Research
My research examines the economic history of Indigenous labour, coercion, and inequality in the colonial Cape of Good Hope. I use large-scale historical microdata — wage contracts, tax censuses (opgaafrolle), auction records, and estate inventories — combined with panel data econometrics and machine learning to reconstruct the economic lives of people largely absent from the archival record.
Current Projects
The Cape of Good Hope Panel Project
A pioneering historical big data initiative that tracks a complete settler population over more than 150 years. The dataset — one of the largest of its kind in the world — is drawn from the Cape Colony's annual tax censuses and linked to church records, court documents, and estate papers. My contribution focuses on the Indigenous (Khoesan) labour force: reconstructing their wages, working conditions, household structures, and economic trajectories from c. 1787 to 1828. I work with micro-level panel datasets of roughly 60,000–100,000 observations, analysing productivity and labour characteristics of the Cape Indigenous labour force.
Wages, Gender, and Coercion among the Khoe
Using 886 wage contracts from the Graaff-Reinet district (1801–1810), this project documents the wage structure of Khoe farmworkers under the colonial labour regime. The contracts reveal systematic gender-based pay differentials, the dominance of in-kind payment (sheep, clothing, tobacco), and the coercive institutional framework through which Khoe labour was extracted. This is the first quantitative study of Indigenous wages in early nineteenth-century South Africa.
Early Modern Globalization and Indigenous Agency
This project investigates Indigenous agency in the context of early modern globalisation at the Cape. Using commodity trade records and ecological data, we examine how the Khoesan navigated, resisted, and shaped the commercial networks that connected the Cape to global markets. The paper challenges the characterisation of Indigenous peoples as passive victims of colonialism, demonstrating active economic agency within severe structural constraints.
Estimating Historical Inequality from Social Tables
With Dieter von Fintel and Erik Green. We develop a methodological framework for estimating income and wealth inequality from historical social tables — the stratified summary statistics that pre-date modern household surveys. The paper addresses systematic biases in existing approaches and proposes a consistent methodology applicable across contexts. The method is demonstrated using Cape Colony data.
Slow to Register? Adjustment Margins after the 1807 Slave Import Ban in the Cape Colony
How did Cape settler farmers adjust when the British abolished the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, cutting off the colony's primary source of coerced labour? Using farm-level panel data from the opgaafrolle (annual tax censuses) linked to slave transaction records, we examine the adjustment margins available to slaveholding households — including labour substitution toward Indigenous Khoesan workers, changes in farm output composition, and shifts in household demographic structure — in response to the supply shock.
On the Causes of the Great Trek
A quantitative re-examination of the economic causes of the Great Trek — the mass migration of frontier settlers from the Cape Colony in the 1830s. Using panel data on settler households, land valuations, and labour market conditions, we assess the relative importance of economic versus ideological motivations for the Trek.
Coerced Indigenous Labour and Effort in Pastoral Agriculture
This project examines the relationship between coercion and labour productivity on Cape frontier farms. Using output data linked to labour force composition, we test whether coerced Khoe workers exerted less effort than free labourers — and how settler employers responded to the productivity consequences of coercion.