Theses and Dissertations

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A review of some literature on economic history in southern Africa and the eastern Cape to around 1800
(University of Fort Hare, 2015-03) Kenyon, Micheal Thomas
The 2 000 years in southern Africa until the end of the 18th century was a period of massive change, perhaps surpassed only by the development of capitalism in the 19th century. The beginning of the period under discussion was characterised by a very low and scattered population using ancient techniques of hunting, foraging and gathering. Over the next 2 000 years there was a diffusion of new technologies, languages and human population into Southern Africa from the north. This was a very complex and uneven process and included diffusion and population movements in all directions within southern Africa, probably including back northwards. While hinted at by writers in the 1960s and 1970s, recent scholarship has shown convincingly that the internal dynamics within southern Africa and the development of the society as it existed at the end of the period under discussion owes far more to local interactions with so-called Late Stone Age people of southern Africa, the Khoikhoi and San, than is generally acknowledged.