A Global History of Gold Rushes

338 Pages·2018·8.569 MB·English

by  Benjamin Mountford, Stephen Tuffnell

A Global History of Gold Rushes
the california world history library
Edited by Edmund Burke III, Kenneth Pomeranz, and Patricia
Seed
1. Th e Unending Frontier: Environmental History of the Early
Modern World, by John F. Richards
2. Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, by David
Christian
3. Th e Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the
Indian Ocean, by Engseng Ho
4. Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena,
1860–1920, by Th omas R. Metcalf
5. Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making
of the Modern World, edited by Emma Christopher,
Cassandra Pybus, and Marcus Rediker
6. Domesticating the World: Afr ican Consumerism and the
Genealogies of Globalization, by Jeremy Prestholdt
7. Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History,
edited by Anne Walthall
8. Island World: A History of Hawai‘i and the United States,
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9. Th e Environment and World History, edited by Edmund
Burke III and Kenneth Pomeranz
10. Pineapple Culture: A History of the Tropical and Temperate
Zones, by Gary Y. Okihiro
11. Th e Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History, by
Robert Finlay
12. Th e Quest for the Lost Nation: Writing History in Germany
and Japan in the American Century, by Sebastian Conrad;
translated by Alan Nothnagle
13. Th e Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global
Radicalism, 1860–1914, by Ilham Khuri-Makdisi
14. Th e Other West: Latin America fr om Invasion to
Globalization, by Marcello Carmagnani
15. Mediterraneans: North Afr ica and Europe in an Age of
Migration, c. 1800–1900, by Julia A. Clancy-Smith
16. History and the Testimony of Language, by Christopher
Ehret
17. From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: Th e Global
Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants fr om New Julfa, by
Sebouh David Aslanian
18. Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route, by Steven
E. Sidebotham
19. Th e Haj to Utopia: Th e Ghadar Movement and Its
Transnational Connections, 1905–1930, by Maia Ramnath
20. Sky Blue Stone: Th e Turquoise Trade in World History, by
Arash Khazeni
21. Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves: Colonial America
and the Indo-Atlantic World, by Kevin P. McDonald
22. Black London: Th e Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization
in the Twentieth Century, by Marc Matera
23. Th e New World History: A Field Guide for Teachers and
Researchers, edited by Ross E. Dunn, Laura J. Mitchell, and
Kerry Ward
24. Margins of the Market: Traffi cking and Capitalism across
the Arabian Sea, by Johan Mathew
25. A Global History of Gold Rushes, edited by Benjamin
Mountford and Stephen Tuff nell
The publisher and the University of California Press
Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the
Peter Booth Wiley Endowment Fund in History.
A Global History of Gold Rushes
edited by
Benjamin Mountford and Stephen Tuff nell
university of california press
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University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2018 by Th e Regents of the University of California
Cataloging-in-Publication data for this title is on fi le with the
Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-520-29454-7
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover images—complete captions and credit information
Left image: Simmons (mining agent, law agent, and public accountant) and
family outside his bark hut, Gulgong area, New South Wales, circa 1870–5.
American & Australasian Photographic Company, ON 4 Box 4 No 18368.
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.
Center image: View of San Francisco Harbor, 1851. McIntyre, Sterling C.,
photographer. Half-plate daguerreotype, DAG no. 1330. Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs Division.
Right image: An African-American miner and a Chinese miner working
underground at Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. Th is image was probably taken
underground at the Catherine Reef Claimholders Company mine in the late
1880s. Photograph courtesy of James Lerk, with assistance from Colin Barr.
Originally from the F.W. Palmer collection.
For the late, great Jan-Georg Deutsch (1956–2016)
Destruction fang mankind. Earth, yield me roots.
He digs
Who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate
With thy most operant poison.
He fi nds gold
What is here?
Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold?
No, gods, I am no idle votarist:
Roots, you clear heavens. Th us much of this will make
Black white, foul fair, wrong right,
Base noble, old young, coward valiant.
Ha, you gods! Why this, what, this, you gods? Why, this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,
Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads.
Th is yellow slave
Will knit and break religions, bless th’ accursed,
Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves,
And give them title, knee, and approbation
With senators on the bench. Th is is it
Th at makes the wappered widow wed again.
She whom the spittle house and ulcerous sores
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To th’ April day again. Come, damnèd earth,
Th ou common whore of mankind, that puts odds
Among the rout of nations; I will make thee
Do thy right nature.
william shakespeare
and thomas middleton,
Timon Of Athens, Act 4, Scene 3
From Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, eds., Th e Oxford Shakespeare: Th e Complete Works,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 [1988]), 899.
contents
List of Illustrations xi
Preface xiii
John Darwin and Jay Sexton
Editors’ Acknowledgments xv
Timeline and Map: Selected Nineteenth-Century
Gold Rushes xix
part one
global transformations in
the age of gold 1
1 Seeking a Global History of Gold 3
•
Benjamin Mountford and Stephen Tuff nell
2 California, Coincidence, and Empire 42
•
Elliott West
part two
settler societies and gold
rush democracy 63
3 Gold and the Public in the Nineteenth-Century
•
Gold Rushes 65
David Goodman
4 Th e Pacifi c Gold Rushes and the Struggle
•
for Order 88
Benjamin Mountford
5 Th e Chinese Question: Th e Gold Rushes and
•
Global Politics, 1849–1910 109
Mae M. Ngai
part three
finance, speculation, and
the economics of gold rushes 137
6 Frenzied Finance: Gold Mining in the Globalizing
•
South, circa 1886–1896 139
Ian Phimister
7 Dreams of a “Johannesburg of West Africa”: Th e Gold
•
Coast’s Moment in the Imperial Rush for Gold 163
Cassandra Mark-Th iesen
8 Creating a Global Industry? Geology, Capital, and
•
Company Formation on the Goldfi elds of the Industrial Age 184
Erik Eklund
part four
expertise, the environment,
and mining technologies 207
9 Th e Real Wealth of the World: Hydraulic Mining
•
and the Environment in the Circum-Pacifi c Goldfi elds 209
Andrew C. Isenberg
10 Engineering Gold Rushes: Engineers and the Mechanics
•
of Global Connectivity 229
Stephen Tuff nell
11 Grounding Capitalism: Geology, Labor, and the Nome
•
Gold Rush 252
Bathsheba Demuth
Select Bibliography 273
List of Contributors 303
Index 307