Skip to main content

Historical Context

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Capital and Colonialism

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

  • 801 Accesses

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe the historical context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for our study. We delineate how European imperialism developed during the period, with a particular focus on the colonization of the African continent, the so-called Scramble for Africa. We also describe the development of global financial markets and the key role played by the City of London. The chapter finally introduces a discussion on the interconnection between these two aspects—international, and in particular British, investments in the African colonies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2001. The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation. American Economic Review 91 (5): 1369–1401.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alden Wily, Liz. 2012. Looking Back to See Forward: The Legal Niceties of Land Theft in Land Rushes. The Journal of Peasant Studies 39 (3–4): 751–775.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, David. 2004. Kenya, 1895–1939: Registration and Rough Justice. In Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain & the Empire, 1562–1955, ed. Douglas Hay and Paul Craven, 498–528. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arrighi, Giovanni. 1970. Labour Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the Proletarianization of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia. The Journal of Development Studies 6 (3): 197–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ash, Catherine B. 2006. Forced Labor in Colonial West Africa. History Compass 4 (3): 402–406.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Austen, Ralph A. 1975. Economic Imperialism Revisited: Late-Nineteenth-Century Europe and Africa. The Journal of Modern History 47 (3): 519–529.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Austin, Gareth. 2014. Capitalism and the Colonies. In The Cambridge History of Capitalism. Volume II: The Spread of Capitalism: From 1848 to the Present, ed. Larry Neal and Jeffrey Williamson, 301–347. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baten, Joerg. 2016. A History of the Global Economy: From 1500 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Berend, T. Iván. 2013. An Economic History of Nineteenth-Century Europe: Diversity and Industrialization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berman, Bruce J., and John M. Lonsdale. 1980. Crises of Accumulation, Coercion and the Colonial State: The Development of the Labor Control System in Kenya, 1919–1929. Canadian Journal of African Studies/La Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 14 (1): 55–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berry, Sara. 1992. Hegemony on a Shoestring: Indirect Rule and Access to Agricultural Land. Africa 62 (03): 327–355.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bessant, Leonard Leslie. 1992. Coercive Development: Land Shortage, Forced Labor, and Colonial Development in the Chiweshe Reserve, Colonial Zimbabwe, 1938–1946. The International Journal of African Historical Studies 25 (1): 39–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bhandar, Brenna. 2018. Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Boahen, A. Adu. 1989. African Perspectives on Colonialism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cassis, Youssef. 2010. Capitals of Capital: The Rise and Fall of International Financial Centres, 1780–2009. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chamberlain, M.E. 2010. The Scramble for Africa. 3rd ed. Harlow: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chanock, Martin. 2004. South Africa, 1841–1924: Race, Contract, and Coercion. In Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain & the Empire, 1562–1955, ed. Douglas Hay and Paul Craven, 338–364. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chapman, Stanley. 1985. British-Based Investment Groups Before 1914. The Economic History Review 38 (2): 230–247.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1988. Venture Capital and Financial Organisation: London and South Africa in the Nineteenth Century. In Banking and Business in South Africa, ed. Stuart Jones. Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, Nancy, and William Worger. 2016. South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Conrad, Sebastian, and Jürgen Osterhammel. 2018. An Emerging Modern World 1750–1870. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, Frederick. 1996. Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. 2009. Africa and the Africans in the Nineteenth Century. London: M.E. Sharpe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crais, Clifton C. 1992. White Supremacy and Black Resistance in Pre-Industrial South Africa: The Making of the Colonial Order in the Eastern Cape, 1770–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crowder, Michael. 1964. Indirect Rule—French and British Style. Africa 34 (3): 197–205.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1968. West Africa under Colonial Rule. London: Hutchinson.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1971. West African Resistance: The Military Response to Colonial Occupation. London: Hutchinson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crummey, Donald. 1986. Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa. London: Currey.

