Browsing by Author "Fourie, Johan"

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    Black living standards in South Africa before democracy : new evidence from height
    (Academy of Science of South Africa, 2018) Mpeta, Bokang; Fourie, Johan; Inwood, Kris
    Very little income or wage data were systematically recorded about the living standards of South Africa’s black majority during much of the 20th century. We used four data sets to provide an alternative measure of living standards – namely stature – to document, for the first time, living standards of black South Africans over the course of the 20th century. We found evidence to suggest that living standards in the first three decades of the century were particularly poor, perhaps because of the increasingly repressive labour policies in urban areas and famine and land expropriation that weighed especially heavily on the Basotho. The decade following South Africa’s departure from the gold standard, a higher international gold price and the demand for manufactured goods from South Africa as a consequence of World War II seem to have benefitted both black and white South Africans. The data also allowed us to disaggregate by ethnicity within the black population group, revealing levels of inequality within race groups that have been neglected in the literature. Finally, we compared black and white living standards, and revealed the large and widening levels of inequality that characterised 20th-century South Africa.
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    "'n Droewige laslap op die voos kombers van onreg" : 'n statistiese analise van konsentrasie-kampbewoners
    (Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns, 2016-12) Du Plessis, Sophia; Fourie, Johan
    AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING : Die konsentrasiekampe van die Anglo-Boereoorlog (1899-1902) wek steeds intense emosies op. Om dié rede is dit ook verstaanbaar dat 'n breë literatuur verskeie aspekte van die konsentrasiekampe en die lewe van die bewoners ondersoek. Vreemd genoeg, is een aspek wat wel agterweë gelaat is 'n kwantitatiewe ondersoek na die lengte van verblyf vir die meer as 100 000 wit mans, vroue en kinders in die kampe. Hoeveel dae is die gemiddelde kampbewoner gehuisves? Het bewoners uit die republieke of dié uit die kolonies langer aangebly? En wat was die kenmerke van bewoners wat voor die einde van die oorlog die kampe verlaat het? Duisende het ook in die kampe gesterf. Ons ontleed ook die kenmerke van hierdie groep, en werp lig op die redes vir hul tragiese einde. Deur gebruik te maak van 'n enorme datastel van kampbewoners en die statistiese hulpmiddel oorlewingsanalise, bied hierdie artikel 'n nuwe blik op n ou onderwerp en vra nuwe vrae vir toekomstige historiese navorsing.
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    Die huwelikspatrone van Europese setlaars aan die Kaap, 1652 - 1910
    (Pretoria : Human Sciences Research Council, North-West University, 2014-07) Fourie, Johan; Cilliers, Jeanne
    The Cape Colony at the southernmost tip of Africa, founded in 1652 with the arrival of European sailors and soldiers under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company, provides, we believe, an excellent opportunity to investigate the persistence of “European” demographic characteristics outside of North-Western Europe, given that it’s social and cultural institions originate from this region. In addition, the Cape has perhaps one of the most well documented settler populations in the world, and the wealth of quantitative archival evidence available allows for new demographic research at a micro level. This study makes use of one such quantitative source: the newly-digitised South African Genealogical Registers, a detailed account of all European settler families at the Cape, to provide new estimates of settler marriage patterns from European settlement to unification in 1910. Why is an understanding of marriage patterns important? A recent literature has emphasised the role of women’s agency in Europe as a key determinant of the rise of a market society and, ultimately, the Industrial Revolution (Diebolt and Perrin 2013; Voigtländer and Voth 2013). Women’s agency arose as a result of an increase in the age at which women married during the earlymodern era in Europe, also known as the European marriage pattern (EMP), which was, according to De Moor and Van Zanden (2010), caused by three related factors: 1) consensus in the marriage decision, 2) the Roman-Dutch inheritance laws which ensured that women were given an equal share in the estate of their deceased husbands, and 3) the rise of an active labour market which gave women between the ages of 12 and 25 the opportunity to earn wage income. These three factors, claim De Moor and Van Zanden (2010), explain a divide within Europe along an imaginary line, first observed by John Hajnal and therefore also known as the Hajnal line, running from St Petersburg in Russia to Trieste in Italy; those regions west of the line exhibited characteristics of the EMP, those east of the line did not. The consequences of a higher age of marriage was that the period during which women were fertile within the marriage shortened, resulting in lower fertility rates. A higher age of marriage also meant that both men and women gained additional time to earn an income and improve their skills before marriage. This rise in human capital, argue De Moor and Van Zanden (2010), was a key building block of the rise of a market society and, later, the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution. The aim of this article, then, is to provide a series of eighteenth- and nineteenth century marriage pattern estimates for the Cape Colony that allow us to view Cape development in a comparative perspective and, perhaps more tentatively, test whether the same factors that De Moor and Van Zanden (2010) propose, are also true at the Cape. From both quantitative and qualitative sources we find no evidence that a European Marriage Pattern developed at the Cape, even though both consensus in marriage and inheritance laws were present. However, more quantitative evidence is necessary to confirm or refute the De Moor and Van Zanden (2010) hypothesis.
