Abstract
This chapter explores the activities of natural resource companies in opening the commodity frontiers of copper in the USA, Central and South America and Central Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is commonly held that the main challenges for modern mining companies resided in using and implementing new mining and metallurgical technologies as to make possible the expansion of global copper mining. This chapter argues, however, that generic challenges and risks shared by most of the new commodity frontiers in copper, such as remoteness, shortage of labour and hostile environments, forced mining companies to acquire a set of new capabilities, which played a fundamental if underestimated role in corporate development of the modern mining business.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Abbeloos, Jan Frederik. “Connections, Connections, Connections! Making Sense of the Relationship Between National Economic Development and Natural Resource Dependence on the Atlantic Copper Market During the Long Twentieth Century.” In Andre Gunder Frank and Global Development: Visions, Remembrances, and Explorations, edited by Patrick Manning and Gills Barry, 175–95. London: Routledge, 2010.
Ball, Simon. “The German Octopus: The British Metal Corporation and the Next War, 1914–1939.” Enterprise & Society 5, no. 3 (2004): 451–89.
Barbier, Edward. Scarcity and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed Through Natural Resource Exploitation. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Benedict, C. Harry. Red Metal: The Calumet and Hecla Story. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952.
Benton-Cohen, Katherine. Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Brion, René, and Jean-Louis Moreau. Van mijnbouw tot Mars: de ontstaansgeschiedenis van Umicore. Tielt: Lannoo, 2006.
Buelens, Frans. Congo, 1885–1960: een financieel-economische geschiedenis. Berchem: EPO, 2007.
Butler, L. Copper Empire: Mining and the Colonial State in Northern Rhodesia c.1930–64. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Carosso, Vincent Phillip, and Rose C. Carosso. The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854–1913. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Cassis, Youssef. “Big Business.” In The Oxford Handbook of Business History, edited by Johathan Zeitlin and Jones Geoffrey, 171–94. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Chandler, Alfred Dupont. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997.
Coleman, Francis L. The Northern Rhodesia Copperbelt, 1899–1962 Technological Development Up to the End of the Central African Federation. Manchester: Manchester University Press and A.M. Kelley, 1971.
Compagnie Du Chemin de Fer Du Bas-Congo Au Katanga. Inauguration de La Ligne Port Francqui-Bukama, 1928.
Culver, William W., and Cornel J. Reinhart. “Capitalist Dreams: Chile’s Response to Nineteenth-Century World Copper Competition.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 4 (1989): 722–44.
Davis, John H. The Guggenheims: An American Epic. New York: S.P.I. Books, 1994.
Declercq, Robrecht. World Market Transformation: Inside the German Fur Capital Leipzig 1870–1939. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Dejung, Christof, and Niels P. Petersson. “Introduction: Power, Institutions, and Global Markets-Actors, Mechanisms and Foundations of Worldwide Economic Integration, 1850–1930.” In The Foundations of Worldwide Economic Integration: Power, Institutions, and Global Markets, 1850–1930, edited by Christof Dejung and Niels P. Petersson, 1–21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Dunning, John H., and Sarianna M. Lundan. Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2008.
Fernández-Domingo, Enrique. Le négoce français au Chili: 1880–1929. Histoire. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015. http://books.openedition.org/pur/25227.
Fitzgerald, Robert. Rise of the Global Company: Multinationals and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Frederiksen, Tomas. “Seeing the Copperbelt: Science, Mining and Colonial Power in Northern Rhodesia.” Global Production Networks, Labour and Development, Geoforum 44, no. Supplement C (January 1, 2013): 271–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.08.007.
Gates, William Bryam. Michigan Copper and Boston Dollars: An Economic History of the Michigan Copper Mining Industry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951.
Grauman, Melody Webb. “Kennecott: Alaskan Origins of a Copper Empire, 1900–1938.” The Western Historical Quarterly 9, no. 2 (1978): 197.
Harvey, Charles. The Rio Tinto Company: An Economic History of a Leading International Mining Concern, 1873–1954. Penzance: Alison Hodge, 1981.
Hausman, William J., Peter Hertner, and Mira Wilkins. Global Electrification: Multinational Enterprise and International Finance in the History of Light and Power, 1878–2007. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Hawley, Charles. A Kennecott Story. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2014.
Hyde, Charles K. Copper for America: The United States Copper Industry from Colonial Times to the 1990s. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998.
Jones, Geoffrey. Multinationals and Global Capitalism: From the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Juif, Dácil, and Ewout Frankema. “From Coercion to Compensation: Institutional Responses to Labour Scarcity in the Central African Copperbelt.” Journal of Institutional Economics 14, no. 2 (April 2018): 313–43.
Katzenellenbogen, Simon. Railways and the Copper Mines of Katanga. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
Klubock, Thomas Miller. Class, Community, and Gender in the Chilean Copper Mines: The El Teniente Miners and Working-Class Politics, 1904–1951, 1993.
