Mining Symposium all together Final

THOUGHTS ON MINING HISTORY

ON MINING HISTORY Warren Alexander Dym Secretary, History of Earth Sciences Society [email protected] Readers of Earth Sciences History will surely agree that mining has an integral place in the history of the geosciences, even though mining history is today a distinct academic specialization. Following some decades of relative neglect among professional historians, it is now regaining some degree of prominence. Part of the reason for the earlier fallow years was the turn from a more strictly economic and industrial history of technology—and with it modernization theory—to the more interdisciplinary approaches (and cultural and post-colonial theories) that have informed history of technology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) since the 1970s or thereabouts. To those of us working on mining history today, this fact may seem paradoxical: mining is an ideal subject for anybody interested in cutting-edge social and cultural analysis, environmental history, and STS. Any number of excellent works attest to this claim. Nevertheless, mining history has not recovered the level of exposure that it formerly enjoyed, and is decidedly ‘Balkanized’ at present, dispersed according to national and even intra-national or regional lines. To pioneering scholars like Lewis Mumford, Geoffrey Blainey, Modesto Bargalló, Rodman Paul, Ronald F. Tylecote or Helmut Wilsdorf, mining and metallurgy was ‘big history’. Large societies for mining history certainly abound, filled with enthusiasts, preservationists, local historians, and scientists alike. But suggest a topic in mining history to most graduate students of history in search of a ‘marketable’ dissertation project today, and you may have to spend some time convincing. The essays that follow may help to make that conversation a little easier. Mining remains an important and fascinating topic among economic and labor historians, Earth science historians, historians of artisanal knowledge and the crafts, and environmental historians, not to mention anthropologists, sociologists, and even scholars of literature and folklore. We should, I suggest, all take a closer look at mining history. Those of us who contribute to this field need to forge stronger ties with one another and recall the high exposure that our topic used to have, even as we revise the master narrative that once gave it such prominence; and all readers of Earth Sciences History will find much to reinforce and develop in their understanding of how mining pertains to Earth science history. We posed a few simple questions to potential authors: ‘What, as you see it, are the important issues or problems in the study of mining history today?’ ‘What are the relevant practical, theoretical or historiographical problems in relation to work on the history of mining?’ Space limitations required that responses should be short; and we approached only a handful of potential contributors. Inevitably, then, the result does not represent a comprehensive or definitive response and it makes no claim to general coverage, either temporally or geographically. Some ambitious authors have attempted the Herculean task of a ‘total history’. For what age of human history did not have a rich mining history? What culture or people did not mine? What branch of industry and economy does not depend on natural resources? Rather than contemplating grandiose projects, we requested simple and thought-provoking responses to our appeal and allowed contributors a free hand in putting down their thoughts, without determining their direction or suggesting an overarching agenda for the essays. Each piece tends toward a distinct geographical or temporal preference—Australia, pre-modern Saxony, the Harz Mountains, and colonial Brazil, respectively—but I would invite readers to appreciate how each addresses broader historiographical issues and the larger significance of mining in world history. Why is mining history important? Among the answers that surface in these essays we find: because of the environmental movement and necessity to understand the historical and continuing impact of mining on the Earth’s surface; because we should preserve the physical and recorded history of the industry as operations expand in tandem with the material and energy 315


needs of the planet; because the mining industry should support the field and mining engineering and geology students should study it, for such studies can work with the mining industry to offer positive exposure and foster good public relations (rather than threaten the industry with a litany of disasters or disputes); because of the enormous tourist potential of promoting the mining history of otherwise out-of-the-way or declining places, bringing money and growth to sometimes troubled local economies; because future historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and others need to realize that mining history can be global history, raising general issues from provincial subjects, and is destined to flourish so long as energy and the environment are critical issues; because it demonstrates how science and technology are fundamentally integrated, or how scientia is ‘born from the underground’; and finally, because mining history can help educate the general public about the profound dependence that the world has on mining and minerals, even as the public demands—and it must always demand—that the Earth be exploited in a sustainable and responsible manner that ensures that future generations will still enjoy the benefits of the constructed world. But the essays that follow make the case better than I do, and so it is to them that I now defer.

THE IMPORTANCE AND FUTURE OF MINING HISTORY: AN AUSTRALIAN PERSPECTIVE KEN McQUEEN Institute for Applied Ecology University of Canberra ACT 2601, Australia [email protected] Mining is a pillar of civilisation, providing many of the materials needed for technologies. It has a long history dating back to the first use of surface stone to make simple hand tools. This history even predates the appearance of our own species and is dated to at least 2.6 million years BP when Homo habilis developed the earliest Oldowan tools in Africa (McCarthy and Rubidge 2005). Our Stone Age ancestors improved and continued this technology for most of the history of Homo sapiens. They also adopted the use of mineral pigments for decoration and art. Following the use of stone, the discovery and utilization of precious metals, particularly gold, as well as copper, lead, tin and iron played a major role in transforming the human condition (Raymond 1984). The production, consumption and coveting of gold shaped and influenced many cultures. In Australia, the gold rushes and gold mining history are a central part of the Australian psyche and national mythology. This is the mining history most familiar to most Australians. The extraction of metals and other useful elements from the Earth’s crust by mining and metallurgical processing is now so well established and widespread that the products of mining are more or less taken for granted and most people have only a vague or incomplete knowledge of the origin of many of these components that make up modern ‘everyday’ items and technological devices. Due to this knowledge disconnect between source and end product contemporary mining activity is probably not considered of heritage importance or future historical interest by the general public or even those in the mining industry. Despite the best efforts of the industry to indicate otherwise, mining is still widely perceived as a ‘dirty and dangerous’ industry, and the cause of significant human misery and environmental degradation. Much of the history of mining in fact underpins this perception. As the human population and related appetite for non-renewable mineral resources continue to increase exponentially there is also a moral dilemma associated with mining, related to concern for the supply of mineral 316


products to future generations and the potential environmental impact of their increased extraction. Australians have typically had an ambivalent attitude to mining. Mining has provided the nation with much wealth, frequently when other economic activity has been in a precarious state. The discovery of payable gold in 1851 helped transform an initial convict dumping ground and pastoral backwater into a liberated new nation. Gold mining provided the wealth and population to industrialise and modernise the entire country. Since the gold rushes, the Australian public has been fascinated by the numerous mineral booms and busts—benefiting directly and indirectly from the booms and losing national income from the busts (Raggatt 1968; Blainey 1969, 1970). Despite the benefits there has often been concern about the negative effects of mining on aspects of the economy, society and social structures, as well as the environment. Concern for environmental impacts has increased significantly since the 1970s with the rise of the environmental movement. Most recently, unease about societal impacts has returned, for example with the current debate about the detrimental effects on local communities of ‘fly in–fly out’ mine employment practices. While the current mining boom has helped insulate Australians from the recent global financial crisis, contributing around A$121 billion per annum to the economy (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012), there is concern about the uneven distributions of the benefits and the problems of a ‘two-speed’ economy. During the peak of the environmental movement in the 1980s–1990s many in the community viewed mining at worst as a form of ‘rape and pillage’ of the land to at best as a necessary evil or dark activity tolerable if it was in remote, unseen regions. During this period, interest in mining history or any celebration of mining was not widely popular. Extreme attitudes appear to be waning, although there is still an active anti-mining lobby, presently focused on coal and unconventional fossil fuel mining/extraction. There is a growing interest in pre-21st century mining history by amateur historians and mining-related professionals driven by an increasing fascination with the narrative or ‘story’ in mining history, as well as a revival in history in general. There may even be a ‘re-awakening’ in mining history amongst academic historians (Claughton and Mills 2011). Mining history is closely intertwined with industrial, technological, economic, social and labour histories. In an academic context it has traditionally been considered a sub-discipline of industrial history or archaeology, although recent trends are towards a broader spectrum of topics and fields (Claughton and Mills 2011). As mining is critical to so many aspects of technological, economic and social activity and development and as its past, present and future environmental impacts become of greater concern, mining history would appear fundamental to all these areas of historical enquiry. Mining history in its broadest sense can inform much of history in general. Mining history is important to the mining industry. Historical records such as plans, assays and reports are essential for establishing the full pre-mining nature of ore deposits and for the re-development of historic mines or even the extension of current mining. Preserved infrastructure such as shafts and other underground openings allow access for sampling or the re-development of a mine. As well as providing practical benefits, maintaining good records and archives at mine sites contributes to the bigger picture of mining history. Historic records can be used to document and understand the best and worst practices in mining, particularly related to engineering and environmental aspects. Miners can learn much to their benefit from the history of mining. A key issue for mining history is the ongoing preservation of its multiple information and evidential sources. Mining history is built on a range of records including: 1. 2.

archaeological evidence of mining activities and practice preserved at mining sites; portable artefacts such as mining tools, equipment and machinery stored in museums (this could also include rock and mineral collections from particular mines as well as drill core and cuttings);

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3. 4. 5.

written records such as those compiled and preserved by the miners and mining organisations, as well as contemporary reports in the press; oral records from miners and people associated with or affected by mining activity; pictorial records, including drawings, paintings, photographs and films.

