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Indigenous Real Wages and Standards of Living in Colonial Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1900-1960

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Author

Summary, in English

The economic history of colonial Bechuanaland has generally been under researched. In this article we aim at redeeming this situation by constructing real wage series for various occupations 1900-1960 using records from the colonial archives. We calculate nominal wages, subsistence consumption baskets and real wages. Our mapping means that we fill an existing knowledge gap. Throughout the text we continuously compare our results to the growing strand of literature on real wages and welfare standards in colonial Africa. Our study shows that Bechuanaland could serve as a ‘typical’ colony representative of Southern Africa with levels of real wages somewhat higher than those of East Africa, but lower than West Africa. We reflect on three divides captured by the real wage series: the urban-rural, public private and skilled-unskilled. We conclude that while the urban-rural divide is almost non-existing and the skill-unskilled divide is small in relative terms, wages in the public sector are forging ahead of the private sector in a significant way.

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Document type

Conference paper

Topic

  • Economic History

Keywords

  • Botswana
  • Bechuanaland
  • colonial era
  • real wages

Conference name

Swedish Economic History Meeting, 2013

Conference date

2013-10-04 - 2013-10-05

Conference place

Lund, Sweden

Status

Unpublished