ABSTRACT

The adoption of limited liability in the nineteenth century is considered to have boosted economic growth and expanded capital markets in Europe and North America. Despite similar legal changes in frontier markets such as South Africa, very few attempts have been made to analyse the economic effects thereof. After the Cape Joint Stock Company Act No. 25 of 1892 there was an upsurge in new joint stock companies in the Cape Colony, but little is known about the people who financed them. This study is an enquiry into who they were. Using a list of 6883 shareholders from 263 companies, we show that the Cape’s sources of private capital were a diverse group of people. Unlike previous studies, we find that most capital came from the middle class at the Cape and very little from foreign investors. The paper contributes to our understanding of early financial developments on the frontier and the evolution of capitalism at the Cape. It also contributes broadly to the economic and business history of the late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Cape.

摘要

19 世纪有限责任的采用被认为促进了欧洲和北美的经济增长并扩大了资本市场。尽管在南非等前沿市场发生了类似的法律变化，但很少有人尝试分析其经济影响。在 1892 年第 25 号开普股份公司法颁布后，开普殖民地的新股份公司激增，但对资助它们的人知之甚少。这项研究是对他们是谁的调查。使用来自 263 家公司的 6883 名股东的名单，我们表明开普敦的私人资本来源是多元化的人群。与之前的研究不同，我们发现大部分资本来自开普敦的中产阶级，很少来自外国投资者。该论文有助于我们了解边境的早期金融发展和开普敦资本主义的演变。它还对 19 世纪后期和 20 世纪开普敦的经济和商业历史做出了广泛贡献。