Conserving the physical evidence of past and present mining activities is becoming a significant challenge. Increased awareness and justifiable concern for the natural environment by community and government is leading to stricter legislative requirements to rehabilitate mine sites. This has driven a trend towards total restoration and obliteration of the physical evidence of mining. There are also pressures related to alternative land uses, such as agricultural, forestry, industrial and urban development. These pressures are much greater as mines become larger, for example open-cast coal mines and open-pit metalliferous mines, where the expansive areas of disturbance need to be restored for alternative uses after mining. Most infrastructure from recent mining is commonly removed, particularly the portable components or recyclable materials. Mullock and tailings deposits are required to be stabilised, covered and vegetated to resemble the natural landscape. Shafts and pits are generally infilled or capped. At older historic sites, mine openings and mullock heaps were commonly left ‘as is’ on abandonment, with stone, concrete and heavy unsalvageable equipment also left behind, particularly where the mines were in remote areas. However, more recently many of these sites have also undergone rehabilitation by government agencies to ameliorate any environmental or public safety hazards. Preserving mining heritage features at mine sites comes with public liability risk and such features must be rendered as safe as possible with appropriate stabilization, fencing and signage. This can be expensive and it may be much cheaper and more convenient to completely infill or remove all physical evidence of mining. New mining commonly, and in many cases inevitably, destroys the evidence of earlier mining activities, particularly where old underground mines are re-developed into open-pit operations. The ‘Super Pit’ at Kalgoorlie, which has taken out the surface infrastructure and most of the historic underground gold workings in the top 360 metres is a prime example. In some cases the juxtaposition of different mining periods presents a fascinating, if confusing, challenge to mining archaeologists. A small example would be the recently restored Gubur Dhaura site in the northern suburbs of Canberra. This site was worked for ochre and clay by aboriginal people, probably from 5,000 years ago and then highly disturbed by nineteenthcentury gold prospecting and twentieth-century quarrying for kaolin and road metal. Many artefacts from historic mining were commonly left on site to decay or to be rescued by local enthusiasts for preservation in collections and museums. There is typically little interest in preserving more modern mining artefacts and equipment, although some mining companies do make donations of their obsolete items to museums. In many cases mine operators may not be fully aware of the historic importance of some of their items of equipment. For example, parts of the first carbon-in-pulp gold extraction plant built in Australia (and one of the first in the world) were still being used at the revived Mount Boppy gold mine in western NSW until 2006 when the current operator ceased mining (McQueen 2005). The entire plant was to be auctioned for scrap, apparently without knowledge of its significance, before the company was advised of its historical importance. Modern large scale and mechanised mining methods also mean that fewer mineral and ore specimens are collected and preserved, unlike some of the spectacular collections previously built up by miners working at the face, as well as by avid collectors who had ready access to active mine sites (the Chapman Collection of mineral specimens from Broken Hill is a classic example). Written and pictorial records can be more easily conserved as long as the will exists to do so. Mining companies recognise the importance of historic records and mine plans to future development or re-development. Despite this, many appear to lack interest in maintaining archival material once their operations have ceased and some may even deliberately destroy records to avoid potential future liability. The cost of safe storage for archival material has been 318


a determining factor in the past, but with digital storage this should not be so significant, although there is still a cost and rapid changes in information technology can result in compatibility problems. The recent trend to corporate ‘unbundling’ of mining companies (i.e. large companies breaking up into smaller companies) also makes it difficult to maintain archival records and corporate knowledge. The future of mining history will depend largely on the level of interest by historians, the public and the mining industry. The Australian Mining History Association, founded in 1995, is successfully promoting and providing a focus for this interest amongst academic historians and sections of the general community, particularly retiring professionals linked to the mining industry. However, the field lacks ‘new blood’ (cf. Claughton and Mills, 2011). Younger historians need to be encouraged into the study of mining history, for example by providing them with incentives and support to select mining history topics for their higher degree studies. Geoffrey Blainey, one of Australia’s leading scholars and the country’s pre-eminent mining historian, chose the history of the Mount Lyell copper mine in Tasmania for his PhD thesis and went on to tell much of the Australian mining story in a series of popular books including The Peaks of Lyell, Mines in the Spinifex, The Rush that Never Ended, The Rise of Broken Hill, and The Golden Mile (Blainey 1954, 1960, 1968, 1969, 1993). Indeed his work has shown how much of Australia’s general history can usefully be seen through the prism of its mining history. But there is still much to uncover and interpret. The mining industry needs to increase its interest and support for mining history and historians need to promote and encourage this interest. Not only is this history of practical use, as outlined above, but also it provides an important public relations link to the general community. The need for greater interest and support for mining history and heritage has been highlighted by the recent demise of the ‘Australian Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame’ in Kalgoorlie. Some companies do actively support aspects of mining history and many take steps to preserve heritage items on their leases. However, others consider mining heritage unimportant or even a costly liability if attention is drawn to it. Mining heritage is seen as adding an extra layer of complexity to environmental protection and compliance requirements. Preserving items of mining heritage can also be inconvenient for modern operations and may add expense if projects need to be designed around them. Some sites of extreme environmental devastation have developed into tourist attractions, for example the denuded hills or so called ‘moonscape’ around the historic Mt Lyell copper mine at Queenstown in Tasmania. Mining companies are keen to distance themselves from such forms of mining heritage and in the process perhaps tend to play down mining heritage in general. Certainly greater interest by the industry will assist in preserving key physical and documentary evidence. A way to enhance greater understanding and interest by the mining industry would be to include a mining history component in the undergraduate training of future mining professionals, such as mining engineers, metallurgists and geologists. In a country such as Australia, with active on-going mining it is important to develop the right balance between heritage preservation and environmental management so that there is a good record of this activity for future generations of mining historians and the public. Currently the balance is probably more towards environmental restoration and there is a need to strengthen awareness and the requirements for mining heritage preservation at mine closure. Even with the best intentions and resources to preserve our physical mining heritage modern rehabilitation practice will inevitably result in much less preservation of primary evidence. It is critical therefore to preserve the sites and features that retain the most important information and particularly aspects that cannot be reconstructed from other evidence. Once the sites go, so does the potential for historical and archaeological research. For example, to this end Pearson and McGowan (2009) have recently proposed guidelines for preservation at mining sites, particularly non-listed sites, as part of a survey of abandoned mining sites in New South Wales. Careful and well-informed preservation of physical evidence at mining sites can provide useful community and economic benefits into the future. The growing interest in mining history is driving a rising interest in mining history tourism, which can bring financial benefits to local 319


