […]
Ekama presents at Bonn Workshop
Kate Ekama delivered a presentation yesterday at the Manumission Workshop: International Colloquium, hosted by the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Her talk, titled “(Self-)Purchase, Obligation and the Financial Lives of Enslaved People in […]
New study explores income mobility
A new paper by Johan Fourie, Erik Green, Auke Rijpma, and Dieter von Fintel, published in Social Science History, examines income mobility in the Cape Colony during the preindustrial period. Using over 70 years of […]
Two economists reflect on comparative study of Indigenous-European interactions
In a guest post on Our Long Walk, Ann Carlos and Angela Redish shared insights from their collaborative research comparing Indigenous-European interactions at the Cape of Good Hope and Hudson Bay. Drawing from their […]
Reflections on the history of laundry at the Cape
Karen Jennings has published an article titled Washing by Hand: A Brief Look at Cape Laundry Since the 17th Century. The piece traces the evolution of laundry practices at the Cape, from enslaved women […]
Study on manumission in Cape Town published
Kate Ekama’s latest article, “Bound to be Free? Manumission in Cape Town, 1825–34,” has been published in Slavery & Abolition. The study examines over 1,200 manumissions recorded in Cape Town during a period of shifting […]
THE TEAM
Erik Green
Department of Economic History, Lund University
Johan Fourie
Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University
Ann Carlos
Department of Economics, University of Colorado Boulder
Benjamin Chatterton
Department of Economic History, Lund University
Jeanne Cilliers
Department of Economic History, Lund University
Kate Ekama
Department of History, Stellenbosch University
Calumet Links
Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University
Igor Martin
Department of Economic History, Lund University
Anne McCants
Department of History, Massachusetts Institutes of Technology
Auke Rijpma
Department of History, Utrecht University
Robert Ross
Department of History, Leiden University
Jonathan Schoots
Department of Economic History, Lund University
Dieter von Fintel
Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University
Leoné Walters
School of Economics, University of Cape Town
Jan Greyling
Department of Agricultural Economics, Stellenbosch University
Karen Jennings
Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University
Karl Bergemann
Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University
Lauren Stevens
Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University
Lisa Martin
Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University
ADVISORY BOARD
Emmanuel
Akyeampong
Harvard University
Wayne
Dooling
SOAS University of London
Joseph
Ferrie
Northwestern University
Laura
Mitchell
UC Irvine
Sheilagh
Ogilvie
Oxford University
Jan Luiten
van Zanden
Utrecht University
DATASET
The transcribed annual tax censuses (opgaafrolle) will be made available during the course of the project.
The metadata can be found here.
RESEARCH
Ekama, K., 2024. Bound to be Free? Manumission in Cape Town, 1825–34. Slavery & Abolition, forthcoming.
Fourie, J., Green, E., Rijpma, A. and von Fintel, D., 2024. Income Mobility before Industrialization: Evidence from South Africa’s Cape Colony. Social Science History, forthcoming.
Carlos, A.M., Green, E., Links, C. and Redish, A., 2024. Early modern globalization and the extent of indigenous agency: Trade, commodities and ecology. The Economic History Review, forthcoming.
Cilliers, J., Mariotti, M. and Martins, I., 2024. Fertility responses to short-term economic stress: Price volatility and wealth shocks in a pre-transitional settler colony. Explorations in Economic History, 94, p.101620.
Fourie, J. and Greyling, J., 2023. Wheat productivity in the Cape Colony in 1825: evidence from newly transcribed tax censuses. Agrekon, 62(1), pp.98-115.
Raaijmakers, W. and Ekama, K. 2023. Advertising the enslaved for sale: A quantitative approach to the Zuid-Afrikaan, 1830-4. In: Quantitative History and Uncharted People: Case Studies from the South African Past (ed: Fourie, J.). Bloomsbury Publishing.
Fourie, J. and Garmon Jr, F., 2023. The settlers’ fortunes: Comparing tax censuses in the Cape Colony and early American republic. The Economic History Review, 76(2), pp.525-550.
Replication package
Cilliers, J., Green, E. and Ross, R., 2023. Did it pay to be a pioneer? Wealth accumulation in a newly settled frontier society. The Economic History Review, 76(1), pp.257-282.
Replication package
Cillliers, J and E. Green (2018) ‘The Land–Labour Hypothesis in a Settler Economy: Wealth, Labour and Household Composition on the South African Frontier’, International Review of Social History, 63(2): 239-271
STUDENTS
PhD graduates
Karl Bergemann (Stellenbosch, 2024): The Runaways: A study of enslaved, apprenticed and indentured labour flight at the Cape in the emancipation era, 1830-42
Calumet Links (Stellenbosch, 2021): The Economic Impact of the Khoe on the North-Eastern Frontier of the Cape Colony
Igor Martins (Lund, 2020): Collateral Effect: Slavery and Wealth in the Cape Colony
Heinrich Nel (Stellenbosch, 2020): Wealth mobility, familial ties and migration: Evidence form the Cape of Good Hope Panel
CONTACT US
Madeleine Jarl
Research secretary
Lund University
PARTNERS
We are grateful to the following supporters, without which this project would not be possible:
