Issue #0

Rural transformations in industrializing South Africa

the Southern Highveld to 1914

Plot

The first comprehensive treatment of the making of the contemporary South African countryside, investigating the emergence of white capitalist farming and the destruction of black rural enterprise in early industrial South Africa. It analyses the impact of rising markets and the influx of capital on rural production and social relationships, particularly the process whereby a black working class was forged. It also examines the rural social origins of modern Afrikanerdom, exploring the experiences of impoverishment and land loss amongst whites as well as the processes of accumulation and capitalization whereby a highly capitalized farming economy, unique in the continent, emerged and was sustained. The significance and nature of state interventions in these processes are especially addressed.