South Africa’s industrial revolution occurred in a Calvinist-dominated and labour-repressive state linked via a strategic corridor to a Catholic regime in Mozambique that was markedly less morally repressive. Third

parties used these disparities in state power to exploit the legitimate or illegitimate demand for certain products or services for private or public financial gain. The resulting patterns of social control and collective work class behaviour are best understood as liminal phenomena operating from within this Calvinist-Catholic nexus. By exploring the historical links between Johannesburg and Lourenço Marques, the rise and decline of the trade in alcohol and opium or the provision of outlets for gambling and prostitution can be traced in ways that help illuminate the dark underside of Southern Africa’s industrial revolution in new ways.

 

Prof Charles van Onselen holds a BSc and UED from Rhodes University, a BA Hons (Wits), a DPhil from Oxford University and a DLit (Honoris Causa) from Rhodes University. He is the author of articles in leading

international journals, and several books on Southern African history. In 2000, 2007 and 2014 he was accorded an A rating by the National Research Foundation of South Africa for his work in the social sciences.

 

He has been Visiting Fellow and Visiting Professor at various universities in the UK and in Europe. In 2012 he was elected the Inaugural Oppenheimer Fellow at the WEB du Bois Institute at Harvard University.

He is a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study at Stellenbosch University, and Research Professor in the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria.

 

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