Discovery Of Gold Research Articles

America's First Great Moderation

We identify the longest expansion in U.S. history, a recession-free 16-year period from 1841 to 1856 that we call America's First Great Moderation. Using newer data on industrial production, we show that the record-long expansion was primarily driven by a boom in transportation-goods investment following the discovery of gold in California. Furthermore, the low volatility of industrial production and stock returns during the First Great Moderation, which occurred during a period without a U.S. central bank, is similar to that observed for the Second Great Moderation (1984–2007).

Repairing the Disjointed Narrative of Ballarat's Theatre Royal

Repairing the Disjointed Narrative of Ballarat's Theatre Royal

Formação territorial enquanto instrumento de afirmação das fronteiras entre São Paulo e Minas Gerais nos séculos XVIII e XIX. A freguesia de N. S. da Conceição do Bom Sucesso do Rio Pardo

O presente artigo discute a formação de parte da região nordeste paulista a partir da criação da freguesia de Nossa Senhora da Conceição do Bom Sucesso do Rio Pardo (Caconde), elucidando o processo de ocupação do território, enquanto afirmação da fronteira entre as Capitanias e, posteriormente, Províncias de São Paulo e Minas Gerais. O trabalho parte da definição teórico-metodológica da constituição de rede de cidades, enquanto forma de consolidar a ocupação dos territórios no Brasil Colônia e Império. A gênese dos conflitos ligados à definição da fronteira na região envolve os novos descobertos auríferos, a abertura de caminhos e a criação de novas freguesias e vilas. O trabalho adota uma abordagem macrorregional para compreender as relações territoriais, definindo a formação da paisagem a partir da sobreposição dos diferentes tempos históricos.

A formação da rede urbana como estratégia de definição da fronteira entre as Capitanias de Minas Gerais e de São Paulo na segunda metade do século XVIII

As instituições municipais são instrumentos essenciais na consolidação e defesa dos territórios da Coroa portuguesa no Brasil. No século XVIII, frente às descobertas auríferas e a ocupação do território, a criação de vilas em Minas Gerais configura-se como estratégia de afirmação do poder da Coroa e de organização administrativa. Quando a Capitania de São Paulo é restaurada em 1765, o fortalecimento do poder da Coroa se estrutura por ações militares e pela inauguração da produção de açúcar, associada à criação de uma rede de povoados, freguesias e vilas. Os governadores paulistas buscam aprimorar estruturas que garantiriam os fluxos de pessoas e mercadorias no território, bem como consolidar os limites com os domínios da Espanha e com as capitanias confinantes. Contudo, a ocupação das áreas de fronteira entre as capitanias de São Paulo e de Minas Gerais nunca foi consensual entre as autoridades, tanto metropolitanas quanto coloniais. Região de litígio no século XVIII, o sertão do Rio das Mortes foi marcado por estabelecimentos paulistas, estimulados pelo governo desta capitania, e pelas tentativas de ordenamento das autoridades coloniais mineiras. O trabalho analisa conflitos, práticas e discursos envolvidos no processo de constituição da rede urbana na região de fronteira entre as capitanias de Minas Gerais e São Paulo no final do século XVIII. As ações da Coroa indicam a importância da região no final do século XVIII. Destaca-se o papel dos agentes do poder civil e eclesiástico no estabelecimento dos núcleos urbanos em questão.Os estudos de caso elucidam diferenças regionais em um mesmo contexto e fundamentam-se na documentação primária que representa os instrumentos de controle do território por parte da Coroa: a cartografia e os ofícios das Câmaras e dos Governadores.

Bursting Golden Bubbles: Thomas De Quincey’s California

ABSTRACT This essay examines the rhetoric of romance in Thomas De Quincey’s skeptical periodical essay about the California Gold Rush. It contextualizes this rhetoric within a long history of California and meditates on the intersection between finance and romance in an effort to shed light on the American state’s enduring susceptibility to speculative bubbles. De Quincey’s interest in California’s global media attention, which galvanized international investors and laborers fascinated by the discovery of gold, mirrors his own investment in opium as a global commodity that helped him generate lucrative visions of romance. By drawing on criticism that has illuminated the importance of political economy on De Quincey’s opium writings, I propose that his essay about the California Gold Rush allows us to more fully understand the economic underpinnings of his long periodical career, as well as the financial romance that continues to draw capital to California.

When did South African Markets Integrate into the Global Economy?

