Karoo pastoral economy 1880s-1930s: enclosure, wool prices and the Great Depression
reference (economic history) · consulted 2026-08-02
- Type
- reference (economic history)
- Repository
- web (several)
- Reference
- Grundlingh & others, "The effects of the Great Depression (1929-1934) on South African White agriculture", South African Journal of Economic History 5(2), 1990; Wikipedia, "Great Depression in South Africa"; allAfrica / Karoo Space on William Beinart and the nineteenth-century Karoo wool economy; Cape Fencing Act of 1883 and Karoo enclosure
- Consulted
- 2026-08-02
The citation as it was given
Background for STO-0020, the argument about where F.S. Oosthuizen's money came from. WHAT IT SUPPORTS: the wool price fell about 75% between 1925 and 1933 and by 1932 a farmer had to produce nearly four times the volume to earn the 1928 revenue; the Great Drought of 1930-33 compounded it; mortgaged farmers were foreclosed and the Land Bank was swamped. Also the nineteenth-century flock growth (c.1.5m mostly non-woolled sheep at the start of the century to c.12m merinos at its close) and the 1883 Fencing Act. [TO VERIFY] READ AT SECOND HAND. The journal article was consulted through its abstract and through summaries, not in full text, and the Beinart comparison (the Karoo out-earning Kimberley's first century of diamonds) is reported rather than read in Beinart. 5a: recorded as what it is. Anyone checking this should read the article and Beinart directly before the claims are hardened.
Kept verbatim. This project contradicts published genealogies and corrects a family's own oral tradition, so every claim has to be checkable by someone who was not in the room.