Collapse and persistence before 1713: Rethinking Khoekhoen political economy at the early Cape

Collapse and persistence before 1713: Rethinking Khoekhoen political economy at the early Cape Erik Green examines the complex interactions between the Khoekhoen and early European settlers, challenging conventional narratives of indigenous passivity and highlighting the resilience and agency of Khoe societies in the face of colonial pressures. From the sixteenth century onward, European powers gained territorial control over vast regions across the globe, followed by substantial waves of migration. By the end of the eighteenth century, roughly 1,410,000 Europeans had settled overseas (Altman and Horn 1991). While some areas – such as the Americas – attracted more migrants than others, a significant number also settled at the Cape of Good Hope. There is now a broad scholarly consensus that the establishment of European settler societies had lasting consequences for the economic development of the regions in which they took root. Some scholars argue that European settlers brought with them, or pressured colonial authorities to adopt, inclusive institutions that fostered long-term economic development (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2002; Engerman and Sokoloff 2002). Others, such as Veranci (2013), contend that settler colonialism represented a form of “die-hard colonialism” that marginalized – and in some cases eliminated – indigenous peoples. Carlos, Feir, and Redish (2022), using the United States as a case study, argue that institutional and economic change cannot be fully understood without accounting for the fate of indigenous communities.