The Quantitative Cape: A Review of the New Historiography of the Dutch Cape Colony

The digitisation and transcription of rich archival sources and the use of statistical techniques combined with modern computing power have, over the last decade, enabled social scientists to reinterpret eighteenth-century Cape history. This review article summarises the main findings from the burgeoning literature, assesses whether these new studies refute or support earlier hypotheses, shows how new quantitative evidence can inform our understanding of the process of economic development, and appeals to historians and economists to learn each other's languages.