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    Luxury product consumption in Eighteenth-century Cape Colony households
    (International Institute of Social History, 2012) Fourie, Johan; Uys, Jolandi
    What we know about the material culture of eighteenth century Cape Colony settlers is mostly limited to qualitative evidence found in official documents, letters, travel accounts and other correspondence. This paper uses a new quantitative source - the MOOC probate inventories - to ascertain the nature, growth and distribution of luxury good ownership in the Cape Colony. The survey reveals a marginal increase over the course of the eighteenth century in household ownership, although the trend masks greater movements within different wealth groups, which supports the notion of high inequality within the European society at the Cape. The evidence presented here suggests that even the poorest had access to the most basic luxuries. In fact, comparisons with European and North American regions suggest that the Cape settlers were often more affuent, refuting the notion that the Cape Colony was an 'economic and social backwater', and confirming that it was at least partially integrated into the 'consumer revolution' of Western Europe.
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    Ons het reeds gewen
    (Die Burger, 2010-05-30) Fourie, Johan
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    Record linkage in the Cape of Good Hope Panel
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2019-02) Rijpma, Auke; Cilliers, Jeanne; Fourie, Johan
    In this article, we describe the record linkage procedure to create a panel from Cape Colony census returns, or opgaafrolle, for 1787–1828, a dataset of 42,354 household-level observations. Based on a subset of manually linked records, we first evaluate statistical models and deterministic algorithms to best identify and match households over time. By using household-level characteristics in the linking process and near-annual data, we are able to create high-quality links for 84% of the dataset. We compare basic analyses on the linked panel dataset to the original cross-sectional data, evaluate the feasibility of the strategy when linking to supplementary sources, and discuss the scalability of our approach to the full Cape panel.
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    Die relatiewe welvaart van die vroee Kaapse setlaars
    (LitNet, 2012-08) Fourie, Johan
    Die tradisionele beskouing van die 18de-eeuse Kaapkolonie as ’n armoedige bestaansekonomie moet heroorweeg word. Deur van 2 577 onlangs gedigitaliseerde boedelinventarisse gebruik te maak, toon hierdie artikel dat die gemiddelde Kaapse setlaarshuishouding relatief welaf was aan die begin van die 18de eeu en dat hierdie rykdomvlakke oor tyd toegeneem het, al het dit ook gepaard gegaan met ’n toename in ongelykheid binne die setlaarsbevolking. Kaapse setlaarshuishoudings kon selfs kers vashou met huishoudings in streke wat gedurende die 18de eeu as die mees welvarende beskou is – Nederland en Engeland.
