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 Town-based 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.