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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Anatomy of a Colonial Settler Population: Cape Colony, 1657-1750
Author:Guelke, LeonardISNI
Year:1988
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:21
Issue:3
Pages:453-473
Language:English
Geographic terms:The Cape
South Africa
Subjects:population
colonists
Europeans
History and Exploration
colonialism
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Ethnic and Race Relations
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/219451
Abstract:The subject of this study is the white settler population of the Cape Colony, South Africa, in the first century of its existence. The annual census or 'opgaaf' of all free people provided the starting point for the study. The demographic life histories, property holdings, and locations of all individual adults recorded in the census years of 1682, 1705, and 1731 were investigated. At the Cape settler men outnumbered settler women at all times, but the greatest imbalance of the sexes is found in the boom conditions of the early 1700s. In this period of rapid population growth and economic expansion a distinctive colonial pattern of marriage and family size came into existence almost overnight. The vast majority of young women married in their mid and late teens and shortly thereafter entered a long period of frequent childbearing; the limited number of women pushed male marriage ages up. By 1731, the settler population was mainly colonial-born and a much better balance existed between the sexes. Notes, ref.
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