220066 Mining in the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Theories of extractivism. (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

After a brief introduction to the mining history of the Americas before Columbus, the first part of the seminar will analyse the development, structure and effects of precious metal mining in colonial Spanish America using the example of silver mining in Potosí and Zacatecas and gold mining in colonial Brazil (Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais). The diachronic seminar will then analyse the development and effects of the precious metal boom in North America using the example of the gold rush in California and Alaska. In a second part, mining products such as coal, iron, copper and saltpetre, which are important for globalisation and industrialisation, will be examined using regional case studies and placed comparatively in the context of the Americas. The mining boom in the last decades before the 2008 economic crisis with the boom in new mining products such as lithium, the Athabasca Oilsands and new extraction methods such as fracking will also be critically discussed and evaluated. Special emphasis will be placed on indigenous forms of resistance against mining production from colonial Potosí to resistance against current lithium projects in Bolivia and Argentina and the resistance of First Nations in North America against mining extractivism in Canada and against oil pipeline projects in Dakota. In the last part, the different variants and economic and ecological effects of European, North American and Chinese mining imperialism in the Americas will be localised and discussed in a comparatively structured, theoretical concept of mining extractivism on the basis of individual examples.

Bibliography

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