communities and an appreciation of the positive contribution of mining to society. Tourist mines such as those at Sovereign Hill near Ballarat, the Dalprats and Day Dream mines at Broken Hill and the mining heritage sites at Gympie in Queensland and in the ‘Copper Triangle’ at Moonta– Wallaroo–Kadina and at Burra in South Australia are examples. Mining will remain a fundamental activity for as long as our technologies and life styles require mineral products. Continued supply of these products in an environmentally sustainable way will be a huge challenge demanding exploitation of new and lower grade ores, major technological innovations in exploration, extraction and processing, much more efficient patterns of use and a high level of recycling. The mining history being forged today and in the near future will be of immense interest to the next generation of mining historians. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Warren Dym for his invitation to prepare this short contribution to a symposium on Mining History. I also thank David Oldroyd for his editorial advice and comments. The article has benefited from the comments and suggestions of several colleagues including Mel Davies, Barry McGowan and Don Perkin. REFERENCES Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2012. Year Book Australia 2012, Mining (latest data for 2009–2010 as measured by GVA, gross value added). Blainey, G. N. 1954. The Peaks of Lyell, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Blainey, G. N. 1960. Mines in the Spinifex: The Story of Mount Isa Mines. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. Blainey, G. N. 1968. The Rise of Broken Hill. Melbourne: Macmillan of Australia. Blainey, G. N. 1969. The Rush that Never Ended, 2nd edn. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Blainey, G. N. 1970. A theory of mineral discovery: Australia in the nineteenth century. Economic History Review 23: 298–313. Blainey, G. N. 1993. The Golden Mile. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin. Claughton, P. and Mills, C. 2011. Introduction: mining the future. In: Mining Perspectives: The Proceedings of the Eighth International Mining History Congress 2009, edited by Peter Claughton and Catherine Mills, 6–10. Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site, Cornwall Council. McCalman, I., Cook, A. and Reeves, A. 2001. Introduction. In: Gold: Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia, edited by Iain McCalman, Alexander Cook and Andrew Reeves, 1–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarthy, T. and Rubidge, B. 2005. The Story of Earth and Life: A Southern African Perspective on a 4.6 Billion-year Journey. Capetown: Struik Nature. McQueen, K. G. 2005. The Mount Boppy gold mine, NSW: a leader in its day and more to come. Journal of Australasian Mining History 3: 74–96. Pearson, M. and McGowan, B. 2009. Mining Sites in NSW: History and Heritage—With Guidelines for Assessing Heritage Values and for Taking Actions on Mining Heritage Places, 209–246. Maitland: Industry and Investment NSW. Raggatt, H. G. 1968. Mountains of Ore: Mining and Minerals in Australia. Lansdowne Press, Melbourne. Raymond, R. 1984. Out of the Fiery Furnace: The Impact of Metals on the History of Mankind, 1–24. Melbourne: McMillan.

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MINING HISTORY: PEOPLE, KNOWLEDGE, POWER ERNST HAMM Science and Technology Studies Program, York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada [email protected] Among the most memorable passages of Technics and Civilization, a work as replete with insights as it is with bold generalizations, are those addressing early modern mining. The author Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) saw in the mine early versions of technologies that were to become crucial in the industrial revolution and without which high-rise and high-density urban life would scarcely be thinkable. The technologies described at length by Georgius Agricola (Georg Bauer, 1494–1555) and illustrated with woodcuts of unusual detail in his De re metallica—elaborate systems of water management that created the centralized power source for the waterwheel, which, in turn, drove the numerous pumping systems that drained the mines; ingenious systems of power transmission that converted circular and reciprocal motion and made it possible to drive hammers for crushing ore, hoists, pumps and other machines that were many metres distant from the waterwheel; underground rails for moving ore and rock; ventilation systems that brought fresh air to the deepest galleries of mines—reappeared in enhanced versions centuries later. There is no need to belabour the centrality of the waterwheel for the factories of late eighteenth-century England and the early nineteenth-century United States. As steam replaced or supplemented water, the technologies of power transmission became no less important. There was little need for Mumford to enumerate the ways in which the management of fresh and wastewater were crucial for cities, or the reasons why skyscrapers needed elevators, though he was explicit that the underground railways of mines were precursors of the subway. More than mere metaphor, the mine and mining were, by Mumford’s analysis, the crucible of modern technics. They also offered unusually promising prospects for historians of science and technology. But before addressing this issue a few more words on Technics and Civilization. Mumford’s was hardly a cheerful analysis, even if he was not without admiration for mining and all that flowed from it. But his was an admiration akin to that which Marx and Engels expressed for the bourgeoisie, whose accomplishments, they announced, overshadowed “the Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals” (Marx and Engels 1888). Mumford’s claim that “mining and the metallurgical arts were outside the social scheme of both classic and gothic civilization” (Mumford 1963, p. 74) was a statement on the transformative character of mining. Early modern mining saw the introduction, on the one hand, of “many of the modern improvements of industrial organization” such as charitable self-help, insurance and the eight-hour day; on the other, it destroyed the power of the guilds and presaged the bitter class war of nineteenth-century capitalism (Mumford 1963, pp. 74–75). Mining was not the only causal agent in these transformations, but “War, mechanization, mining, and finance played into each other’s hands” (Mumford 1963, p. 76). Where did or does science fit in with all of this? The new science, according to Mumford demanded “the elimination of the organic” from its mechanistic picture of the world, and the mine was the “first completely inorganic environment to be created and lived in by man” (Mumford 1963, p. 47 and p. 69). A world without life, lighted and ventilated by artificial means, the mine was a “triumph of the ‘manufactured environment’”. “The mine”, Mumford insisted, was “nothing less in fact than the concrete model of the conceptual world which was built up by the physicists of the seventeenth century” (Mumford 1963, p. 70).1 At this point some readers may have reached the limit of their patience with these reflections on Mumford. After all, Technics and Civilization was published almost eighty years 1

Italics in original and ‘manufactured environment’ appears in quotation marks in the original, but the phrase appears to be his own, see the remarks in Rosalind Williams (2008), pp. 5-6.

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ago and it bears signs of having been written in the midst of the Great Depression. Since then we have learned a few things about the history of mining and the history of science and technology. Mumford’s account of early modern mining rested largely on Agricola’s De re metallica— granted it was and is the single most important work on early modern mining, even more so in the important edition by Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover (Agricola 1912) that Mumford consulted. (Though few historians today would rest so heavy a burden of generalization upon a single source.) One need not accept Mumford’s conclusions or methods to admire the breadth of his vision and the critical acumen he displayed. Never an academic in any traditional sense, Mumford is nonetheless a salutary reminder to those of us today who consider that the history of mining can aspire to reach an audience that is both broad and intellectually demanding. Readers of Earth Sciences History are well aware of the major historical and historiographic contributions that David Oldroyd (1990) and Martin Rudwick (1985), among others, have made with their fine-grained reconstructions of controversies in the history of geology, or the indispensable and careful work of Hugh Torrens (2002) on the many linkages between mining and geology in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain, or of the nuanced contributions to the history of mining by the other contributors to this symposium (Dym 2011a).2 The same could be said of the history of science and technology more generally, as practised for several decades. The fine-grained historical account can, in its best instantiations, offer insight into particular times, places or cultures, and a perspective on the larger world. All easier said than done, and doubtless less relevant to those facing the demands of finding and keeping an academic job. The well-cited and acclaimed examples of fine-grained histories of science and technology are often the works of mature scholars and writers. These can be inspiring works for younger scholars, but the accomplishments of senior writers do not always accord with the requirements of a PhD thesis. The more likely result is that the kind of work that goes into researching and writing a dissertation lends itself to ever greater specialization and, consequently, ever narrower readership, to what Steven Shapin (2005) has called ‘hyperprofessionalism’, i.e. scholarship so narrowly conceived and expressed that it fails to draw the interest of all but a dwindlingly small number of specialists. Fortunately mines and mining offer a wealth of promising possibilities to graduate students looking for a dissertation topic, as they do for historians of the Earth sciences looking to make their work more appealing to a broader readership. I shall, therefore, consider some of these possibilities under the broad rubrics of material culture, globalization, the environment, and knowledge making. All of these, I hasten to add are rubrics only, not tightly defined categories with impermeable boundaries. It is a small but not unexpected irony that some of the most memorable sites for viewing the material culture of the mine are in those places where mining no longer has its former economic importance. As their mines became exhausted, former mining communities have sometimes sought to boost their local economies by turning their past into tourist attractions, as at Clausthal-Zellerfeld and other former mining towns in the Germany’s Harz Mountains. Whatever their touristic value, one should not underestimate the relevance that such sites can have for historians, particularly historians of the Earth sciences. Not least because they offer a means of taking us beyond the textual sources that have served more often than not as our ‘primary’ guide to the past. The machines, tools, buildings and, in those instances where they are still accessible, the galleries and shafts of the mines themselves offer a way of apprehending the practices and reconstructing the lives of miners and their culture.3 Nor should one underestimate the sense of ‘being there’ that such sites can offer the historian. My first visit to Freiberg, Saxony, was concerned entirely with the rich resources of the historical and archival collections of that city’s Bergakademie, which among its treasures includes the papers of Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749–1817). It was only on a subsequent visit that I had the opportunity to be taken on a tour of the historic mine works, some of which are 2

3

Although not a study of a controversy, Oldroyd (2002) is an important fine-grained account of geological research for a particular region. For a striking example of the reconstruction of labour practices in ancient China, based on an analysis of ancient Chinese bronze casting, see Franklin (1999) chapter 1.