    Google Scholar 

  • Curtin, Philip D. 1961. The White Man’s Grave:’ Image and Reality, 1780–1850. The Journal of British Studies 1 (1): 94–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1998. Disease and Empire: The Health of European Troops in the Conquest of Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davenport-Hines, R.P.T., and Jean-Jacques Van Helten. 1986. Edgar Vincent, Viscount D’Abernon, and the Eastern Investment Company in London, Constantinople and Johannesburg. Business History 28 (1): 35–61.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dilley, Andrew Richard. 2012. Finance, Politics, and Imperialism: Australia, Canada, and the City of London, c.1896–1914. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dumett, Raymond. 2009a. Edwin Cade and Frederick Gordon: British Imperialism and the Foundations of the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, West Africa. In Mining Tycoons in the Age of Empire, 1870–1945: Entrepreneurship, High Finance, Politics and Territorial Expansion, ed. Raymond Dumett, 63–84. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009b. Mining Tycoons in the Age of Empire, 1870–1945: Entrepreneurship, High Finance, Politics and Territorial Expansion. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelstein, Michael. 1994. Foreign Investment and Accumulation, 1860–1914. In The Economic History of Britain since 1700. Volume 2: 1860–1939, ed. Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey, 2nd ed., 173–196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edgerton, Robert. 1995. The Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred-Year War for Africa’s Gold Coast. New York: The Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Etemad, Bouda. 2007. Possessing the World: Taking the Measurements of Colonisation from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century. New York: Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fall, Babacar. 2002. Social History in French West Africa: Forced Labor, Labor Market, Women and Politics. Amsterdam: South-South Exchange Programme for Research on the History of Development.

