Southern Africa , 1867-1886

bibliographic database
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Book chapter

Title:	Southern Africa , 1867-1886
Author:	Marks, Shula
Book title:	The Cambridge History of Africa: vol. 6: From 1870 to 1905
Year:	1985
Pages:	359-421
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Southern Africa
Subjects:	economic history history 1860-1869 1870-1879 1880-1889
Abstract:	In 1867, a solitary diamond picked up by chance near Hopetown on the Orange river frontier proved to be 'the rock on which the future success of South African (would) be built'. In the early days of the mining industry, capital had not only to transform the weak colonial and republican states; even after conquest, it had also to come to terms with African societies and their ruling classes. The demand of the colonial economies resulted in the creation of a wage labour force; that it took the form of migrant labour, was related to the complex and extraordinarily diverse struggles between and within ruling classes over the labour power of young men. In the lands between the Limpopo and the Zambezi, the hunting of elephants for ivory, the trade in gold and quite considerable slave-trading were the major forms of economic enterprise that were geared to production for overseas markets. Further north and east ivory and slave trade were inextricably linked, with shattering results. Bibliogr. essay p. 791-798, bibliogr. p.854-867, notes.