Macroeconomic history in South Africa: The South African Reserve Bank centennial special issue

J. Fourie
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Abstract

When Simon Groot died in 1688 on his Stellenbosch farm – leaving behind his wife, Gertrud Baumann, and their two daughters, aged 6 and 18 months – his probate inventory recorded the collection of household goods and farm implements that the family had owned at the time: some tin and iron equipment, a gun, and a wagon, to name but a few items. The inventory also lists the summer harvest of ten mudden rye and the livestock on the farm: one pig, two horses, twelve trek oxen, ten cattle and fifty-five sheep. Ownership of one enslaved, unnamed boy is recorded – but what is most remarkable about Groot’s inventory is the family’s credit network: despite their relatively humble portfolio of assets, they owed money to at least fifteen people – including a sizeable sum to the Dutch Reformed Church. In contrast to an earlier literature which suggested a mostly subsistence economy, research using these probate inventories and auction rolls has revealed the dense financial network of the eighteenth-century Cape Colony – a financial network underpinned, it must be emphasized, by the institution of slavery (Fourie and Swanepoel 2018). This fact – a thriving capitalist system blemished by exclusion and exploitation – would become characteristic of South Africa’s economic development into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The study of capitalism – the history of markets, entrepreneurship, trade, and innovation but also labour coercion, discrimination, and inequality – is back in vogue. There are at least two reasons for this. First, events in the present have forced social scientists to learn from the past. Macroeconomists, enamoured with rational expectations models, had predicted the end of the business cycle – that was, until the Great Recession of 2007 dashed those predictions. As Eichengreen (2012) reminds us, it is during such financial crises that policymakers turn to history for guidance. Furthermore, the rise of populist movements across the globe during the 2010s has warranted comparisons with earlier eras that also witnessed severe levels of societal inequality (Piketty and Zucman 2014). Forms of exclusion along race and gender identities persist – exclusions that have deep historic roots (Wanamaker 2017). And research on the Spanish flu of 1918 is in high demand in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic (Arthi and Parman 2021). A second reason for the rising interest in the study of economic history is the availability of new methods and sources (Mitchener 2015). This is especially applicable to the developing world, where conventional historical sources are often inaccessible or
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南非宏观经济历史:南非储备银行百年特刊
西蒙·格鲁特于1688年在他的斯泰伦博斯农场去世,留下了他的妻子格特鲁德·鲍曼和两个分别为6岁和18个月大的女儿。他的遗嘱清单记录了当时家庭拥有的家庭用品和农具:一些锡和铁设备,一支枪,一辆马车,等等。清单上还列出了十只黑麦的夏季收成和农场上的牲畜:一头猪,两匹马,十二头牛,十头牛和五十五只羊。一个被奴役的无名男孩的所有权被记录了下来,但格鲁特的清单中最引人注目的是这个家庭的信用网络:尽管他们的资产组合相对不起眼,但他们至少欠了15个人的钱,其中包括荷兰归正教会的一大笔钱。与早期文献提出的主要是自给自足的经济相比,使用这些遗嘱清单和拍卖卷的研究揭示了18世纪开普殖民地的密集金融网络——必须强调的是,这一金融网络是由奴隶制制度支撑的(Fourie and Swanepoel 2018)。这一事实- -被排斥和剥削玷污的繁荣的资本主义制度- -将成为南非进入19和20世纪的经济发展的特点。对资本主义的研究——市场、创业、贸易和创新的历史,以及劳动强制、歧视和不平等的历史——重新流行起来。这至少有两个原因。首先,当前发生的事件迫使社会科学家从过去学习。痴迷于理性预期模型的宏观经济学家曾预测到商业周期的结束——直到2007年的大衰退打破了这些预测。正如Eichengreen(2012)提醒我们的那样,正是在此类金融危机期间,政策制定者才会从历史中寻求指导。此外,2010年代民粹主义运动在全球范围内的兴起,值得与早期社会严重不平等的时代进行比较(Piketty和Zucman 2014)。种族和性别认同的排斥形式依然存在——这种排斥有着深刻的历史根源(Wanamaker 2017)。在Covid-19大流行之后,对1918年西班牙流感的研究需求量很大(Arthi和Parman 2021)。对经济史研究越来越感兴趣的第二个原因是新方法和新来源的可用性(Mitchener 2015)。这尤其适用于发展中国家,在这些国家,传统的历史资料往往难以获得
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.30
自引率
0.00%
发文量
11
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