Port cities, shipping lines and hinterlands in the Southern African mining economy c.1890–1950

Source abstract

Since the “Mineral Revolution” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries, the mining industry has decisively shaped Southern African society. This article aims to show how maritime infrastructure and logistics were essential to the inland mining industry, and to link this theme to a revisiting of the concept of hinterlands. The article draws on the recent work of Campling and Colás, to connect the social dynamics of capitalist reproduction, the natural contingencies of the sea and processes of port city building. The article seeks to contribute to the analysis of “hinterlands” by highlighting the centrality of political contestation and labor in the processes of circulation and in the provision of the infrastructure undergirding it. Shipping systems and ports, created against the constraints of rather unfavorable natural conditions, enabled the coming into being of the new spaces of production and urbanization in the African interior, on Atlantic islands and in the European metropolises. At the same time, imperial politics and military power shaped the establishment of shipping lines and channeled the flow of mineral products in certain geographical directions. The article shows how southern African mining urbanization connected, through shipping, to regional ports and metropolitan centers.