Lecture | Brown Bag Seminar
Commerce, Capital and Competition: Dutch Entrepreneurs in Southern Africa (1870s-1910s)
- Date
- Tuesday 22 September 2026
- Time
- Serie
- Economic and Social History Brown Bag Seminars 2026-2027
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference room 2.60
Abstract
This talk based on a forthcoming book with Palgrave Macmillan, investigates the participation of Dutch entrepreneurs and investors in Southern Africa. More specifically, it focuses on what is today Southern Mozambique and North-Eastern South Africa between the mid-1870s and 1910s. While a substantial body of literature addresses the British and (to a lesser extent) German and French investments in the economic competition for South(ern) Africa between the 1870s and 1910s, investors from other European countries – including the Netherlands – also played a significant role in this process. The perceived stamverwantschap (‘kinship’) between the Dutch and the settler-population of Afrikaners facilitated a wave of Dutch investment in two Afrikaner Republics of the Orange Free State and South Africa Republic during this period. Even after the British take-over of the Afrikaner states after the Second South African War of 1899-1902, Dutch investments remained substantial in South Africa, in particular through financial institutions. This book project seeks to address this significant gap in the literature on economic competition in Southern Africa as well as Dutch global financial ties, by studying Dutch entrepreneurship and investments in 1) commodity trading 2) finance 3) mining & land and 4) railways.
Speaker
Dr. Gijs Dreijer works on Dutch entrepreneurship in the Scramble for Africa, at present with a grant from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, and is a lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University and the Alfred D. Chandler jr. International Visiting Fellow at Harvard Business School in the fall of 2024. He received his PhD from the University of Exeter and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2021 with a thesis on sixteenth-century maritime law.
Economic and Social History Brown Bag Seminars
The Brown Bag Seminars provide researchers with an opportunity to receive constructive feedback on work in progress, unpublished papers and new research ideas. To encourage the presentation of new material, papers that have already been presented at conferences are generally not considered suitable. Speakers are invited to present ongoing research, preliminary findings or new directions in their current projects. Postdoctoral researchers and PhD candidates are particularly encouraged to share their work.
There is no requirement to circulate a paper in advance. Presentations typically last between 20 and 35 minutes, allowing ample time for discussion. Everyone is welcome to attend these seminars. Depending on the venue, participants are welcome to bring their own lunch.