purchased 38,000 acres.” Three years later he recorded that around eight thousand African farmers in the district had bought and started to work on ninety thousand acres of land.
Africa was certainly not on the verge of an Industrial Revolution, but real change was under way. Private property in land had weakened the chiefs and enabled new men to buy land and make their wealth, something that was unthinkable just decades earlier. This also illustrates how quickly the weakening of extractive institutions and absolutist control systems can lead to newfound economic dynamism. One of the success stories was Stephen Sonjica in the Ciskei, a self-made farmer from a poor background. In an address in 1911, Sonjica noted how when he first expressed to his father his desire to buy land, his father had responded:“ Buy land? How can you want to buy land? Don’ t you know that all land is God’ s, and he gave it to the chiefs only?” Sonjica’ s father’ s reaction was understandable. But Sonjica was not deterred. He got a job in King William’ s Town and noted:
I cunningly opened a private bank account into which I diverted a portion of my savings … This went only until I had saved eighty pounds … [ I bought ] a span of oxen with yokes, gear, plough and the rest of agricultural paraphernalia … I now purchased a small farm … I cannot too strongly recommend [ farming ] as a profession to my fellow man … They should however adopt modern methods of profit making.
An extraordinary piece of evidence supporting the economic dynamism and prosperity of African farmers in this period is revealed in a letter sent in 1869 by a Methodist missionary, W. J. Davis. Writing to England, he recorded with pleasure that he had collected forty-six pounds in cash“ for the Lancashire Cotton Relief Fund.” In this period the prosperous African farmers were donating money for relief of the poor English textile workers! This new economic dynamism, not surprisingly, did not please the traditional chiefs, who, in a pattern that is by now