Settler Economies In World History

Settler colonialism was a major aspect of the imperial age that began in the sixteenth century and has encompassed the whole world unto the present. Modern settler societies have together constituted one of the major routes to economic development from their foundation in resource abundance and labour scarcity. This book is a major and wide-ranging comparative historical enquiry into the experiences of the settler world. The roles of indigenous dispossession, large-scale immigrant labour, land abundance, trade, capital, and the settler institutions, are central to this economic formation and its history. The chapters examine those economies that emerged as genuine colonial hybrids out of their differing neo-European backgrounds, with distinctive post-independence structures and an institutional persistence into the present as independent states. Contributors include Stanley Engerman, Susan Carter, Henry Willebald, Luis Bertola, Claude Lützelschwab, Frank Tough, Kathleen Dimmer, Tony Ward, Drew Keeling, Carl Mosk, David Meredith, Martin Shanahan, John K Wilson, Bernard Attard, Grietjie Verhoef, Tim Rooth, Francine McKenzie, Jorge Alvarez, Jim McAloon, as well as the editors.

The economic history of developing countries, particularly the former colonies, has become polarized between two ideologies. The apologists for colonialism have emphasized the stimulus given to the indigenous economy by the introduction of foreign capital; the 'underdevelopment theorists' have turned this interpretation on its head and represented the relationship as being, particularly in 'settler colonies' such as Kenya and Zimbabwe, one not of stimulus but of rape and plunder. In this study, Dr Mosley considers the economies of colonial Kenya and Southern Rhodesia and argues, in the light of recently assembled statistical data, that the truth is more complex than either of these simple interpretations allows. At the level of policy, most white producers acknowledged that they could not afford to let 'white mate black in a very few moves': they needed his cheap labour, cattle and maize too much to wish to damage seriously the peasant economy that sustained them.

Debates about the origins and effects of European rule in the non-European world have animated the field of economic history since the 1850s. This pioneering text provides a concise and accessible resource that introduces key readings, builds connections between ideas and helps students to develop informed views of colonialism as a force in shaping the modern world. With special reference to European colonialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in both Asia and Africa, this book: • critically reviews the literature on colonialism and economic growth; • covers a range of different methods of analysis; • offers a comparative approach, as opposed to a collection of regional histories, deftly weaving together different themes. With debates around globalization, migration, global finance and environmental change intensifying, this authoritative account of the relationship between colonialism and economic development makes an invaluable contribution to several distinct literatures in economic history.

Pioneering study of the anglophone 'settler boom' in North America, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand between the early 19th and early 20th centuries, looking at what made it the most successful of all such settler revolutions, and how this laid the basis of British and American power in the 19th and 20th centuries.

This open access book offers a detailed study of the foundation and expansion of the Dutch Cape Colony to ask why certain regions in the global south became European settler societies from the 16th century onwards. Examining the different factors that led to the creation of the Cape Colony, Erik Green reveals it was a gradual process, made up of ad hoc decisions, in which the agency of indigenous peoples played an important role. He identifies the drivers behind settler expansion, explores the effect of inequality on long-term economic development and examines the relationship between settlers and the colonial authorities, asserting that they should not be treated as one homogenous group with shared economic interests. Assessing specific characteristics of the Cape Colony, such as the proposition it was a slavery economy, and comparing key insights of this study with the historiography of other settler colonies, Creating the Cape Colony demonstrates the need to revise our understanding of how settler economies operated, and to rethink the long-term legacies of settler colonialism. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation grant.

"This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation grant. This book offers a detailed study of the foundation and expansion of the Dutch Cape Colony to ask why certain regions in the global south became European settler societies from the 16th century onwards. Examining the different factors that led to the creation of the Cape Colony, Erik Green reveals it was a gradual process, made up of ad hoc decisions, in which the agency of indigenous peoples played an important role. He identifies the drivers behind settler expansion, explores the effect of inequality on long-term economic development and examines the relationship between settlers and the colonial authorities, asserting that they should not be treated as one homogenous group with shared economic interests. Assessing specific characteristics of the Cape Colony, such as the proposition it was a slavery economy, and comparing key insights of this study with the historiography of other settler colonies, Creating the Cape Colony demonstrates the need to revise our understanding of how settler economies operated, and to rethink the long-term legacies of settler colonialism."--

In a time of pandemics, war and climate change, fostering knowledge that transcends disciplinary boundaries is more important than ever. Economic history is one of the world’s oldest interdisciplinary fields, with its prosperity dependent on connection and relevance to disciplinary behemoths economics and history. Australian Economic History is the first history of an interdisciplinary field in Australia, and the first to set the field’s progress within the structures of Australian universities. It highlights the lived experience of doing interdisciplinary research, and how scholars have navigated the opportunities and challenges of this form of knowledge. These lessons are vital for those seeking to develop robust interdisciplinary conversations now and in the future. This previously untold story of economic history in Australia exposes the centrality of economic thought and scholarship to Australian intellectual and political life. Deftly positioning economic history in an innovative institutional, place-based and person-focused narrative, Claire Wright entangles economics with the history of education to produce a tale of university interdisciplinarity, influence and impact. Written with vitality and bursting with both data and anecdote, this book makes an exceptional contribution to the intersecting fields of history, economics and higher education studies. – Hannah Forsyth, author of A History of the Modern Australian University. Few readers would expect to find a classical tragedy in the story of an academic field. Yet that is what Claire Wright shows us in this study of Economic History, as it has been practiced in Australia. She traces the field from legendary beginnings to triumphant growth to organisational collapse - and renaissance on other terms. Carefully researched and vigorously written, this book raises questions about disciplines and interdisciplinary fields, universities and markets, and social bases of intellectual work, that are relevant to all fields today. – Raewyn Connell, author of The Good University Australia proved a pioneer in the study of economic history, nurturing a discipline with innovative data and understanding of material trends. Yet by the 1990s economic history departments closed as senior scholars retired and the field was subsumed by conventional economics. In this absorbing study, Dr Claire Wright challenges the conventional account. She is tough-minded about financial and institutional pressures on the field, but cautiously optimistic about the future. It is a mistake, she argues, to see institutional representation as the benchmark of influence. Instead, the interdisciplinary nature of economic history has encouraged new research and teaching across the humanities and social sciences. With close attention to individual scholars and their university departments, and a deep sense of the trajectory of the field, Australian Economic History: Transformations of an Interdisciplinary Field is an original and important contribution to Australian intellectual history. – Glyn Davis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science in the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University