    Google Scholar 

  • Feinstein, Charles. 2005. An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, Niall. 2003. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferro, Marc. 1997. Colonization - A Global History. Quebec: World Heritage Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gardner, Leigh. 2013. Taxing Colonial Africa: The Political Economy of British Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, Charles, and Jon Press. 1990. The City and International Mining, 1870–1914. Business History 32 (3): 98–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hay, Douglas, and Paul Craven. 2004. Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955. Studies in Legal History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Headrick, Daniel R. 1981. The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huillery, Elise. 2014. The Black Man’s Burden: The Cost of Colonization of French West Africa. The Journal of Economic History 74 (1): 1–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iliffe, John. 1983. The Emergence of African Capitalism. London: Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2007. Africans: The History of a Continent. New ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Stuart. 1988. Banking and Business in South Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Katzenellenbogen, Simon. 1990. Southern African Mining Interests in Australia Before 1939. Business History 32 (3): 120–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laidlaw, Zoë, and Alan Lester. 2015. Indigenous Communities and Settler Colonialism: Land Holding, Loss and Survival in an Interconnected World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Laumann, Dennis. 2012. African World Histories: Colonial Africa, 1884–1994. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lovejoy, Paul E., and Jan S. Hogendorn. 1993. Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria 1897–1936. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lukasiewicz, Mariusz. 2017. From Diamonds to Gold: The Making of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, 1880–1890. Journal of Southern African Studies 43 (4): 715–732.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacKenzie, John M. 1983. The Partition of Africa 1880–1900 and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. London: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mamdani, Mahmood. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Michie, Ranald C. 1981. Options, Concession, Syndicates, and the Provision of Venture Capital, 1880–1913. Business History 23 (2): 147–164.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2001. The London Stock Exchange: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2006. The Global Securities Market a History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mlambo, A.S. 2014. A History of Zimbabwe. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Newbury, Cecil. 2009. Cecil Rhodes, De Beers and Mining Finance in South Africa: The Business of Entrepreneurship and Imperialism. In Mining Tycoons in the Age of Empire, 1870–1945: Entrepreneurship, High Finance, Politics and Territorial Expansion, ed. Raymond Dumett, 85–108. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Öberg, Stefan, and Klas Rönnbäck. 2015. The White Man’s Grave Revisited - Settler Mortality Rates in Pre-Colonial West Africa. Working Paper, Gothenburg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ochonu, Moses. 2013. African Colonial Economies: Land, Labor, and Livelihoods. History Compass 11 (2): 91–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Osterhammel, Jürgen, and Patrick Camiller. 2014. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pakenham, Thomas. 1991. The Scramble for Africa 1876–1912. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paulin, Christopher. 2001. White Men’s Dreams, Black Men’s Blood: African Labor and British Expansionism in Southern Africa, 1877–1895. Trenton: Africa World Press, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phillips, John. 2009. Alfred Chester Beatty: Mining Engineer, Financier, and Entrepreneur, 1898–1950. In Mining Tycoons in the Age of Empire, 1870–1945: Entrepreneurship, High Finance, Politics and Territorial Expansion, ed. Raymond Dumett, 215–238. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Platt, D.C.M. 1968. Finance, Trade, and Politics in British Foreign Policy 1815–1914. Oxford: Clarendon press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raftopoulos, Brian. 1997. The Labour Movement in Zimbabwe: 1945–1965. In Keep on Knocking: A History of the Labour Movement in Zimbabwe 1900–97, ed. Brian Raftopoulos and Ian Phimister, 55–90. Harare: Baobab Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ranger, T.O. 1967. Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 1896–7: A Study in African Resistance. London: Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rathbone, Richard. 2004. West Africa, 1874–1948: Employment Legislation in a Nonsettler Peasant Economy. In Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain & the Empire, 1562–1955, ed. Douglas Hay and Paul Craven, 481–497. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richardson, Peter, and Jean-Jacques Van Helten. 1982. Labour in the South African Gold Mining Industry, 1886–1914. In Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Culture, and Consciousness, 1870–1930, ed. Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone, 77–98. New York: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1984. The Development of the South African Gold-Mining Industry, 1895–1918. The Economic History Review 37 (3): 319–340.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ross, Robert. 1983. Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanderson, G.N. 1975. The European Partition of Africa: Coincidence or Conjuncture? In European Imperialism and the Partition of Africa, ed. E.F. Penrose, 1–54. London: Frank Cass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scammell, Geoffrey Vaughan. 1989. The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion c. 1400–1715. London: Unwin Hyman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schreuder, D.M. 1980. The Scramble for Southern Africa, 1877–1895: The Politics of Partition Reappraised. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sender, John, and Sheila Smith. 1986. The Development of Capitalism in Africa. London: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steinfeld, Robert J. 2001. Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Stone, Irving. 1999. The Global Export of Capital from Great Britain, 1865–1914: A Statistical Survey. New York: Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, Leonard. 2001. A History of South Africa. 3rd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turrell, Robert Vicat, and Jean-Jacques Van Helten. 1986. The Rothschilds, the Exploration Company and Mining Finance. Business History 28 (2): 181–205.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Twomey, Michael J. 2000. A Century of Foreign Investment in the Third World. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Der Merwe, Derek. 1989. Not Slavery but a Gentle Stimulus: Labour-Inducing Legislation in the South African Republic. Journal of South African Law: 353–369.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Helten, Jean-Jacques. 1990. Mining, Share Manias and Speculation: British Investment in Overseas Mining, 1880–1913. In Capitalism in a Mature Economy: Financial Institutions, Capital Exports and British Industry, 1870–1939, ed. Jean-Jacques Van Helten and Youssef Cassis, 159–185. Aldershot: Edward Elgar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vatikiotis, P.J. 1991. The History of Modern Egypt from Muhammad Ali to Mubarak. 4th ed. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warren, Bill, and John Sender. 1980. Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism. London: NLB.

    Google Scholar 

  • Welsh, David. 2009. The Rise and Fall of Apartheid. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wesseling, Hendrik Lodewijk. 1996. Divide and Rule: The Partition of Africa, 1880–1914. Westport, CT: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wickins, Peter. 1986. Africa 1880–1980: An Economic History. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilkins, Mira. 1988. The Free-Standing Company, 1870–1914: An Important Type of British Foreign Direct Investment. The Economic History Review 41 (2): 259–282.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Henry. 1977. The Imperial Experience in Sub-Saharan Africa since 1870. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolfe, Patrick. 2006. Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journal of Genocide Research 8 (4): 387–409.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Klas Rönnbäck .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Rönnbäck, K., Broberg, O. (2019). Historical Context. In: Capital and Colonialism. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19711-7_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19711-7_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-19710-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-19711-7

  • eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics