mineral revolution in south africa essay

Introduction: Colonial South Africa, Mineral Revolutions and Finance

• First Online: 20 March 2024

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• Mariusz Lukasiewicz 4  

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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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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.

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

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.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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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.

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.

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

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Ibid. pp. 91–93.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ally, Russell. 1994. p. 14.

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.

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

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

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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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Ibid. pp. 69‒70.

Ibid. p. 70.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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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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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