The World Copper Industry. Raymond F. Mikesell

The process of normal scholarship leads young historians to focus on their fields of research with an intensity that is unparalleled during their academic careers. It is no wonder that after a certain interval many change directions, if only to escape the tyranny of the overly familiar. Occasionally, however, we encounter a new approach to our old questions, which forcibly brings us back to our original topic, not with the initial ardor but with the nostalgia of suddenly coming across the photograph of a teenager's crush.Such was my response to discovering Christopher Schmitz's, “The Changing Structure of the World Copper Market, 1870-1939,” in a recent number of the Journal of European Economic History. I wondered just how I would have approached my study of the Central African mines if, between 1963 and 1983, I had had access to this account of the copper industry in its global setting. Mind you, my thirty-one years' experience with undergraduates and master's candidates suggests that it might have made no difference to me at all. So intense is the concentration of our apprentice-historians on their primary materials that it is often difficult to get them to consider contexts beyond those inherent in the sources they use.What was new about Schmitz's synthesis? That is difficult to isolate. He has, indeed, written a series of studies of the copper industry. The article under discussion offers generalizations about the industry as a whole between 1870 and 1939 and the role of various producers and consumers in it for the same period. For the sake of Africanist readers, let me summarize them.

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An Econometric Model of the World Copper Industry

The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science ◽

10.2307/3003038 ◽

1972 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 568 ◽

Cited By ~ 75

Author(s):

Franklin M. Fisher ◽

Paul H. Cootner ◽

Martin Neil Baily

Keyword(s):

Econometric Model ◽

Copper Industry ◽

The World

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The World Copper Industry

10.4324/9781315064437 ◽

2013 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Raymond F. Mikesell

Keyword(s):

Copper Industry ◽

The World

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Basic facts on the world copper industry

Minerals and Energy - Raw Materials Report ◽

10.1080/14041048309408471 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 2 (3) ◽

pp. 59-63

Author(s):

John Dryden ◽

Andreas Tegen ◽

Raw Materials Group

Keyword(s):

Copper Industry ◽

The World ◽

Basic Facts

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Coppering the Industrial Revolution: History, Materiality and Culture in the Making of an Ecological Regime

Journal of World-Systems Research ◽

10.5195/jwsr.2020.917 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Daniel Cunha

Keyword(s):

World Economy ◽

Industrial Revolution ◽

Value Added ◽

Copper Industry ◽

Unique Role ◽

Textile Printing ◽

The World ◽

The Caribbean ◽

Ground Method ◽

Ecological Regime

No copper, no Industrial Revolution. Although accountants listed it in the very last position in the table of “value added” per sector in 1831, the British copper industry was essential for the Industrial Revolution, the period of British hegemony over the world-economy. In this article, I use the figure-ground method proposed by Terence K. Hopkins to show that the copper industry played key roles in the ecological regime of the 1700-1840 period, due to its material properties and related historical contingencies and cultural valuations. By focusing in on particular production processes, historical contingencies, and cultural phenomena in which copper played an important and unique role, and then zooming out again to the world-economy as a whole, I show that an Industrial Revolution would not have happened without copper. From sugar production in the Caribbean to textile printing, from the slave trade to the Battle of Saintes, from the development of the steam engine to gin and rum production, from the telegraph to buckles and buttons, copper was conspicuous. This demonstrates the ecological regime of the period, in which the removal of a single commodity from the picture—i.e., copper—disrupts the whole constellation of relations. This study also shows that a “copper boom” immediately before and at the start of the Industrial Revolution (~1700-1800), instrumental in the British struggle against France for the hegemony over the world-economy, has been overlooked in the literature. Additionally, the article includes a reflection on method.

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