LeCain, Timothy J. Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009.
Leitner, Jonathan. “Red Metal in the Age of Capital: The Political Ecology of Copper in the Nineteenth-Century World-Economy.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 3, no. 24 (2001): 373–437.
Loughlin, Gerald Francis. Contributions to Economic Geology (Short Papers and Preliminary Reports), 1927: Part I.—Metals and Nonmetals Except Fuels. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1928.
Maggor, Noam. Brahmin Capitalism: Frontiers of Wealth and Populism in America’s First Gilded Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Moore, Jason W. “Sugar and the Expansion of the Early Modern World-Economy: Commodity Frontiers, Ecological Transformation, and Industrialization.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 23, no. 3 (January 1, 2000): 409–33.
Moran, Theodore H. Multinational Corporations and the Politics of Dependence: Copper in Chile. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Morris, Patrick F. Anaconda, Montana: Copper Smelting Boom Town on the Western Frontier. Bethesda, MD: Swann Publishing, 1997.
Mutschler, Charles Vincent. Wired for Success: The Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway, 1892–1985. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2002.
O’Brien, Thomas F. “‘Rich Beyond the Dreams of Avarice’: The Guggenheims in Chile.” The Business History Review 63, no. 1 (1989): 122–59.
———. “Copper Kings of the Americas—The Guggenheim Brothers.” In Mining Tycoons in the Age of Empire, 1870–1945: Entrepreneurship, High Finance, Politics and Territorial Expansion, edited by Raymond E. Dumett, 195–215. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009.
Osterhammel, Jürgen. Die Verwandlung der Welt: eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. München: Beck, 2009.
Perrings, Charles. Black Mineworkers in Central Africa: Industrial Strategies and the Evolution of an African Proletariat in the Copperbelt 1911–41. London: Heinemann, 1979.
Phillips, John. “Alfred Chester Beatty: Mining Engineer, Financier and Entrepreneur 1898–1950.” In Mining Tycoons in the Age of Empire, 1870–1945: Entrepreneurship, High Finance, Politics and Territorial Expansion, edited by Raymond E. Dumett, 215–39. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009.
Richter, F.E. “The Copper-Mining Industry in the United States, 1845–1925.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 41, no. 2 (February 1, 1927): 236–91. https://doi.org/10.2307/1883502.
Roberts, Andrew D. A History of Zambia. London: Heinemann, 1981.
Ross, Corey. Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire: Europe and the Transformation of the Tropical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Särkkä, Timo. “The Lure of Katanga Copper: Tanganyika Concessions Limited and the Anatomy of Mining and Mine Exploration 1899–1906.” South African Historical Journal 68, no. 3 (July 2, 2016): 318–41.
Schmitz, Christopher. “The Rise of Big Business in the World Copper Industry 1870–1930.” Economic History Review 3, no. 29 (1986): 392–410.
———. “The Changing Structure of the World Copper Market, 1870–1939.” Journal of European Economic History 2, no. 26 (1997): 295–330.
———. “The World Copper Industry: Geology, Mining Techniques and Corporate Growth, 1870–1939.” The Journal of European Economic History 1, no. 29 (2000): 77–105.
Schwantes, Carlos A. Vision & Enterprise: Exploring the History of Phelps Dodge Corporation. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000.
Sippel, Patricia. “Technology and Change in Japan’s Modern Copper Mining Industry.” In Institutional and Technological Change in Japan’s Economy: Past and Present, edited by Janet Hunter and Cornelia Storz, 10–27. London: Routledge, 2012.
Topik, Steven C., and Allen Wells. “Warenketten in einer globalen Wirtschaft.” In 1870–1945: Weltmärkte und Weltkriege, edited by Emily S. Rosenberg, 589–815. München: Beck, 2012.
Tracing the Veins. Accessed July 4, 2018. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520211377/tracing-the-veins.
du Trieu de Terdonck, R., E. Weberg, and L. Theys. Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, 1906–1956: évolution des techniques et des activités sociales, 1957.
Truett, Samuel. Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2008.
Unger, Irwin, and Debi Unger. The Guggenheims: A Family History. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins e-books, 2006.
Union minière du Haut Katanga, 1906–1956. Bruxelles: L. Cuypers, 1956.
Van der Straeten, Edgar. “Edgar Sengier.” Biographie Belge d’Outre-Mer VII-A (1997): 429–37.
Waterschoot, Dirk. Union Minière du Haut Katanga: ontstaan en arbeidsbeleid tot 1960. Brussel: GRESEA, 1985.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Declercq, R. (2019). Red Fever: Natural Resource Companies and the Global Copper Mining Frontier 1890–1939 . In: Joseph, S. (eds) Commodity Frontiers and Global Capitalist Expansion. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15322-9_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15322-9_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15321-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15322-9
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)