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maintained for the teaching and research purposes of that illustrious institution. Countless hours immersed in reading the sources will always be an indispensable part of the history of the Earth sciences, but there is also much to be gained from seeing where people worked and what they accomplished. Spending the better part of a working day underground in the mines greatly enhanced my appreciation of and respect for the miners’ accomplishments, and while I had seen working waterwheels above ground, seeing a subterranean waterwheel, in a chamber some twelve metres square, excavated by hand, was another matter altogether. Even as the era of steam was gaining hold in the early nineteenth century, the waterwheel remained a major technological achievement. It is worth noting that while De re metallica was the primary source for Mumford’s remarks on early modern mining, it was his 1932 visit to Munich’s Deutsches Museum, with its reconstruction of salt, ore, and coal mines, that first inspired him to address mining and its history (Williams 2008, pp. 5–6). Not all mining museums, or even reconstructions of mines, are as illustrious as those at Freiberg and Munich. Indeed, the place names of many such sites are a reminder of their unfamiliarity. Who can identify places like Wildemann, Britannia Beach, and Kiwa to give a few random examples? The history of mining has an inescapably local element, but this should not lead one to conclude that the history of mining is therefore local history. To make it so would be to excise the largest part of the story. Mining has for centuries, at least, played a critical part in vast networks of exchange that reached far beyond nation states or their equivalents (mining being considerably more ancient than the nation state). The silver mines in sixteenth-century Potosi in what is now Bolivia were part of a complex set of global exchanges that ranged from Antwerp and Seville to China and Japan (Brook 2008, pp. 152–184). The history of mining lends itself in many ways to the study of global history, thanks to the vast networks of exchanges integral to mining. If one assumes that the only kinds of exchanges that matter are economic ones, then one would indeed be treating mining as a subset of economic history, but that is far too narrow a treatment of exchange.4 It would be more enlightening to examine the ways in which ideas, people, practices and institutions travelled from place to place, and how they ‘translated’ as they moved from place to place. For far too long a kind of ‘diffusionist’ model has prevailed, one that adopted a centre–periphery structure in which knowledge moves from the metropolis outward and, along the way, adapts itself to the local conditions.5 A welcome alternative is an approach that looks for interactions that take place in exchanges, an approach that doesn’t assume the knowledge coming from Europe is universal, whereas that from elsewhere is ‘local’.6 A globally oriented history of mining would not be a history of all mines everywhere, but a history that shows the linkages and interactions between particular places often very distant from one another, between small-scale local events and larger-scale international ones. Priests in Potosi allegedly kept a copy of De re metallica chained to the altar to encourage local miners to attend mass.7 If this is so it tells us something about Agricola’s reach, but the knowledge could not have flowed strictly in one direction. It would be 4

5

6

7

Not that there is anything wrong with economic history or questions about wealth. There is nothing unseemly in asking whence came the income for the ‘gentlemanly specialists’ who helped shape the discipline of geology in the nineteenth century (such as Joseph Banks and the lead mines on his estates in Derbyshire). Such a model is implicit in Rachel Laudan’s notion of the influence of the Freiberg Bergakademie ‘radiating’ across Europe. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of Freiberg for the history of mining, and the importance of Abraham Gottlob Werner within Freiberg, but as is well known, one of the great strengths of renowned institutions of learning is their ability to attract the finest students and teachers. We should not treat such individuals as empty vessels who come to be ‘filled’ from the centre and then dispense their knowledge as they move outward. See Laudan (1987). See Cook (2007) and, for a treatment focused on mining knowledge see the work of Dym (2011b) on Freiberg students who worked in the nineteenth-century United States. For an analysis of the transform-ative character of exchange that reaches well beyond economic transactions see Simmel (1971). The story of De re metallica and the Potosi priests is repeated in a number of places, none of which cite a source. The version I recount is from the distinguished historian of the Renaissance, Eugenio Garin (1964), p. 513. Hoover, who was also in a good position to have seen a primary source, said: “There is a record somewhere that an ironbound copy was chained to the pulpit in a Church at San Luis Potosi in Peru” (Hoover 1955, p. 181).

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worth knowing more about how the knowledge that derived from the exploitation of the spectacular silver mines of South America found its way to Europe and elsewhere. The use of the word exploitation is not an accidental choice. The exploitation of people and the environment has long been associated with mining and continues to grasp wide swathes of the public imagination—and it should surprise no one that it does so. Environmental vandalism and human suffering are not the necessary costs of mining, but they are surely widespread and impossible to ignore for anyone who considers the history of mining. Already in the sixteenth century Agricola and Vannoccio Biringuccio (1480–ca 1539) defended the necessity and virtue of mining against its detractors; and mining had its detractors going back to Antiquity (Long 1991, esp. pp. 330–341). Mumford made no attempt to disguise his contempt for Agricola’s ‘lame’ attempt to defend mining (Mumford 1963, p. 72) and would, I suggest, have had little sympathy for Biringuccio’s claim that mining was preferable to usury, commercial capitalism or long-distance overseas trade. In a more restrained register, Lynn White Jr (1967) famously argued that an early modern energy crisis brought on by the massive deforestation of Britain necessitated the search for coal as fuel, which in turn led to greater environmental destruction.8 Mining has been a prominent feature of our civilization for centuries, and any history of mining fairly cries out for a consideration of environmental questions, all the more so given anthropogenic climate change. Such considerations might have us eschew writing apologies for the history of the earth’s exploitation, but they need not and should not compel historians to adopt the tired clichés of ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ history. The history of science has a venerable tradition of gently setting aside those things that might implicate its subject matter in war, environmental mayhem, or human exploitation, by referring such matters to technology, the applied sciences, or politics. Such an attitude was altogether understandable and, more than that, noble-minded for George Sarton, who saw in the history of science a ‘new humanism’ that offered the promise of undoing the havoc wreaked by “the war”, as he referred to what we now call the First World War (Sarton 1924). It is not difficult to find Cold War examples of those who took angry exception to the links Mumford drew between science and the military in the 1960s, in part because they knew Mumford might find enough sympathy that it could lead to a decline in funding for physics.9 However, if the past few decades of the history of science and technology, and science and technology studies in general, has taught us anything it is that the tidy distinctions between the world of science and that of technology do not stand up to closer scrutiny. Nor is this an interlinking that first came to the fore with twentieth-century technoscience. Leibniz’s theory of the Earth’s origin and development was, in part, a reply to Descartes’ theory of the Earth, but it can only be properly understood in connection with the many years Leibniz spent trying to improve mining in the Harz and so enrich the House of Hanover. The particularities of the “natural geography” of the Harz offered him insights for a general account of the Earth’s development (Leibniz 2008). Mines were, for Leibniz, a place to see the artifice of Nature at work, they were the “laboratories of Nature”; Francis Bacon expressed similar views in his New Atlantis (1876), as did John Webster in Metallographia (1671, pp. 35–39). Indeed, the separation of mind and hand that is inscribed in many education systems, with their tidy distinctions between the practical work and intellectual life, was railed against by any number of early moderns, notably by Agricola’s contemporary Paracelsus, who decried the degenerate world of the scholar and favoured mining as a place to learn about the workings of nature.10 Mining was good for thinking about Nature, and mines and the metal 8

9

10

White in his account also placed rather excessive emphasis on the importance of a specific reading of ‘dominion’ in Genesis. Gerald Holton, who was otherwise sympathetic to Mumford, was one of those who strongly objected to the latter’s Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1970); see Mendelsohn (1994). On Paracelsus, see Webster (2008). For the important humanist strain in Agricola see Hannaway (1992a, 1997); see also Beretta (1997). Hannaway also has explains why Hoover, who made a fortune as a mining engineer before entering political life, presented Agricola as a geologist rather than a mining engineer (Hannaway