This research note identifies the period when South African prices began to move in unison with those of the country's lead trading partner. We find that South African wheat prices started reflecting UK trends soon after the discovery of diamonds and gold in the interior of the country. The mineral revolution, it seems, was responsible for integrating the broader South African economy - here proxied by agricultural prices - into the global economy. We further show that this integration was not confined to Cape Town; the coming of the railways ensured that markets in the larger Western and Eastern Cape and, importantly, the town of Kimberley, were well integrated with those in Cape Town. We therefore establish the start of South Africa's integration into the global market economy in the 1870s.

Introduction: The Archaeology of “Marvellous Melbourne”

Melbourne was a major global city in the nineteenth century. Founded by pastoralists in 1835, the settlement grew explosively following the discovery of gold in 1851, and within a decade the population had reached half a million people. New settlers and new wealth brought a boom in housing construction, manufacturing, civic institutions, and transport and communication infrastructure, as the city became the leading urban center in Australasia. The structure and fabric of the city today expresses much of its colonial development, when “Marvellous Melbourne” was among the most remarkable metropolitan centers in the Asia-Pacific region. In the last ten years, the intersection of more rigorous heritage protection and a boom in large-scale urban development means that there has been a fluorescence of historical archaeological work carried out in Melbourne, especially in the central business district. We draw upon this extensive archive of material to highlight the results of major archaeological discoveries that have occurred in recent years.

Historia de Siuna, Nicaragua, (1905-2009)

En este artículo se presenta la versión narrativa de la historia de tres períodos del pueblo minero de Siuna, empezando con el descubrimiento de oro a finales del siglo diecinueve, siguiendo con la época de las compañías norteamericanas que controlaban la mina (1905-1979), y ha concluido con la Revolución Sandinista, la guerra civil de los ochentas, y la postguerra. La historia se basa en la revisión de la literatura disponible, en la investigación de archivos y en las entrevistas a miembros de la comunidad, que se realizaron con un corte transversal de 2008 - 2009. La investigación concluye que, a pesar de su aislamiento, Siuna, debido a su oro, ha jugado un papel importante, y tal vez no bien reconocido, en la historia de Nicaragua.

Currency Culture: Australian Identity and Nationalism in New South Wales before the Gold Rushes

This article examines the white, native-born population of New South Wales, known as ‘the currency’, between the 1820s and the discovery of gold in the 1850s. While Britishness was the dominant cultural influence before, and after, the gold rushes, the ‘currency lads and lasses’ often found their identity in opposition to British-born colonists, known as ‘the sterling’. This early incarnation of Australian nationalism is significant, it will be argued, as it reveals how quickly indigenous roots were claimed at the expense of Aboriginal Australians. Further, rather than a sense of Australianness within a larger British identity, the currency community held Britishness as part of their larger Australian identity. Drawing on examples of popular culture from the theatre, the press, and the sporting arena, this article explores the nature of this unique community who held Britishness as a secular religion but identified most strongly as white Australians.

Jeannette Rankin, “Democracy and Government,” Carnegie Hall, New York, 2 March 1917

Jeannette Rankin, “Democracy and Government,” Carnegie Hall, New York, 2 March 1917

Wealth Woman: Kate Carmack and the Klondike Race for Gold. By Deb Vanasse

In Wealth Woman, Deb Vanasse draws readers into the world of Kate Carmack, the Tagish woman who—with her husband, George, and her brother Keish (Skookum Jim)—was at the center of the 1896 gold discovery that launched the epic Klondike Gold Rush. Kate has been underrepresented or misrepresented in many popular accounts of the discovery and its aftermath. Vanasse endeavors to correct the record with this biography. In the process, she offers readers a view of the Klondike Gold Rush from an indigenous perspective. The first half of the book provides the cultural and historical context of Kate’s life before the gold discovery. Vanasse follows Kate (then Shaaw Tláa) from the subsistence round of her girlhood through a decade of travels along the Yukon River with her husband, the white prospector and trader George Carmack, culminating in his filing the Klondike discovery claims and extracting the gold that would make them rich. In the second half of the book, Vanasse follows Kate, George, and their daughter, Graphie, from Dawson to Seattle in 1898 and then on to California, where they settled on a ranch owned by George’s sister. Just two years later, George abandoned Kate for another woman. After legal action failed to save her marriage or win her a portion of the Carmack fortune, Kate returned with Graphie to the Yukon, where she lived in Carcross near Tagish family members until her death in 1920. Vanasse is a non-Native author who taught English in Alaska Native villages. Throughout the book, she treats Kate and her culture with empathy and respect.

