Building the Cape of Good Hope Panel

• To study the intergenerational dynamics of productivity, social mobility and demographic change of any contemporary society is a challenge. To do this for a pre-industrial society at the southern tip of Africa seems almost impossible. Yet this is the purpose of the Cape of Good Hope Panel, an annual panel data set–still under construction–of Cape Colony settler tax records over almost two centuries. The transcription of this ambitious project is now in its fourth year. Here we describe the history of the project, the transcription process, and present some preliminary results.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Ekonomisk geografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Economic Geography (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Africa

Big data

colonialism

institutions

longitudinal

settler

VOC

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)