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The essays in this volume, drawn from articles in scholarly journals and book chapters by the author over the years, cover a wide variety of topics in African economic and social history as well as on British imperial policy and colonial administration. Concentrating on Anglophone West Africa, with special emphasis on the Gold Coast and Asante, the author investigates the complex interactions between, African production systems, overseas trade and entrepreneurship, against the backdrops of an expanding capitalism and the impact of colonial rule on indigenous economic, political and social structures. Rather than view colonialism simplistically as the obstacle in indigenous economic developme...
El Dorado in West Africa explores the first modern gold rush of Ghana in all its dimensions - land, labor, capital, traditional African mining, technology, transport, management, the clash of cultures, and colonial rule. The rich tapestry of events is textured with unexpected ironies and paradoxes. Professor Dumett tells the story of the expatriate-led gold boom of 1875-1900 against the background of colonial capitalism. Through the use of field interviews, he also brings to light the expansion of a parallel "African gold-mining frontier, " which outpaced the expatriate mining sector.
The publication by Longman of P J Cain and A.G. Hopkins two-volume study of "British Imperialism" (1688-1914; 1914-1994) caused a sensation amongst historians of European imperialism and economic international history. The theory of `gentlemanly capitalism' - the complex of economic, social and political power centring on the City of London - which they developed to explain Britain's imperial expansion has since been expanded , both in its original theory and its implications. Here now is a purpose-built volume prepared in collaboration with the original authors which reviews the latest state of scholarship in the field and develops it further.
The years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, aptly described by Mark Twain as the 'Gilded Age' witnessed an unprecedented level of technological change, material excess, untrammeled pursuit of profit and imperial expansion. Within this dynamic and often ruthless environment many colorful characters strode across the world stage, among them the great mining tycoons, who constituted one of the major spearheads of global capitalistic expansion and colonial exploitation. This volume, which carries the epic story to the mid-twentieth century, provides a truly international perspective on the role of mining entrepreneurs, investors and engineers in shaping the economic and political map of the globe, in testing management techniques and in setting a vogue for extravagant displays of wealth among the world's rich.
This volume suggests a new way of doing global history. Instead of offering a sweeping and generalizing overview of the past, we propose a ‘micro-spatial’ approach, combining micro-history with the concept of space. A focus on primary sources and awareness of the historical discontinuities and unevennesses characterizes the global history that emerges here. We use labour as our lens in this volume. The resulting micro-spatial history of labour addresses the management and recruitment of labour, its voluntary and coerced spatial mobility, its political perception and representation and the workers’ own agency and social networks. The individual chapters are written by contributors whose expertise covers the late medieval Eastern Mediterranean to present-day Sierra Leone, through early modern China and Italy, eighteenth-century Cuba and the Malvinas/Falklands, the journeys of a missionary between India and Brazil and those of Christian captives across the Ottoman empire and Spain. The result is a highly readable volume that addresses key theoretical and methodological questions in historiography. Chapter 7 is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.
The hidden history of African uranium and what it means—for a state, an object, an industry, a workplace—to be “nuclear.” Uranium from Africa has long been a major source of fuel for nuclear power and atomic weapons, including the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In 2003, after the infamous “yellow cake from Niger,” Africa suddenly became notorious as a source of uranium, a component of nuclear weapons. But did that admit Niger, or any of Africa's other uranium-producing countries, to the select society of nuclear states? Does uranium itself count as a nuclear thing? In this book, Gabrielle Hecht lucidly probes the question of what it means for something—a state, an object, an indust...
This volume of pioneering essays brings together an impressive array of well-established and emerging historians from Europe and the United States whose common endeavor is to situate America’s Civil War within the wider framework of global history. These essays view the American conflict through a fascinating array of topical prisms that will take readers beyond the familiar themes of U. S. Civil War history. They will also take readers beyond the national boundaries that typically confine our understanding of this momentous conflict. The history of America’s Civil War has typically been interpreted within a familiar national narrative focusing on the internal discord between North and South over the future of slavery in the United States.
In the late nineteenth century, Mexican citizens quickly adopted new technologies imported from abroad to sew cloth, manufacture glass bottles, refine minerals, and provide many goods and services. Rapid technological change supported economic growth and also brought cultural change and social dislocation. Drawing on three detailed case studies—the sewing machine, a glass bottle–blowing factory, and the cyanide process for gold and silver refining—Edward Beatty explores a central paradox of economic growth in nineteenth-century Mexico: while Mexicans made significant efforts to integrate new machines and products, difficulties in assimilating the skills required to use emerging technologies resulted in a persistent dependence on international expertise.