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refineries were some of the most important sites for making knowledge in what was once called the Scientific Revolution but is now more prosaically referred to as Early Modern natural knowledge. Notwithstanding decades of excellent historical work on the importance of mining for knowing, old prejudices against places of manual labour die hard. Nobody would feel the need to make the case that observatories are important places for making natural knowledge. Any historian of science who considers mining should expect to have to make the case that this is not a ‘lowly’ or undignified pursuit, and that mining is not a “devilish and sinister” business (Mumford 1963, p. 74).11 That mining might inspire thinking was not a phenomenon restricted to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If Werner is seen as too parochial an example, thanks to his prominence at a mining academy, perhaps Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), and Alexander von Humboldt will do—the first had nothing but praise for the Freiberg Academy and the latter two studied there. It may be more than an accident of my own knowledge of the history of mining that most of the figures I have mentioned come from the German-speaking parts of Europe. The traditions of hard-rock mining were different from those associated with the coal-mining of the Industrial Revolution in England, France, Belgium and the Ruhr, and it is not altogether unexpected that the former loom large in German Romantic literature, whereas the latter have a place somewhat akin to William Blake’s ‘Satanic Mills’ in English Romanticism (Ziolkowski 1990, pp. 18–63). Despite its manifold linkages to far-flung places, practices, ideas, exchanges, and peoples, mining has distinctly local expressions. That’s the way history tends to work. Historical writing on mining and mines has a strong tradition connected to the preservation of local and national heritage, as one would expect. Historians of the Earth sciences, or historians of science more generally, are in a good position to be able to draw together some of the local story in a larger framework. Mining, as Mumford taught us, is not an incidental activity in our history, it is woven into the very fabric of our civilization, and in writing its history we should not hesitate to grasp the nettle of difficult questions about how knowledge is made, about how knowledge is used, who it is used for, and at what cost. REFERENCES Agricola, Georgius. 1912. De re metallica [1556]. Translated by Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover. London: Published for the translators by The Mining Magazine. Bacon, Francis. 1876. The New Atlantis [1627]. In: Works of Francis Bacon, Vol. 3, edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath, 119–166. London: Longmans & Co. Beretta, Marco. 1997. Humanism and chemistry: the spread of Georgius Agricola’s metallurgical writings. Nuncius 12: 17–47. Dym, Warren Alexander. 2011a. Divining Science: Treasure Hunting and Earth Science in Early Modern Germany. Leiden: Brill. Dym, Warren Alexander. 2011b. Freiberg and the frontier: Louis Janin, German engineering, and ‘civilisation’ in the American west. Annals of Science 68: 295–323. Franklin, Ursula. 1999. The Real World of Technology. Revised edn. Toronto: Anansi. Garin, Eugenio. 1964. Die Kultur der Renaissance. In: Propyläen Weltgeschichte: Eine Universalgeschichte, Vol. 6: Weltkulturen: Renaissance in Europa, edited by Golo Mann and August Nitschke, 429–534. Berlin: Propyläen. Hannaway, Owen. 1992a. Georgius Agricola as humanist. Journal of the History of Ideas 53: 553–560. Hannaway, Owen. 1992b. Herbert Hoover and Georgius Agricola: the distorting mirrors of history. Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 12: 3–10. Hannaway, Owen. 1997. Reading the pictures: the context of Georgius Agricola’s woodcuts. Nuncius 12: 49–66.

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1992b). For some of the interactions between mining and eighteenth-century sciences see Porter (1981) and Klein (2012). The phrase “devilish and sinister” resonates with ideas of J. R. R. Tolkien, whose linkages between mining, warfare and the destruction of the shire were not unlike those of Mumford.

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Hoover, Herbert. 1955. A discussion of De Re Metallica, CBS broadcast transcript 15 April 1951. In: Essays Upon the American Road, 1950-1955, 179-182. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Klein, Ursula. 2012. Savant officials in the Prussian Mining Administration. Annals of Science 69: 349– 374. Laudan, Rachel. 1987. From Mineralogy to Geology: The Foundations of a Science, 1650–1830. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 2008. Protogaea, translated and edited by Claudine Cohen and Andre Wakefield. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Long, Pamela O. 1991. The openness of knowledge: an ideal and its context in 16th-century writings on mining and metallurgy. Technology and Culture 32: 318–355. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. 1888. Manifesto of the Communist Party [1848], translated by Samuel Moore www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm accessed 10 August 2012. Mendelsohn, Everett. 1994. The politics of pessimism: science and technology circa 1968. In: Technology, Pessimism, and Postmodernism, ed. Yaron Ezrahi, Everett Mendelsohn and Howard Segal, 151– 173. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Mumford, Lewis. 1963. Technics and Civilization [1934]. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Oldroyd, David R. 1990. The Highlands Controversy: Constructing Geological Knowledge through Fieldwork in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Oldroyd, David R. 2002. Earth, Water, Ice and Fire: Two Hundred Years of Geological Research in the English Lakes District. Geological Society of London, Memoir No. 25. London: Geological Society. Porter, Theodore M. 1981. The promotion of mining and the advancement of science: the chemical revolution of mineralogy. Annals of Science 38: 543–570. Rudwick, Martin J. S. 1985. The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sarton, George. 1924. The New Humanism. Isis 6: 9–42. Shapin, Steven. 2005. Hyperprofessionalism and the crisis of readership in the history of science. Isis 96: 238–243. Simmel, Georg. 1971. Exchange [1907]. In: On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings, edited by Donald N. Levine, 43–69. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Torrens, Hugh. 2002. The Practice of British Geology, 1750–1850. Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum. Webster, Charles. 1982. From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Webster, John. 1671. Metallographia: Or an History of Metals. London: Printed by A. C. for Walter Kettilby. White Jr, Lynn. 1967. The historical roots of our ecological crisis. Science 155: 1203–1207. Williams, Rosalind. 2008. Notes on the Underground: An Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination [1990]. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Ziolkowski, Theodore. 1990. German Romanticism and Its Institutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

THE HARDROCK MINES OF EARLY MODERN GERMANY ANDRE WAKEFIELD Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin Pitzer College, Claremont, California [email protected] We must have looked conspicuous, even to the locals, standing there on the meadow behind the cows, decked out in overalls, waders, helmets and headlamps. Wolfgang Lampe, head archivist at the Bergarchiv in Clausthal, and Hans-Joachim Gleichmann, a judge and mining historian, had agreed to include me on a tour of the Harz waterworks, a vast network of drainage tunnels, shafts, ponds, and trenches near the old Harz mining town of Clausthal-Zellerfeld. Just beneath our feet lay the Johann-Friedricher Wasserlauf and the Prinz-Walliser Wasserlauf, two 326


interconnected adits constructed, respectively, during the late-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. We dropped into a drainage ditch and followed it to the mouth of the adit. The tunnel was secured by a locked gateway (to keep wildcatters out), but we had a key. It was a warm day, and we were already sweating in our spelunking gear, but once we went underground, the temperature dropped about twenty degrees. Though the adits were largely the product of pick and hammer (Schlägel und Eisen) work, we also found bore holes, testament to blasting, followed by long stretches of chiseled tunnel walls and ceilings, shimmering in the glow of our headlamps. In addition to the telltale etchings of the diggers (Hauer), we also found the Gedingezeichen of the foremen (Steiger). These distinctive symbols, carved into the rock at regular intervals, marked the progress of the diggers.12 The extent of that progress determined how much they would be paid for a given period of work. The foreman adjusted the Gedinge based on the hardness of the rock: the harder the rock, the more money the Hauer received for each fathom (Lachter) of tunnel. Trouble arose when the foreman underestimated the hardness of the rock, or when the diggers felt he had underestimated it. Mining history is local history, and the region around Clausthal-Zellerfeld is teeming with enthusiasts who tramp through the region, charting every adit, drainage ditch, and holding pond. Professional historians, especially historians of science, have a nasty habit of dismissing such local experts as ‘amateurs’ and ignoring their work. That reflects our own insecurities, which are rooted in progressive efforts to distance professional history of science from its origins. It is also a big mistake in the Harz and Erz Mountains, because the locals know more than you do. If you want to know something specific—‘where did Leibniz build that horizontal windmill?’—you will need their help. Not only do these local experts know where everything is, they also publish in local periodicals and international journals.13 Historians of the earth sciences have long been drawn to the mines of early modern Germany because of the luminaries who passed through Clausthal-Zellerfeld and Freiberg (Saxony).14 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Abraham Gottlob Werner, Henning Calvör, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich von Trebra, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Alexander von Humboldt all spent significant time in these mining towns. There is the obligatory Goethe Wanderweg that wends its way through the ponds and meadows near Clausthal. The Leibniz Gesellschaft, not to be outdone, is planning its own Leibniz Wanderweg so that curious hikers can see where Leibniz built his wind machines and the house he slept in.15 Leibniz started coming to Clausthal in the 1670s, soon after work on the JohannFriedricher adit had been completed. During that period, and for many decades thereafter, miners and officials in the Harz mines struggled constantly to drain water from underground. When Leibniz came to town there was already a vast network of water wheels, drainage ditches, adits, and reciprocating rods (Feldstangen). It was among the most extraordinary early modern energy systems in the world, and it has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site: ‘The Upper Harz mining water management system.’ Its construction was first undertaken in the Middle Ages by Cistercian monks, and it was then developed on a vast scale from the end of the 16th century until the 19th century. It is made up of an extremely complex but perfectly coherent system of artificial ponds, small channels, tunnels and

