Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- List of figures
- List of maps
- Preface
- A note on terminology, country names, and currency
- 1 Setting the context: South Africa in international perspective
- 2 Seizing the land: conquest and dispossession
- 3 Making the labour force: coercion and discrimination
- 4 Creating the colour bar: formal barriers, poor whites, and ‘civilized’ labour
- 5 Exporting the gold: the vital role of the mineral revolution
- 6 Transforming the economy: the rise of manufacturing and commercial agriculture
- 7 Separating the races: the imposition of apartheid
- 8 Forcing the pace: rapid progress despite constraints
- 9 Hitting the barriers: from triumph to disaster
- 10 Confronting the contradictions: the final crisis and the retreat from apartheid
- Annexe 1 The people of South Africa
- Annexe 2 The land and the geographical environment
- Annexe 3 The labour force and unemployment
- Guide to further reading
- References
- Index
Annexe 2 - The land and the geographical environment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- List of figures
- List of maps
- Preface
- A note on terminology, country names, and currency
- 1 Setting the context: South Africa in international perspective
- 2 Seizing the land: conquest and dispossession
- 3 Making the labour force: coercion and discrimination
- 4 Creating the colour bar: formal barriers, poor whites, and ‘civilized’ labour
- 5 Exporting the gold: the vital role of the mineral revolution
- 6 Transforming the economy: the rise of manufacturing and commercial agriculture
- 7 Separating the races: the imposition of apartheid
- 8 Forcing the pace: rapid progress despite constraints
- 9 Hitting the barriers: from triumph to disaster
- 10 Confronting the contradictions: the final crisis and the retreat from apartheid
- Annexe 1 The people of South Africa
- Annexe 2 The land and the geographical environment
- Annexe 3 The labour force and unemployment
- Guide to further reading
- References
- Index
Summary
This annexe is provided primarily for readers who are not familiar with South Africa. Its purpose is to provide a very brief resumé of the main geographical and environmental features of the country, with particular reference to those that influenced its economic history with respect to the settlement and migration of people, the pattern of farming, and the development of mining. Nature could scarcely have been more generous in endowing South Africa with minerals, or more niggardly in providing water for the land. It was only the good fortune of the mines that enabled the country to overcome the misfortunes of the farms.
The land area and the geological legacy
Modern South Africa is in large part a political rather than a geographical construct. The area of the Union from its formation in 1910 was approximately 472,000 square miles (302,000,000 acres). This is big by European standards, almost as large as the territories of Great Britain, France, and Germany combined, but small by comparison with the 3,000,000 square miles of Australia and the even larger area of Canada. With a population in 1911 of almost 6,000,000, South Africa had an overall density of less than thirteen persons a square mile, but this covered a wide range: from large, sparsely settled regions in the western half of the country with fewer than one person to the square mile to the more settled areas to the east with densities of over seventy-five to the square mile.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Economic History of South AfricaConquest, Discrimination, and Development, pp. 260 - 268Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005