Agricultural Productivity in the Cape Colony: a Story of Networks or Property Rights?
Abstract: There is a considerable body of evidence which suggests that the French Huguenots were highly skilled individuals who made positive economic contributions to whichever country they settled in. In an earlier analysis of wine production at the Cape, Fourie and von Fintel (2011) find that Huguenot immigrants, particularly from wine-producing regions, were more productive than their Dutch and German counterparts. We first examine some theoretical reasons for higher agricultural productivity due to network subscription, followed by an investigation of possible ways in which Huguenots from wine-producing regions may have benefited from network externalities at the Cape. In the second section we show how the development of property rights at the Cape Colony impacted on the performance of the economy in a number of ways. It is our contention that the evolution of property rights for farmers at the Cape explains the growth and changing composition of the agricultural sector in the eighteenth century. Property rights significantly changed how farmers could produce, despite the fact that markets remained monopsonistic.
