Mercury Mining And Empire

On the basis of an examination of the colonial mercury and silver production processes and related labor systems, Mercury, Mining, and Empire explores the effects of mercury pollution in colonial Huancavelica, Peru, and Potosí, in present-day Bolivia. The book presents a multifaceted and interwoven tale of what colonial exploitation of indigenous peoples and resources left in its wake. It is a socio-ecological history that explores the toxic interrelationships between mercury and silver production, urban environments, and the people who lived and worked in them. Nicholas A. Robins tells the story of how native peoples in the region were conscripted into the noxious ranks of foot soldiers of proto-globalism, and how their fate, and that of their communities, was—and still is—chained to it.

Exploring the development of California and the relationship between the built environments of the mercury-mining industry and the emerging ethnic identities and communities in California, Mercury and the Making of California brings mercury to its rightful place alongside gold and silver in their defining roles in the development of the American West. In this pioneering study, Andrew Johnston examines the history of California’s mercury-mining industry—and its defining role in the development of the American West. Mercury was crucial to refining gold and silver; therefore, its production and use were vital to creating and securing power and wealth in the west. The first industrialized mining in California, mercury mining had its own particular organization and structure shaped by powers first formed within the Spanish Empire, transformed by British imperial ambitions, and manipulated by groups made wealthy and powerful by controlling it. In addition, the landscapes of work and camp and the relations among the many groups—Mexicans, Chileans, Spanish, British, Irish, Cornish, American, and Chinese—throughout the industry’s history illustrate the complex history of race and ethnicity in the American West. Combining rich documentary sources with a close examination of the existing physical landscape, Andrew Johnston explores both the detail of everyday work and life in the mines and the larger economic and social structures in which mercury mining was enmeshed, revealing the significance of mercury mining to Western history.

In Santa Bárbara’s Legacy: An Environmental History of Huancavelica, Peru, Nicholas A. Robins presents the first comprehensive environmental history of a mercury producing region in Latin America. Tracing the origins, rise and decline of the regional population and economy from pre-history to the present, Robins explores how people’s multifaceted, intimate and often toxic relationship with their environment has resulted in Huancavelica being among the most mercury-contaminated urban areas on earth. The narrative highlights issues of environmental justice and the toxic burdens that contemporary residents confront, especially many of those who live in adobe homes and are exposed to mercury, as well as lead and arsenic, on a daily basis. The work incorporates archival and printed primary sources as well as scientific research led by the author.

"For anyone who wants to learn about the rise and decline of Potosí as a city . . . Lane’s book is the ideal place to begin."—The New York Review of Books In 1545, a native Andean prospector hit pay dirt on a desolate red mountain in highland Bolivia. There followed the world's greatest silver bonanza, making the Cerro Rico or "Rich Hill" and the Imperial Villa of Potosí instant legends, famous from Istanbul to Beijing. The Cerro Rico alone provided over half of the world's silver for a century, and even in decline, it remained the single richest source on earth. Potosí is the first interpretive history of the fabled mining city’s rise and fall. It tells the story of global economic transformation and the environmental and social impact of rampant colonial exploitation from Potosí’s startling emergence in the sixteenth century to its collapse in the nineteenth. Throughout, Kris Lane’s invigorating narrative offers rare details of this thriving city and its promise of prosperity. A new world of native workers, market women, African slaves, and other ordinary residents who lived alongside the elite merchants, refinery owners, wealthy widows, and crown officials, emerge in lively, riveting stories from the original sources. An engrossing depiction of excess and devastation, Potosí reveals the relentless human tradition in boom times and bust.

Mercury and the Making of California, Andrew Johnston’s multidisciplinary examination of the history and cultural landscapes of California’s mercury-mining industry, raises mercury to its rightful place alongside gold and silver in the development of the American West. Gold and silver could not be refined without mercury; therefore, its production and use were vital to securing power and wealth in the West. The first industrialized mining in California, mercury mining had its own particular organization, structure, and built environments. These were formed within the Spanish Empire, subsequently transformed by British imperial ambitions, and eventually manipulated by American bankers and investors. In California mercury mining also depended on a workforce differentiated by race and ethnicity. The landscapes of work and camp and the relations among the many groups involved in the industry—Mexicans, Chileans, Spanish, English, Irish, Cornish, American, and Chinese—form a crucial chapter in the complex history of race and ethnicity in the American West. This pioneering study explicates the mutual structuring of the built environments of the mercury-mining industry and the emergence of California’s ethnic communities. Combining rich documentary sources with a close examination of the existing physical landscape, Johnston explores both the detail of everyday work and life in the mines and the larger economic and social structures in which mercury mining was enmeshed, revealing the significance of mercury mining for Western history.

Exterranean concerns the extraction of stuff from the Earth, a process in which matter goes from being sub- to exterranean. By opening up a rich archive of nonmodern texts and images from across Europe, this work offers a bracing riposte to several critical trends in ecological thought. By shifting emphasis from emission to extraction, Usher reorients our perspective away from Earthrise-like globes and shows what is gained by opening the planet to depths within. The book thus maps the material and immaterial connections between the Earth from which we extract, the human and nonhuman agents of extraction, and the extracted matter with which we live daily. Eschewing the self-congratulatory claims of posthumanism, Usher instead elaborates a productive tension between the materially-situated homo of nonmodern humanism and the abstract and aggregated anthropos of the Anthropocene. In dialogue with Michel Serres, Bruno Latour, and other interdisciplinary work in the environmental humanities, Usher shows what premodern material can offer to contemporary theory. Examining textual and visual culture alike, Usher explores works by Ronsard, Montaigne, and Rabelais, early scientific works by Paracelsus and others, as well as objects, engravings, buildings, and the Salt Mines of Wieliczka. Both historicist and speculative in approach, Exterranean lays the groundwork for a comparative ecocriticism that reaches across and untranslates theoretical affordances between periods and languages.

The natural wealth of the Amazon and Andes has long attracted fortune seekers, from explorers, farmers, and gold panners to multimillion-dollar mining, oil and gas, and timber operations. Modern demands for commodities have given rise to new development schemes, including hydroelectric dams, open cast mines, and industrial agricultural operations. The history of human habitation in this region is intimately tied to its rich biodiversity, and the Amazon basin is home to scores of indigenous groups, many of whom have populations so small that their cultural and physical survival is endangered. Landscapes of Inequity explores the debate over rights to and use of resources and addresses fundamental questions that inform the debate in the western Amazon basin, from the Andes Mountains to the tropical lowlands. Beginning with an examination of the divergent conceptual interpretations of environmental justice, the volume explores the issue from two interlocking perspectives: of indigenous peoples and of economic development in a global economy. The volume concludes by examining the efficacy of laws and policies concerning the environment in the region, the viability and range of judicial recourse, and future directions in the field of environmental justice.

This volume documents recent efforts to track the transformation and trajectory of silver during the early modern period, from its origins in ores located on either side of the Atlantic to its use as currency in the financial centres of continental Europe. As a point of comparison, copper mining and its monetary use in the early modern Atlantic World will also be considered. Contributors rely mainly on economic and economic history methodologies, complemented by geographical and cultural history approaches. The use of novel software applications as tools to explain economic-historical episodes is also detailed.