Changing lifestyles, business, and the politics of the nineteenth-century Cape ice and refrigeration trade
Abstract
The involvement of Cape businessmen in the ice or frozen water trade,
and their contribution to its globalisation during the nineteenth century, is
a neglected aspect of South Africa’s water history. During the period 1840
up to the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer (South African) War, Cape Townbased
expatriate American and British citizen-businessmen launched at
least three attempts to establish a profitable local trade in ice-making and
its associated technology. Constrained by high input and operational costs,
limited government support, a small consumer market and high prices, these
individual initiatives had a short lifespan. This notwithstanding, it created both
an awareness and a growing market of the product’s utility and its technology
in colonial households, hospitality businesses, retailers, pharmacies and Cape
farmers. This article not only foregrounds these significant events, but also
assists in its mainstreaming within the international history of both water and
the ice trade.