The tortoise and the hare: how North's institutional ideas resolved a 19th century Australian fable

AbstractOur paper adopts Douglass North's institutional framework to explain why the colonies of Western Australia and South Australia, established in 1829 and 1836, respectively, had considerable disparities in economic growth up the end of 1900. Both colonies were established under different modes of organisation (colonisation). The method adopted for WA harked back to Mercantilism, famously condemned by Adam Smith because it led to under-investment in, and over-exploitation of, colonial assets. SA on the other hand was the product of a radical new theory in colonisation proposed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield whereby land, instead of being given away as in WA, was sold at a fixed price with the proceeds being used to subsidise gender-balanced immigration. Outcomes suggest that SA's method of ‘systematic colonisation’ introduced a better institutional matrix, compared to the initial institutions seeded in WA, allowing SA's economy to develop sooner and at a higher rate of growth. However, once the detrimental effects of its method of foundation were eliminated, occurring on the eve of one of the largest gold discoveries of modern times, WA's institutions finally provided the necessary incentives for economic development such that by the end of 1900, it had equalled SA's level of economic output if not exceeded it.

Keeping Up Appearances: Genteel Women, Dress and Refurbishing in Gold-Rush Victoria, Australia, 1851‒1870

The discovery of gold in 1851 attracted a flood of migrants to the Colony of Victoria. Aspirational migrants, who struck it rich on the goldfields or in providing services to the diggers, turned to material consumption to express their newfound wealth, with the consequence that clothing could complicate its wearer’s social status. Integrating primary sources and surviving material culture, this article explores genteel articulations of the spontaneous and extravagant purchases of luxury goods by the lower orders, and their response: an engagement with notions of tasteful dress and genteel economy. It examines how genteel women carefully selected their dress, essential when gowns were worn over many years and wearing secondhand clothing was common, and how clothing was maintained through material practices, including mending and refurbishing, to demonstrate the place of dress and related needlework activities in constructions of genteel identity.

Physicians of the Bear-Flag Republic.

In the mid-nineteenth century, three events coincided to make California the 31st state of the USA: The Mexican-American war of 1846-1848, The Bear Flag Revolt of 1846 and the discovery of gold in 1848. Within a few years a population explosion had occurred and with it came the need for organization of the practice of medicine. This paper outlines the biographies of some physicians who were instrumental in the early years of the Golden State.

Violence and the competition for sovereignty in Cherokee Country, 1829–1835

ABSTRACTBeginning in 1829 with the discovery of gold and ending in 1835 with the ratification of the Treaty of New Echota, three political entities waged a struggle for political sovereignty over the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokees, of course, had their national self-determination at stake. They referenced treaties with the U.S. government that reaffirmed their status as an independent nation, but also looked to the federal government and its commitments in those same treaties to help the Cherokees uphold their territorial integrity. In this formulation, which the Supreme Court verified, the federal government reigned supreme. The ambiguous nature of American federalism also made it possible for the state of Georgia to claim sovereignty. Beginning in 1830, the state used violence against Cherokees under the guise of bringing social order to a lawless region. The vehicle for creating state authority, the Georgia Guard, used violence as a way of making life untenable for those the state saw as less than desirable. Criminals, especially members of the Pony Club, and Cherokees, were deliberately targeted by the Guard. Federal authorities eventually relented and relied on state figures to help pave the way for the implementation of Removal. By doing so, they effectively ceded political sovereignty to the state.

The centrality of labor time in South African gold mining since 1886

Labor time, as a dimension of South African mining labor history, has been ignored, both conceptually and historically. This article remedies this yawning gap by presenting primary and secondary evidence which demonstrates the centrality of labor time in South African gold mines since the discovery of gold in 1886. To this end, labor time is traced in two ways. Part I tracks industrial working time by tracing the length of the working day and week. Part II tracks the ever-increasing length of the African migrant labor contract. While industrial working hours remain remarkably stable for almost a century, the migrant labor contract systematically increases over a similar period. These two measures of labor time eventually coincide when the migrant labor system dissolves and black African workers take annual leave together with their compatriots across the racial divide. The explanation for the mining industry’s long struggle to both maintain relatively long working hours and increasingly maximize the length of the migrant labor contract is construed as completing the received wisdom of Harold Wolpe's much celebrated and criticized `cheap- labor' thesis. (Wolpe, “Capitalism and Cheap Labor Power.”)

