ABSTRACT

Mining history provides a worthwhile common theme and also a methodological tool for investigating and understanding a number of divergent but interrelated fields, including industrialization, the exploitation of natural resources, overland and overseas settler migrations, the expansion of capitalism from the northerntier Atlantic seaboard nations to vast areas overseas, and the transformation of simple partnerships into mammoth corporations. This book focuses mainly on entrepreneurship, but it also touches on a number of ancillary areas of individual and collective action. Mining history of the period 1870-1945 encompasses prospecting and exploration, technical innovation, mining engineering, company organization, extensive land acquisitions, and relations with politicians and governments against a background of high finance and stock market operations. The life stories presented here, which focus on the personalities and organizational accomplishments of some of the famous (and not so famous) of the mining entrepreneurs in the “Age of Empire,” nonetheless attempt to cast light on a number of the important related political, economic, and social issues of that age where they had an impact.