Serving God and Mammon: the ‘minerals-railway complex’ and its effects on colonial public finances in the British Cape Colony, 1810-1910
Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No. WP07/2019Publication date: May 2019
Author(s):
The resource curse literature underscores the fact that extractive economies face challenges in diversifying their economies. What is less explored are the public finance challenges encountered in these economies when the extractive industries are completely owned by the private sector. Using a recently compiled dataset on public revenues, expenditures and debt, this paper explores the nexus between the privatized extractive sector operations and public finance policies of the Cape Colony between 1810 and 1910. The paper finds that despite the natural resource endowment, the Cape Colony became heavily indebted and had huge budget deficits by the time it joined the Union of South Africa in 1910. After the discovery of diamonds, competition for resource-rents caused a slowdown and in some instances reversed the progress made in consolidating state institutions. The drive towards a national program of development inherent in self-governing colonies was overturned when the competition for resource-rents culminated in rent-seeking led by the interests in the monopolized extractive sector. Rather than being the main source of government revenues and a basis for inclusive economic progress, as expected in a self-governing settler colony, diamonds became a trap through the operations of what I call a ‘Minerals-Railway complex’. The insights from the paper have important implications for our understanding of both settler colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as the management of natural resources in developing economies.
JEL Classification:H30 H41, H50, H61, N17
Keywords:public finances, fiscal capacity, elite power, economic development, natural resources, African colonialism, Cape Colony
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Monday 21 July 202512:00-13:00
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Topic: "Diverging fiscal policies and what it means for markets"
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Topic: "Two competing approaches in South African competition policy: merger control and anti-cartel enforcement over the past 30 years"
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27 Jun 2025 Another setback for the GNU, but oil markets breathe a little easierThis week was marked by heightened tensions both domestically and internationally. At home, friction intensified between the two largest parties in the Government of National Unity (GNU), the ANC and the DA, following the firing of one of the DA's deputy ministers. Internationally, the US conducted airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities using...
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