A grant of SEK 4,820,000 was awarded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) to fund three years of research.
The project is part of the larger research programme The Cape of Good Hope Panel, led by Erik Green. It focuses on studying the colonial political and economic elites in the Cape Colony.
“Access to unique sources allows us to study the European population in the Cape Colony on an annual basis. The sources provide information on economic assets, marriages, family formation, employment within the colonial administration, and more. This enables us to map colonial economic and political elites across time and space,” says Erik Green.
The project uses this mapping as a starting point to examine the extent to which the elites shared economic and political interests, and how their interactions influenced the development of the institutions that came to govern the colonial economy.