The Unpredictable America of William Gwin: Expansion, Secession, and the Unstable Borders of Nineteenth-Century North America

The Unpredictable America of William GwinExpansion, Secession, and the Unstable Borders of Nineteenth-Century North America Rachel St. John (bio) In 1865, while the United States struggled to reconstruct itself, war raged in Mexico between invading French forces supporting Emperor Maximilian and partisans of Benito Juárez’s republican government. The uncertain futures of the United States and Mexico underscored the instability of the boundaries that the two nations had drawn across North America in the preceding decades. While this impermanence was a source of anxiety for officials in Washington, D.C., Mexico City, and Paso del Norte (the city from which the Juárez government operated), for others it was an opportunity. Among those opportunists was a former California senator named William McKendree Gwin. Gwin, a Tennessee native who had amassed wealth in Mississippi and political success in California and Washington, D.C., spent the summer of 1865 in Mexico City, where he worked to secure military backing for a mining colony in northern Mexico. His activities drew the attention of Matías Romero, the Juárez government’s minister to the United States. Writing to U.S. secretary of state William Seward in July 1865, Romero claimed that Gwin was working with French emperor Napoleon III to “take to the frontier of Mexico all the discontented citizens of the United States living in the south, with the design of organizing them there under the protection and with the assistance of France.”1 This plan echoed earlier efforts to colonize Americans in Texas and Sonora, neither of which, from the Mexican perspective, had ended well. Moreover, in the context of the French occupation of Mexico and the U.S. Civil War, it raised warning flags as a threat to the Juárez government and a possible refuge for unrepentant Confederates. Although this scheme sounds harebrained in hindsight, at this moment in which Mexico and the United States were both fragile, it touched on insecurities about the weakness of national identities, boundaries, and loyalties. Sharing Romero’s concern, Seward concluded that Gwin was “disloyal,” his actions “injurious” to the reconstituted Union.2 [End Page 56] When Gwin returned to the United States later that year, federal officials arrested him. To Gwin, however, this scheme was neither treasonous nor far-fetched.3 On the contrary, it was in line with the work he had done throughout his life. As a young man, Gwin had moved from Tennessee to Mississippi—where he had helped distribute land, from which the U.S. government had forcibly removed Choctaws and Chickasaws, to white speculators and settlers (including himself). He had also speculated in land in Texas and advocated for its annexation by the United States. With the discovery of gold in 1848, he relocated to California, where he became one of the state’s first senators. Over his almost decade-long career in the Senate, he promoted settlement and economic development in California, worked to annex additional territory to the United States, and defended the rights of Americans to settle and seize power throughout the western hemisphere.4 While Seward and Romero viewed Gwin’s plan for a colony of Americans within a French-backed Mexican imperial government as a challenge to the sovereignty of the nations they served, for Gwin this scheme was simply a variation on a theme in which he could help Americans disperse across the continent and put its resources to economic use, and become rich and powerful in the process. In the nineteenth-century North America in which Gwin lived and achieved political and economic success, territorial boundaries were impermanent; national loyalties were conditional; and many alternative configurations of land, power, and people seemed possible. From his first speculative ventures in Mississippi through his Mexican scheme and on to the end of his life, Gwin was an archetype of the entrepreneurial state- and nation-builder who viewed the map of North America as malleable and sought to reshape it. Gwin belongs to a historical cast of characters that includes Aaron Burr, who, after serving as U.S. vice president, was tried for treason for scheming to separate the western territories from the Union; Stephen F. Austin, the Texas empresario...

The Founders: The origins of the ANC and the struggle for democracy in South Africa by Andre Odendaal (review)