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14 15

On the symbols used by Steiger in the Harz mines, see Lampe (2008). The Ausbeute, published in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, is a good example. You won’t find it on the internet! Even Der Anschnitt, the most important German-language journal for mining history, gets ignored by many historians of science. Hans-Joachim Gleichmann, one of my guides, published an extensive, two-part article on Humboldt’s work as a mining official. See Gleichman (2007–2008). But his work is not cited in recent work by historians of science on Humboldt and the mines. See, for example, Ursula Klein (2012). The same goes for the otherwise excellent Dagmar Hülsenberg and Ingo Schwartz, eds (2012). See, for example, Ospovat (1967); and more recently Hamm (1997). On Leibniz’s windmills, see Wakefield (2010).

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underground drains. It enabled the development of water power for use in mining and metallurgical processes.16

The constant battle against the water was waged with water; the pumps that drained the mines and kept the deeper shafts from flooding were themselves powered by water from above. The main source of such power came mainly from the Teiche (artificial holding ponds) and adits that generations of Guelf dukes had sponsored. The system of drainage and power that evolved out of such efforts represented a staggering investment of human labor. To take just one example, the famous 19-Lachter-Stollen stretched almost twelve miles underground and took 139 years to build (Ließmann 2010, pp. 67–75). Leibniz arrived in the Harz, as he arrived everywhere, full of projects and ideas. Early in 1679, after a visit to Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Leibniz promised Duke Johann Friedrich that one could drain the mines and keep them drained with new pumps and windmills. He had designed a pump that could lift water from more than a thousand feet down, a pump “so new, and so important, that if there is one thing in mechanics that merits being kept secret, I believe this is it”.17 He promised that this new invention could eliminate underground flooding, the age-old curse of the mines, a problem that had preoccupied, frustrated and defeated mining men for centuries. Leibniz claimed to have solved it. His memo to the duke imagined a subterranean world largely free of flooding. The mines will be in a flourishing state, the miners will always have work, but most importantly, the success of this venture will encourage people to undertake new mines or to reestablish old ones that have been neglected for lack of water. The noise of such a great success will also attract strangers to invest money in the mines.18

Like many alchemists and projectors before him, Leibniz guaranteed vast wealth from the fruits of secret knowledge. If wind could be harnessed to work the mines, there would be no need for transmutation; the silver was there already, in the bowels of the Harz and in the pockets of foreign investors.19 Mining officials and historians have written about Leibniz’s windmills for almost 250 years without ever really getting to the bottom of what happened out there.20 There were fights and misunderstandings, threats, accusations of sabotage, and claims of dishonesty. Many of these involved Leibniz’s predecessor, Peter Hartzing, a fascinating man in his own right—his father was Dutch and his mother was Japanese—who had a wind machine plan, and a model, years before Leibniz. After Hartzing died abruptly in 1680, officials in Clausthal claimed that Leibniz had stolen his idea.21 My interest in this topic, and my ability to pursue it under the aegis of the history of science at all, reflect some major shifts in the field. During the early twentieth century, when the history of science was still taking shape, mining and metallurgy occupied a place of central importance. George Sarton, Herbert Hoover, and Cyril Stanley Smith put the mines of early modern Germany on the map for historians of science. The legacy of that interest survives today

16

17 18 19 20

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http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/623. There is some disagreement about the monks. They seem to have constructed some fishponds, but the relationship between these ponds and the smelting works nearby is disputed (Lampe, pers. comm., 12 August, 2012). Leibniz (1986, pp. 126–130); Aiton (1985, pp. 87–89). Leibniz (1986, pp. 129–30). For a fuller account of Leibniz’s venture, see Wakefield (2010). Published accounts of the episode stretch as far back as Calvör (1763), but there are still many unanswered questions. See also Paul Ritter, ‘Einleitung,’ in Leibniz (1986, pp. xxvii–lxvi), Stiegler (1968) and Horst and Gottschalk (1973). The story is there, in the files of the Bergarchiv in Clausthal-Zellerfeld (for example, HSTA BaCl Hann. 84a, Nr. 673911), and in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover (for example, HStA Hannover Cal. Br. 4, Nr. 528). But it is very hard to read.

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in the remarkable collections they left behind.22 Hoover, who translated Agricola’s De re metallica with his wife, Lou Henry, imagined Agricola as a patron saint and founding father, a kind of Galileo for mining engineers.23 The English version of Agricola that they produced became important for George Sarton, not only for its scientific merit but also because of what Hoover had done for Belgium during World War I. When I was working at the War Office in London in 1914–1915, I often passed near the offices of the Mining Magazine in Salisbury House, in the City, and used to stop at the window to examine a copy of HOOVER’s book which was there exhibited. The price of it, thanks to the author’s munificence, was extraordinarily low, but it was too high for my purse, and after a few looks at the impressive volume I had to move on without it! Who would have thought then that the author would become President of the United States, or rather more! For to be the incumbent of that high office is after all a smaller distinction than to have been the leading spirit of the greatest relief organization of all times.24

Early modern mining and metallurgy remained a staple for the history of science through the 1950s, as reflected in the many ‘critical bibliographies’ that Sarton published in Isis. Nevertheless, the work of translation and dissemination was carried out by a relatively small group of enthusiasts, led by Cyril Stanley Smith and Anneliese Sisco. “The preparation of these translations has been for Dr Smith a true labor of love”, wrote I. Bernard Cohen (1951), “since he is not an historian by training but a metallurgist, director of the Institute for the Study of Metals in the University of Chicago”. By the late 1950s Bern Dibner, another enthusiastic engineer cum historian in the model of Hoover and Smith, was working to popularize the work that Hoover had translated over four decades earlier. “It has become increasingly more obvious,” read the review in Isis, “that the task of the historian of science must include relating the science described to the general progress of that science and to the total history of science and society” (Hellman 1959). Things changed when Alexander Ospovat, a civil engineer who went on to get his PhD and ended up at Oklahoma State University, arrived on the scene. Those of us who spent time in the old mining town of Freiberg during the 1980s or 1990s remember him as the German– American demigod of Abraham Gottlob Werner Forschung. He had extensive connections in the DDR, where he spent large amounts of time from the 1960s to the 1980s. Ospovat’s work on Werner moved gradually away from an emphasis on chemistry and metallurgy and toward the history of geology. Ironically, as the history of geology and earth sciences established itself, the mines of early modern Germany started to disappear from the pages of Isis.25 But Bergbau is back. The last decade has seen a resurgence of interest in mines and mining among historians of science, and it has happened for a number of reasons: the rise of environmental history, an interest in historical forms of expertise and artisanal knowledge, the rehabilitation of alchemy (chymistry) as a core discipline within the history of science, and the turn to scientific practice more generally. This combination of factors has created a mini-boom for mining history. I only hope that the contributions of local historians, and the specificity of local history, will not be marginalized as historians of science turn to the mines as a source of data to support larger conceptual frameworks and historiographical innovations. In other words, we have to keep going to Clausthal and Freiberg, because there is a limit to how much you can 22

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The Hoover Collection in Mining and Metallurgy: Special Collections at the Claremont Colleges Library in Claremont, California. Cyril Stanley Smith donated his collection in mining and metallurgy to the Burndy Library, which has moved from Cambridge, Mass. to the Huntington Library in California. The papers and letters of Hoover in the archive of Honnold Special Collections in Claremont, California reveal that he was insecure about his identity as a mining engineer. Hoover’s memoirs too, indicate a kind of professional inferiority complex. Agricola, as a worthy founding father for the profession, was supposed to make that better. See Hoover (1951, pp. 130–135). Sarton (1929). Hoover headed up the ‘Commission for Relief’ in Belgium, which helped to feed the entire nation during World War I, after the German invasion. Sarton, of course, was Belgian. There were of course still occasional interventions and book reviews by Ospovat, Robert Multhauf and Albert Carozzi. Isis introduced the separate category, ‘earth sciences’, in its book review section in 1976.