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    Towards a real-time decision support system for fire incidence management in South African forestry
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 1992-09) Fourie, Johan; Uys, H. J. E.; Theron, J. M.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of AgriSciences. Dept. of Forest & Wood Science.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study presents the development of the conceptual structure for an applications model, which has the objective of improving the effectivity of South African fire incidence management in an elementary and cost-effective way. The proposals reflect reality in that: a) international standards, guidelines and technological trends were considered; b) the capabilities of existing and developing computer and communication infrastructure within forestry, especially in the rural areas, were considered and utilized and c) the requirements and problems of operations managers were considered. Most managerial decisions which have a direct influence on the natural environment, are executed at the operational level. Providing this level with effective, affordable, maintainable and purpose-specific computer systems, is therefore the correct avenue for improved managerial practices within our natural heritage.
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    An unequal harvest: The French Huguenots and early Cape wine-making ['n ongelyke oes: Die Franse Hugenote en die vroeë Kaapse wynbedryf]
    (SCOPUS, 2011-09) Fourie, Johan; Von Fintel, Dieter
    There is as yet little understanding of the impact of the arrival of French Huguenots during 1688/1689 on the Cape wine industry in the Dutch Cape Colony. Van Riebeeck already produced the first wine at the Cape in 1659. Under Company officials, notably Simon and Willem Adriaan van der Stel, production expanded rapidly until, at the turn of the 17th century, the Lords XVII in Amsterdam limited private farm ownership by Company officials and paved the way for free farmers to take up viticulture. These included the 159 French Huguenots that had arrived a decade earlier to augment the free European population at the Cape by at least a third. Not all farmers were instantly successful, however, and, after rapid early adoption, wine production increased piecemeal over the course of the eighteenth century. Most of this activity was restricted to the areas west of the first mountain ranges. We posit that the skills, knowledge and secrets of wine-making the French Huguenots possessed at their arrival allowed them to produce better quality wines more productively than the non-French settlers. By using quantitative production data - the opgaafrolle were collected for the purposes of taxation - over more than seven decades of European settlement, we show that the Huguenots produced significantly more wine and did so more productively than the other settlers. The dataset allows for a number of control variables, including inputs (vines and wheat reaped, which also acts as a proxy for land), other capital (slaves, horses and cattle) and labour (knechts, or European labourers). But the standard factors of production (land, capital and labour) do not explain the difference: the "additional advantage" of the Huguenots remain despite these controls. The only plausible alternative hypothesis is that the knowledge, skills and secrets of viticulture allowed these Huguenots to produce quality wine, an invaluable asset in the fight against scurvy on the long ship voyages between Europe and the East. We test this hypothesis by splitting the sample into two groups: those that originate from wine-producing provinces in France and those that originate from non-wine producing provinces. Using only this subsample (and thus eliminating the possibility of institutional differences between the French Huguenots and the other settlers), we show that the Huguenots from wine-producing regions are more adept at making quality wine than their Huguenot compatriots who originate from non-wine producing regions. The skills, knowledge or "secrets" of producing quality wine brought with them from France gave these Huguenots a competitive advantage, which allowed them to consistently secure a market for their produce and thus expand production.
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    When selection trumps persistence : the lasting effect of missionary education in South Africa
    (International Institute of Social History, 2015-01-15) Fourie, Johan; Swanepoel, Christie
    To estimate the long-term, persistent effects of missionary education requires two strong assumptions: that mission station settlement is uncorrelated with other economic variables, such as soil quality and access to markets, and 2) that selection into (and out of) mission stations is unimportant. Both these assumptions are usually not sufficiently addressed, which renders the interpretation of the persistent effects of mission stations suspect. We use an 1849 mission census of the Cape Colony in South Africa to test whether, controlling for location and selection, mission station education can explain education outcomes 147 years later. Our first set of results show that Black and Coloured residents of districts with a mission station are today likely to attain more years of schooling than those in districts with no stations. In addition, when only modern-day controls are included, education seems to be the mechanism that explains this persistence. However, when we control for selection in 1849, literacy loses its explanatory power. Education outcomes may be highly persistent – even in the face of active repression by apartheid authorities – but the key factor is early selection and not education persistence.