Reviewed by: The Founders: The origins of the ANC and the struggle for democracy in South Africa by Andre Odendaal Melissa Armstrong The Founders: The origins of the ANC and the struggle for democracy in South Africa By Andre Odendaal. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013. The Founders argues that the character and form of South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), established in 1912, was fortified and refined by more than fifty years of African participation in constitutional politics and protest. The notion that the ANC had deep intellectual roots is not likely to be new to scholars of South Africa, however the detailed cataloguing of the lives, writings, and ideas of groups and individuals make Odendaal’s work an important contribution. The author makes extensive use of both English and Xhosa newspapers printed prior to 1912. With meticulous precision and detail, he uses these sources to trace the political ideas and debates considered by Western-educated African men. Odendaal recognizes and articulates the subtle changes and divisions that occur within the political resistance formed by mission-educated Africans between 1860 and 1912. In order to emphasize these changes, The Founders is divided into four roughly chronological sections. In the first section, the author highlights the beginnings of organized African constitutional debate and political resistance between 1860 and the late 1880s. The rise of African constitutional challenge to the colonial regime started in the Eastern Cape and was linked to the early establishment of missionary schools in the region as well as the military devastation suffered by the Xhosa and the Zulu in 1856–57 and 1878 respectively. Africans educated by missionary institutions—like Tiyo Soga—voiced their political views conservatively, optimistic that processes of education and assimilation would bring equal rights to Black and White men in South Africa. However, Western-educated Africans were not made the legal equals of their White counterparts and by the late 1870s and early 1880s, African intellectuals grew more radical in their political approach. The main body of the work examines the process by which African political resistance moved from the confines of the Eastern Cape to grow into a nationally unified movement that represented African rights and freedoms. The author highlights two historical developments that initially enabled African constitutional politics to gain a wider regional base. First, the discovery of diamonds and gold in the South African interior and the subsequent colonial desire to control African labor created new spaces in which resistance could form. Second, the rise of the religious separatist movement, Ethiopianism, became an outlet for nascent political expression; while not a lasting movement, the separatist church used Christian values to challenge colonial power and oppression. At the turn of the century, with budding political dissention growing in the South African interior, the South African war and its aftermath became crucial to the growth of unified African political expression. Most politically involved African men sided with the British war effort, believing the British to be the champions of equal rights for Africans. However, after the British victory in 1902, the political cause for equality and African rights was not extended in the former Boer Republics. The disenchantment with the British corresponded to the growth in political organizations that aimed at encouraging African awareness and action in securing equal rights. Editors of African newspapers in the first decade of the twentieth century were quick to provide political commentary on the implications of a South African federation. Furthermore, South African political organizations debated how best to respond to the growing Boer-Briton colonial alliance forming against African political interests. When the Union in 1910 provided neither direct political representation for Africans nor any hope for Black assimilation, the educated elite that had been driving African constitutional politics for the past fifty years were able to finally bridge regional boundaries, coordinate with traditional chiefs, and mobilize a united African front. In 1912, African representatives from across South Africa met and together formed the South African National Congress. Odendaal’s research on the political precursors to the ANC has benefited from thirty-five years of consideration. As stated in his introduction, The Founders is a compilation of Odendaal’s master’s thesis “The...

‘The Greatest State Scandal’: Personality, Power and the South African Republic Police, 1886–1896

The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 led to the rapid industrialisation of the South African Republic's agrarian based economy. Focusing on the attempts made at reforming the South African Republic Police during the period 1886 to 1896, this article examines the contested character of the state. Marred by internal power struggles and bureaucratic constraints, the police force was synonymous with ‘rottenness’. Attempts to reform the police force were a battle in a broader political war over power between the conservative and progressive factions within the South African Republic government. Greater focus needs to be given to the contested interplay of state power and bureaucratic struggles within the institutions of this modernising state. This invites a more nuanced understanding of the Republic's character.

Entering Apartheid's History in Johannesburg

photos : laura hernandez 112 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2016 Outpost Entering Apartheid’s History in Johannesburg by Laura Hernandez LOCATED IN BUSTLING Johannesburg, South Africa, the Apartheid Museum traces segregation along with the diversity of its people. As they enter, visitors experience a split entrance—those issued a white racial classification must enter one way, while those issued a nonwhite racial classification come in a different entrance. The cards are distributed randomly but serve as an example of apartheid separation. The architecture and outside structures tie into the museum’s portrayal of history and culture. Visitors walk along an outdoor path lined with mirrored structures of images showing the diverse descendants who came to South Africa in 1886 after the discovery of gold in Johannesburg . The museum winds through more than thirty rooms, each telling a piece of the apartheid story and giving examples through video, photography, firsthand accounts, and artifacts. Delving into the history surrounding South Africa’s tumultuous past isn’t easy, but the museum offers a look at the major historical events leading up to apartheid and the changes that brought reconciliation. One of my favorite rooms showcased documentary photography by Ernest Cole, who recorded what it was like to be black in a repressive government. The photographs were pulled from his book House of Bondage, banned in South Africa during apartheid but now being publicly displayed for the first time. Apartheid affected the entire framework of South Africa, including the literary landscape . Breyten Breytenbach, an Afrikaans poet, spent several years in prison because of his political beliefs. Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer published July’s People in 1981, which depicted white-minority rule and its collapse. Miriam Tlali was the first black woman to publish a novel in South Africa with Muriel at Metropolitan. J. M. Coetzee also achieved fame during apartheid and received the Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. Conceived with the specific purpose of showing the rise and fall of apartheid, the museum opened in 2001. Pillars outside the main entrance depict the seven fundamental values of South Africa’s first fully democratic parliament after apartheid ended in 1994: democracy, equality, reconciliation , diversity, responsibility, respect, and freedom. Laura Hernandez lives and writes in Brooklyn. ...