Sophia Du Plessis

Happy in the service of the Company: the purchasing power of VOC salaries at the Cape in the 18th century

This paper contributes to the debate on the level and trajectory of welfare at the Cape of Good Hope during the 18th century. Recent scholarship (for example, Allen 2005) has calculated and compared the levels and evolution of real wages in various European and Asian economies since the early modern period. To this literature we add evidence for unskilled and skilled workers of the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope during the 18th century, following De Zwart (2009; 2011), who recently presented evidence for unskilled workers in the Cape for the latter half of the 17th century and the 18th century. We calculate job-specific real wages in a three-step argument; from the narrowest international comparison of wage rates in terms of silver content to one based on a basket of widely consumed goods. This paper adds to this literature by adapting the consumption basket for local circumstances (due to both diet and relative prices) and the comparison for local demographics. We also provide a broader range of comparative statistics on real wages. Finally, we add the real wages of skilled workers to the comparison of unskilled workers offered in the literature to date. While the paper is based on real wages for VOC officials the mechanism we identify as the cause of this rising prosperity (sustained lower prices of consumption goods) would have raised the prosperity of all colonists at the Cape.ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the debate on the level and trajectory of welfare at the Cape of Good Hope during the 18th century. Recent scholarship (for example, Allen 2005) has calculated and compared the levels and evolution of real wages in various European and Asian economies since the early modern period. To this literature we add evidence for unskilled and skilled workers of the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope during the 18th century, following De Zwart (2009; 2011), who recently presented evidence for unskilled workers in the Cape for the latter half of the 17th century and the 18th century. We calculate job-specific real wages in a three-step argument; from the narrowest international comparison of wage rates in terms of silver content to one based on a basket of widely consumed goods. This paper adds to this literature by adapting the consumption basket for local circumstances (due to both diet and relative prices) and the comparison for local demographics. We also provide a broader range of comparative statistics on real wages. Finally, we add the real wages of skilled workers to the comparison of unskilled workers offered in the literature to date. While the paper is based on real wages for VOC officials the mechanism we identify as the cause of this rising prosperity (sustained lower prices of consumption goods) would have raised the prosperity of all colonists at the Cape.

Explanations for Zambia's economic decline

Zambian growth failure is often related to the resource curse. This article evaluates not only this claim, but also whether the new institutional theory can account for Zambias economic decline. Little empirical support is found for the terms of trade or volatility versions of the resource curse theory, and there is only slightly more support for relative price versions of the theory. Turning to the new institutional theory, the article quantifies the poor quality of institutions in Zambia using a measure for contract intensive money, and supports the hypothesis that ‘poor quality’ institutions, and especially the failure to protect property and contract rights, played an important role in Zambias economic decline. Examples are given to support this claim.

The wealth of Cape Colony widows : inheritance laws and investment responses following male death in the 17th and 18th centuries

ABSTRACT Losing a household member is usually negatively associated with welfare, especially if that person is a breadwinner. Coping methods include disposal of assets to generate cash flow, while other households increase their labour supply. This paper considers a specific case in a pre-industrial society, presenting evidence where male mortality was associated with distinct benefits for widows. In the Cape Colony (during the Dutch East India Company occupation), Roman Dutch inheritance laws favoured widows, who were then able to set up households independently of their children. Their sizable inheritances (relative to other heirs) enabled investment in production assets with otherwise prohibitively high fixed costs (in particularly slave labour and vineyards) and resulted in divestment from other non-productive assets. While the mortality shock would presumably have had negative impacts on income and subsistence crop levels, this was not the case in the Cape: instead, reconstructed asset portfolios set widows up for productive, slave intensive farming and subsequent status and affluence.

Property rights as an institution in Zambia

The detrimental influence of colonisation cannot be overstated. Extensive research has been done on the link between colonisation and post-colonial economic prosperity. It is especially the work of Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson that have linked different types of colonisation to geographical realities, and these to post-colonial institutions.