The first two centuries of colonial agriculture in the cape colony: A historiographical review∗

Over the last fifteen years radical historiography has demolished the unstated presumption that South African history began in 1652. However, in emphasising the centrality of the mineral revolution, it encouraged a tendency to see South African history as really beginning in 1870. Many recent liberal works have done the same. This article argues that, no matter how much new was brought into South African society by the great transformation of the late nineteenth century, industrial capitalism was able to build on historical processes within pre‐industrial colonial society to a degree that is far greater than is frequently realised. The article develops five main propositions: (i) as a colony, the Cape can only be understood within the context of the Dutch and British empires (ii) a necessary condition for the establishment of colonial agriculture was the generally forcible dispossession of the African population from the land (iii) colonial agriculture relied to a very large degree on forced labour systems, whether the labourers were legally slave or free (iv) almost all colonial farmers were linked to the urban, and so to the world, market, both to sell their produce and to raise credit and (v) the farming community was never homogeneous, but exhibited continual and various degrees of stratification. Focussing on colonial agriculture, the article concludes that capital accumulation by one class to the exclusion of others and with the help of the state had begun long before the mineral revolution, setting the pattern for modern South Africa.