Built mostly to support the early mining industry, the Cape Colony’s railways reduced the cost of transport to the interior and increased labor productivity in the Colony from 1859 to 1905 by, we calculate, 30 percent. Little of the gains went to the state-owned company: the Cape parliament seems always to have seen the railways as a means to development. But the politically overrepresented western parts of the Colony gained much more than underrepresented areas like Basutoland or the Transkei. While boosting the economy, the railways also had distributional effects, with consequences for racial segregation in twentieth-century South Africa.

中文翻译：

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“为了公共利益”？英属海角殖民地的铁路

Cape Colony的铁路主要为支持早期采矿业而建造，从1859年至1905年，该铁路降低了内部运输的成本，并提高了殖民地的劳动生产率，据我们估算，这一生产率提高了30％。国有公司获得的收益很少：开普国会似乎总是将铁路视为发展的手段。但是，政治上人数过多的殖民地西部地区获得的收益远远超过人数不足的地区，例如Basutoland或Transkei。在促进经济发展的同时，铁路也产生了分配效应，对二十世纪的南非种族隔离产生了影响。