Freund was born in
Chicago,
Illinois on 6 July 1944. His parents were
Austrian Jewish refugees who had arrived in the United States in 1939. He studied at the
University of Chicago and later at
Yale University, where he earned a PhD in 1971 with a dissertation on
Dutch rule at the Cape during the
Batavian Republic period (1803–06). He later cited
Eric Hobsbawm as a key intellectual influence. In 1986, Freund was appointed Professor of Economic History at the
University of Natal in
Durban,
South Africa (later incorporated into the
University of KwaZulu-Natal), where he developed an interest in
development studies. That same year, he co-founded the journal
Transformation, drawing inspiration from the
New Left Review. Freund was best known as an
economic historian with particular interests in
capital accumulation and
labour relations. He described his theoretical stance as "
materialist" rather than explicitly
Marxist. His first major publication was
Capital and Labour in the Nigerian Tin Mines (1981), influenced by the work of
Charles van Onselen. He later published the influential synthesis
The African Worker (1988) and contributed significantly to the
urban history of Africa, especially the
history of Durban. During the
transition from apartheid in South Africa, Freund served as an expert in
political economy for committees convened by the
African National Congress to develop post-apartheid
economic policy. Although sympathetic to
African nationalism, he maintained critical distance from the ANC and expressed skepticism regarding aspects of its development strategy. In 2006, a
festschrift was published in his honour, and a special issue of
African Studies was later devoted to assessing his scholarly legacy. His memoir, ''Bill Freund: An Historian's Passage to Africa'', was published posthumously in 2021. He died in Durban on 17 August 2020. ==Selected publications==