ABSTRACT
The Cape Colony at the southern tip of Africa offers valuable lessons on the emergence of a productive agricultural society in a pre-industrial, mercantilist setting. Not only was the Cape Colony under Company rule – the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC, which maintained a unique set of formal and informal institutions – but the particular geographic position of the Cape, as a midway point for ships sailing between Europe and the East Indies, and the temperate climate conducive for Mediterranean winter-rainfall crops, engendered unique factor endowments that gave rise to a relatively affluent settler society. And yet, it also gave rise to a slave society and severe inequality.
