Rush to Gold: The French and the California Gold Rush, 1848-1854 Malcolm J.Rohrbough. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.

Abstract

Rush to Gold: The French and California Gold Rush, 1848-1854 Malcolm J. Rohrbough. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.The Californian gold rush of 1849 brought an international deluge of miners and entrepreneurs hoping to strike it rich in American West. Malcolm J. Rohrbough, no stranger to history of gold rush, explores this frenzied phenomenon through unique lens of a particular group of forty-niners: 30,000 French who immigrated to California to seek their fortune. By examining gold rush from perspective of French miners, entrepreneurs, and writers captivated by dreams of wealth, Rush to Gold contributes a compelling, if somewhat incomplete, study to a growing literature that regards nineteenth century West as a site of transnational convergence and competition.Rohrbough's book juxtaposes heady optimism of Californian gold rush with social and political upheavals in France that followed 1848 Revolution and resulting Second Republic. For many working class French in cities and provinces, revolution failed to bring about meaningful social transformation or lasting economic opportunity; short-lived government experiments, such as establishment of national workshops to provide employment for poor, merely exacerbated public discontent with increase in public expenses and commensurate imposition of new taxes. Into this environment of uncertainty and disappointment came reports that vast reserves of gold had been discovered in California, and this news quickly took on a mythical quality in French media as untold wealth seemed to beckon for anyone who could make journey. One part poor relief and another part individual opportunism, sudden outpouring of capital to fund la ruee vers l'or, or the rush to gold, spirited away thousands of French citizens to American West. While some French Argonauts were able to make a fortune in gold fields, others, discouraged from diminishing returns, logistical failures by French companies, and increasing friction with competing American miners, either returned to France or stayed to become part of San Francisco's burgeoning urban community.Rohrbough roots his dual narrative solely within French perceptions of gold rush, alternating between optimistic accounts of gold fever in France and more mixed experiences of miners themselves in California. To accomplish this, book draws heavily upon French newspapers and periodicals and to a lesser extent previously unpublished or long-neglected personal letters of French men and women who immigrated across Atlantic. …