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understand sitting in Boston or Paris or Berlin. Leibniz himself understood this very well. As he wrote to Duke Johann Friedrich: “the Harz is a true source of experiences and discoveries in mechanics and physics, and I consider myself able to discover more with five or six men of practice, who might be employed in these regions, than with twenty of the most learned savants in Europe” (Leibniz 1986, pp. 126–128). What once held for Leibniz is still true for historians of science today. There is a lot to learn in these old mining towns. The amateur ethos that helped found our discipline eventually became an embarrassment to a young, professionalizing field. Bern Dibner sometimes feels like the Walt Disney of the history of science. But there is still much of value there, and in Cyril Stanley Smith’s careful analyses, or in the Hoovers’ translation of Agricola. More than that, though, the collections these pioneers established have long supported the research that many of us, we professional historians of science, conduct today. Have we finally grown up enough to appreciate our disciplinary ancestors? Maybe it is time to rediscover some of their excitement, curiosity and enthusiasm; that same enthusiasm still exists today in the old mining towns of Germany and Austria, where local experts carry on the tradition that founded our field. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for research support. ARCHIVES This article draws on letters in the archives of Honnold Library Special Collections at the Claremont Colleges. I also used material from the Bergarchiv Clausthal-Zellerfeld, a branch of the Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover. REFERENCES Aiton, E. J. 1985. Leibniz: A Biography. Boston: Hilger. Calvör, Henning. 1763. Acta historico-cronologico-mechanica circa metallurgicam in Hercynia Superiori. Oder Historisch-chronologische Nachricht und theoretische und practische Beschreibung des Maschinenwesens, und der Hülfsmittel bey dem Bergbau auf dem Oberharze. Braunschweig: Waysenhaus. Cohen, I. Bernard. 1951. Review of Bergwerk- und Probierbüchlein, translated by Anneliese Grünhaldt Sisco and Cyril Stanley Smith (New York: American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, 1949) and Georgius Agricola, De re metallica, translated by Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover (New York: Dover, 1950). Isis 42: 54–56. Gleichmann, Hans Joachim. 2007–2008. Der Bericht Alexander von Humboldts über das Berg- und Hüttenwesen in der Grafschaft Sayn-Altenkirchen in dem Grenzraum Siegerland/Westerwald 1795. Der Anschnitt: Zeitschrift für Kunst und Kultur im Bergbau 59: 204–221 (Part 1) and 60: 12–37 (Part 2). Hamm, Ernst P. 1997. Knowledge from underground: Leibniz mines the Enlightenment. Earth Sciences History. 16: 77–99. Hellman, C. Doris. 1959. Review of Bern Dibner, Agricola on Metals. The Age of Technology Waited for Better and More Abundant Metals. It Arrived so Much Sooner because Agricola Published De Re Metallica, a Mining and Metallurgical Classic (Norwalk, Conn.: Burndy Library, 1958). Isis 50: 171–172. Hoover, Herbert Clark. 1951. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure. New York: Macmillan Company. Horst, Ulrich and Jürgen Gottschalk. 1973. Über die Leibnizschen Pläne zum Einsatz seiner Horizontalwindkunst im Oberharzer Bergbau und ihre mißglückte Durchführung. In: Akten des II. Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses Hannover, 17.–22. Juli 1972, Vol. 1, 35–59. Wiesbaden: Steiner. Lampe, Wolfgang. 2008. Stuffenzeichen im Harzer Bergbau. Ausbeute, Mitteilungsblatt der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Harzer Montangeschichte 3: 26–30.

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Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1986. Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, Series 1, Vol. 2, edited by Paul Ritter. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Ließmann, Wilfried. 2010. Historischer Bergbau im Harz. Kurzführer, 3rd edn. Heidelberg: Springer. Ospovat, Alexander M. 1967. The place of the Kurze Klassifikation in the work of A. G. Werner. Isis 58: 90–95. Sarton, George. 1929. Review of Georg Agricola, Zwölf Bücher vom Berg- und Hüttenwesen in denen die Ämter, Instrumente, Maschinen und alle Dinge, die zum Bergund Hüttenwesen gehören, nicht nur aufs deutlichste beschrieben, sondern auch durch Abbildungen, die am gehörigen Orte eingefügt sind, unter Angabe der lateinischen und deutschen Bezeichnungen aufs klarste vor Augen gestellt werden, edited and translated by Carl Schiffner, Ernst Darmstaedter, Paul Knauth, Wilhelm Pieper, Friedrich Schumacher, Victor Tafel, Emil Treptow, and Erich Wandhoff; and Georg Agricola, De re metallica edited and translated by Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover. Isis 13: 113–116. Stiegler, Leonhard. 1968. Leibnizens Versuche mit der Horizontalwindkunst auf dem Harz. Technik Geschichte 35: 265–92. Wakefield, Andre. 2010. Leibniz and the wind machines. Osiris 25: 171–188.

HISTORY OF MINING IN BRAZIL: SOME THOUGHTS ON TRAINING AND SOURCES 1

SILVIA F. DE M. FIGUEIRÔA, 2JEFFERSON DE L. PICANÇO and 3 MARIA JOSÉ MESQUITA

Department of Geological Education Institute of Geosciences University of Campinas (UNICAMP) P.O. Box 6152 13083–970 Campinas-SP, Brazil 1 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Thanks to the kind invitation of Warren Dym, we were given the opportunity to present and discuss some issues we consider relevant for the understanding of mining history in Brazil, namely: education and training, and material sources. In this paper we shall mainly summarize points already discussed in previously published papers, generally in Portuguese and therefore mostly inaccessible to larger audiences. Two basic and intimately connected aspects result from the analysis of the sources dealing with the beginnings of the institutionalization of geological sciences in Brazil: one, its colonial condition and its ‘insertion’ within the Portuguese Empire; the other, the role played by mining activities in the prevailing mercantilist system. Within the set of problems that afflicted the Old Colonial System, those related to agriculture, first, and those related to mining, second, articulated in the wider framework of the Portuguese ‘lack of progress in the industrial level’, constituted the focus of the agenda to be solved. The Academia Real de Ciências de Lisboa (Lisbon Royal Academy of Sciences), founded in 1779, was the center from which the movement of applying science to economic improvement was developed and diffused to the rest of the Kingdom. Mining in Colonial Brazil, especially with respect to the study of methods and techniques, is still little known, despite its importance. The sources are scarce, and mainly relate to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, requiring the use of several different approaches in addition to the use of manuscript sources.26 Among the written sources, some fundamental documents include such texts as the anonymous Informação sobre as Minas do Brasil (Information on Mines in Brazil), probably written before 1660, which describes in detail the mining of alluvial deposits of Paranaguá (nowadays in the Paraná State, in the south of Brazil). In his book Cultura e Opulência do Brasil 26

Documentation relating to mining sites in Minas Gerais is more abundant in comparison to other Brazilian regions. Two recent studies are: Gonçalves (2007) and Reis (2007).

