An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination, and Development (review)

For the past three or four decades, most economic historians have come to embrace quantitative methods as the sine qua non of their subfield. The general effect has been to produce rigorous, highly technical research papers, limiting the readership for most publications in economic history to a small subset of specialists. Few economic historians have aspired to write broadly conceived works that could appeal to a nonspecialist readership.

Feinstein's An Economic History of South Africa is a welcome departure from this trend. It is a generally accessible account that follows 450 years of the political and social history of white settlement in South Africa. It is the first general economic history of South Africa since that of de Kiewiet some sixty-six years ago.¹ Moreover, as its subtitle suggests, the text takes explicit account of the devastating effect of land alienation and racial discrimination on the economic development of South Africa. It is to be welcomed as an appropriate economic history of South Africa for the post-apartheid era.

Feinstein's vision of South African economic history in the period before Dutch settlement in 1652 is standard. The Khoikhoi herding and Bantu mixed-farming societies in the region of South Africa are understood in good measure by what they lacked—economic dynamism and markets. The principal historical dynamic from 1652 until the mineral revolution in the late nineteenth century is the demographic expansion of the European farming frontier, powered by population growth and in-migration, at the expense of the indigenous peoples. The European settler economy was also remarkably lacking in economic dynamism, and the export successes that were achieved, as a result of the introduction of the merino sheep, were extremely modest in comparison with those of European settler economies in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Argentina, or the United States.

The grand utility of Feinstein's work is that it analyzes dispassionately and lucidly the effects of the early dispossession on the African communities, thereby establishing a deep baseline for understanding the more extensive dispossessions and disabilities that were visited upon the majority communities after the discovery of diamonds in the late 1860s and gold in the mid-1880s. The author explores the applicability of Lewis' export-oriented "dual economy" model of economic growth, in the context of land alienation and racial discrimination.² He unmasks the bigoted contexts in which economic debates took place about the incentives necessary to convince black workers to leave the land in favor of the mine or white-owned farm. He provides a neoclassical economic analysis to explain the wildly lopsided economic development from the late nineteenth century until the 1970s, during which period wealth accrued to whites and poverty to Africans.

Several of his chapters are more technical in approach. He explores the unique performance of gold in world markets through an analysis of the gold standard and international exchange rates, the effect of state-subsidization on the white-manufacturing and commercial-farming sectors, and the successes of the growing South African economy during the first six decades of the twentieth century—even as it burdened itself with ever more savage racial inequalities. Other chapters highlight the broader political history of apartheid, from its increasing international disrepute in the 1970s, to the flight of international capital and the decline of South African economy.

An Economic History of South Africa highlights the costs that have been imposed on the majority populations and the economy itself by the illogic of racial exploitation and the denial of educational and occupational opportunity. This book provides a reliable introduction to the economic history of South Africa.