Abstract
Very little is known about what family life looked like for settlers in colonial South Africa during the 18th or 19th century, nor how events over these centuries might have affected demographic change. The primary reason for this lacuna is a shortage of adequate data. Historians and genealogists have, over the last century, worked to combine the rich administrative records that are available in the Cape Archives in Cape Town and beyond, into a single genealogical volume of all settlers living in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century. Until recently, this valuable resource was not in a format that would enable its use for the type of event-history analyses that have come to dominate the field of contemporary historical demography. This is now changing with the introduction of the South African Families database (SAF). SAF is one of very few databases known to document a full population of immigrants and their families over several generations. This article introduces provides a brief background to, and technical overview of, the construction of the SAF. It discusses both the merits and limitations of its use in longitudinal demographic studies and offers a look into the types of studies it can enable.
Highlights
Assembling archival materials and historical registries to reconstruct family lineages of the European settlers to South Africa from the 17th to 20th centuries allows for an investigation into long-term economic and demographic trends across more than just two or three generations
Thanks to the wealth of documents kept by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the British colonial government when they ruled South Africa, much is already known about the establishment of the South African colonial society (Fourie, 2014)
Less is known about what family life looked like for settlers in the 18th and 19th century nor how events over this period might have affected the way in which decisions around household formation were made
Summary
Assembling archival materials and historical registries to reconstruct family lineages of the European settlers to South Africa from the 17th to 20th centuries allows for an investigation into long-term economic and demographic trends across more than just two or three generations. Less is known about what family life looked like for settlers in the 18th and 19th century nor how events over this period might have affected the way in which decisions around household formation were made This is exacerbated to some extent by the fact that South Africa does not have a research hub for historical demography to encourage researchers to collect and transcribe data from the archives. This article provides a brief background to and technical overview of the construction of the South African Families database It discusses both the strengths and limitations of its use in longitudinal demographic studies and offers a look into research currently being undertaken with these data at their core
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