Mining in World History (Globalities)

Mining in World History deals with the history of mining and smelting from the Renaissance to the present day, drawing out, in an engaging and fast-paced fashion, the interplay of personalities, politics and technology which have together shaped the metallurgical industries over the last 500 years.
Martin Lynch opens with the invention, sometime before the year 1453, of a
revolutionary technique for separating silver from copper, an event that
revived the rich copper-silver mines of central Europe and the ruling
ambitions of the Habsburg emperors who owned them. The author shows how the
flood of silver from Spain's newly-conquered American colonies brought about
the demise of these mines, and goes on to examine the far-reaching changes
brought to mining and smelting by the steam engine and the Industrial
Revolution. The book then looks at the era of the gold rushes and the
comprehensive developments in mineral extraction and technology that took
place in the United States and South Africa at the end of the nineteenth
century, and describes the spread of mass metal-production techniques across
the world amid the violent struggles of the twentieth century and the energy
crises of the 1970s.
Written by an author vastly experienced in the field, Mining in World
History is the first book to provide an account of how and why change and
advance in this global industry have taken place in different eras and
locations around the world. As such it will appeal to the industry
specialist as well as to the general reader who wants to know more about a
field that has been fundamental to the construction of industrial
civilization.