Building the Cape of Good Hope Panel

ABSTRACT

To study the intergenerational dynamics of productivity, social mobility and demographic change of any contemporary society is a challenge. To do this for a pre-industrial society at the southern tip of Africa seems almost impossible. Yet this is the purpose of the Cape of Good Hope Panel, an annual panel data set – still under construction – of Cape Colony settler tax records over almost two centuries. The transcription of this ambitious project is now in its fourth year. Here we describe the history of the project, the transcription process, and present some preliminary results.

KEYWORDS:

• Big data
• longitudinal
• settler
• VOC
• Africa
• colonialism
• institutions

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Jeanne Cilliers, Hans Heese, Calumet Links, Igor Martins, Heinrich Nel, Auke Rijpma, Robert Ross and Dieter von Fintel for their valuable contributions to the project. We want to thank Linda Orlando and Chris de Wit in particular for their dedication in the transcription effort, and Erika le Roux for archival support. Research made possible by the Swedish Handelsbankens and the Marianne and Marcus Research Foundation: Marianne och Marcus forskningsstiftelser (Dnr: MMW 2015.0027), Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius stiftelse, Tore Browaldhs stiftelse (Dnr: P2015-0159 and P2015-0409:1), CLARIAH-CORE, financed by NWO, and the South African National Research Foundation (96248).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Numbers reflect GDP per capita (current US$) in 2016, according to the World Bank Development Indicators.

2. Six of the world’s most unequal countries are in southern Africa. They are South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho and Swaziland. The global Gini coefficient is now almost exactly the same as the Gini for the most unequal country in the world, South Africa.

3. Those are indicated in green. Those in yellow have been partially transcribed (only the names, for example). Those in red are of records that are either ineligible or missing. Those in blue are not yet transcribed.

4. The wife’s name is sometimes missing, which makes matching across censuses extremely difficult. See Rijpma et al. (2018).

5. J131, Cape Town Archives Repository.

6. J154, Cape Town Archives Repository.

7. J156, Cape Town Archives Repository.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [CLARIAH-CORE];Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius Stiftelse;Tore Browaldhs stiftelse [Dnr: P2015-0159 and P2015-0409:1];South African National Research Foundation [96248];Marianne och Marcus forskningsstiftelser [Dnr: MMW 2015.0027].