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por suas Drogas e Minas (Culture and Wealth of Brazil from its Drugs27 and Mines) (1711), the Jesuit priest known as Antonil (né João Antonio Andreoni) described the mining methods commonly used in the early development of the ore deposits of Minas Gerais, with woodcuts illustrating the exploitation of alluvia. A somewhat later chronicler of mining in Brazil was Pedro Taques de Almeida Paes Leme (1714–1777), who described methods of auriferous mining, especially in the Province of São Paulo. Also, the two volumes of Pluto Brasiliensis, by Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege (1777–1855), published in Berlin in 1834, described the occurrences of gold mines, as well as the methods of ‘plowing’ the alluvia and auriferous hill slopes of Minas Gerais. Eschwege’s book was a comprehensive volume, and is still relevant and influential in studies of mining in colonial Brazil. In addition to the written texts, another important source of information, still waiting to be fully explored, is the iconographic one, such as woodcuts that show the tools, methods, and techniques of mining. The impressive woodcuts of De re metallica, by Georgius Agricola, though illustrating European mining, are also important for understanding early European mining in colonial America. Other important sources are nineteenth- century lithographs, such as the works by the German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802–1858). His engravings, published in his Malerisches Reise in Brasilien (Picturesque Journey in Brazil) (1835), are revealing reports of the decline of Brazilian mining. Old maps are also a crucial source of information on mining in colonial times. Some from the seventeenth century, such as the Planta da Baía de Paranaguá (Map of Paranaguá Bay) (1653), already show the localities of the gold mines (Picanço 2009). In maps like this, or others (see Costa 2009), it is possible to recognize crucial aspects of mining areas, their pathways and access routes, the known geographical features, unfamiliar areas, or those inhabited by indigenous people, etc. Similarly, some archaeological studies (Zequini 2007), as well as recent geological surveys of old mining areas (Juliani et al. 1995), are also important sources for the characterization of mining work in the colonial period. News of the discovery of gold in the Minas Gerais Province around 1693–1695 by the Paulistas (i.e., people from São Paulo, practically a synonym for the well-known explorers, Bandeirantes28), launched a rush to this locality. However, despite its economic and political importance in the eighteenth century, colonial mining in Brazil did not generate specific institutions, nor did it encourage the emergence of schools of mining to meet the demands of productivity. The Italian naturalist Domenico [Domingos] Vandelli (1735–1816), Director of the Real Museu da Ajuda (Ajuda Royal Museum), in his Memória sobre as Minas De Ouro do Brasil (Report on the Gold Mines of Brazil), written ca 1786, stated that: If a superior order did not command me to write about the gold mines of Brazil, certainly I would not dare to deal with this matter, which hitherto has been left in the hands of people ignorant of mineralogy, causing great losses to the State. Are the gold mines advantageous or disadvantageous to Portugal? This question I leave to the learned politicians, who know how to gauge the genuine interests of nations. That intelligent people are needed, that the miners should receive instruction, and be overseen in their operations, this I shall demonstrate, given the current state of the mines (Vandelli 1898, p. 2).

This passage deals with problems that deserve comment. One refers to the advantages or disadvantages of mining. The text, and others contemporary to it, draw attention to a second and important aspect of the problem: the technical challenges that played a vital role in the decline of mineral production, due to the ways that gold and diamonds occur in Brazil.29 To illustrate how widespread were such opinions, it is worth mentioning the observations of an expert such as José 27 28 29

At the time, this word referred to medicines, dyes, etc., as well as what are today called narcotics. These men engaged in slave hunting, as well as exploration and prospecting for precious metals. Almost all gold and diamond in Brazil occurs in secondary formations, that is, associated with sand and pebble deposits where they naturally accumulated, following their separation from the matrix rocks by the geological processes of weathering and erosion.

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Vieira Couto in his Memória sobre as Minas da Capitania de Minas Gerais (Report on the Mines of the Province of Minas Gerais) (1801): On another occasion I have demonstrated how mining in our rivers, although more advanced than that performed in the mountains, still suffered from the absence, and almost total lack of knowledge about many essential machines, and I also demonstrated, speaking expressly of diamond mining, how this deficiency was a sensitive one, and how it caused difficulties for advances in this type of mining. This truth is quite evident, even to those who have never observed the techniques and ways of work of our miners. . . . Who cannot see that all these things, which depend upon principles and a thorough knowledge of hydraulics and mechanics, will be performed clumsily by men who only know how to read, and some not even that? (Couto 1842 [1801], p. 16)

In all such statements, emphasis was placed on the need for the modernization of the techniques employed in mineral extraction, on the improvement of miners’ training, and on the need to appoint managers to provide instruction and supervise their work. The deficiency of practical miners in the Brazil’s colonial era had been the object of constant criticism in the reports of local governors, prompting the authorities to seek a solution to the problem. The miners who worked in alluvia in Brazil from the sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century normally came from mining centers, whether from Europe or the Kingdom of Peru—mainly from Potosi (in Bolivia today). Already in 1560, the Portuguese Crown sent the practical-minded Luis Martins to Brazil (Maffei and Nogueira 1966). And around 1591–1595 the governor of the São Paulo Province, Dom Francisco de Souza, imported several German and Spanish miners (Maffei and Nogueira 1966). In the mines of Iguape and Paranaguá, explored in the second half of the seventeenth century, various skilled and experienced miners were at work, mostly from the mines of Potosi (Picanço and Mesquita 2011). In keeping with the enlightened spirit of Vandelli’s time, one would typically appeal to science to redress the situation. At a practical level, one of the measures taken to improve the instruction of miners was the printing of two manuals on mining.30 Another measure, of great impact, was the sending of three graduates of Coimbra University to visit the main scientific and mining centers of Europe—a solution already urged by Vandelli in his aforementioned Memoir on gold in Brazil: “[i]t is not necessary to bring in [large numbers of] foreigners, since many nationals are already well-versed in mineralogy and chemistry; they only need greater practical instruction, which could be acquired in two or three years, by means of a journey to Germany” (Vandelli 1898 [1786], p. 226). The purpose of the journey to Paris, Freiberg, Austria, Italy, Sweden and Britain, financed by the Royal Treasury, was “to acquire by means of observant journeys and philosophical explorations by well-educated persons, the most perfect knowledge of mineralogy and other parts of natural philosophy” (Sousa 1972, p. 22). The chosen students were Joaquim Pedro Fragoso de Sequeira (?–1833) from Portugal, and José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva (1763–1838) and Manoel Ferreira da Câmara de Bittencourt e Sá (1762–1835) from Brazil. The presence of two students from the Brazilian élite can be explained by the importance that mineral deposits in Brazil, despite all its decadence, still maintained in the overall economy of the kingdom. It was believed that technical improvements could bring results. The Instructions to this journey, published on 31 May 1790, clearly set out the itinerary, as well as the scientific themes of major interest to which the travelers should apply themselves: In the city of Paris, Your Graces shall follow a complete course in Chemistry, with Mr. Fourcroy, and another in Docimastic mineralogy with Mr. Le Sage, or with whomever replace them, spending in this occupation at least one year; the preparatory courses accomplished, Your Graces shall head directly to Freiberg, in Artz [sic], in order to enroll for the complete courses of mining in that district, where Your Graces will find all the facilities needed thanks to the instructions that shall be 30

Namely: De Genssanne, Mineiro do Brasil melhorado pelo conhecimento da mineralogia, e metallurgia, e das sciencias auxiliadoras (Lisbon: Oficina de Antônio Rodrigues Galhardo, 1801); Le Febvre, Mineiro livelador ou hydrometra (Lisbon: Oficina de Antônio Rodrigues Galhardo, 1803).

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sent to the Directors, by means of their Court; in this situation, Your Graces shall remain for two years, as we consider it the appropriate amount of time; it seems convenient that Your Graces shall undertake the craft of miners in order to acquire all the practical knowledge, for which you shall equally be aided by the Director; having finished the courses at Freiberg, Your Graces shall visit the mines of Saxony and Bohemia, and others of the Emperor’s states, in Hungary, and so on . . . ; after finishing the journey to Hungary, you shall visit the mines in Ekatarinenburg and its neighborhood in Russia; you shall then proceed to Sweden and Norway, and from thence to England, to visit the mines of Scotland and Wales, and finally of Cornwall, from whence you shall return to Portugal, by means of the Falmouth mail-boat; in all the Courts where you shall journey, which may be regarded as ministers of H. M., you shall present yourselves to receive protection and recommendation . . . and whenever there is need to acquire books of trade, machines and models to be bought and sent to the Lisbon Court, the Chief of the expedition shall make representations to the Ambassador . . . in order to meet the necessary expenses. . . . P. S. Contrary to the [foregoing] arrangements, Your Graces shall travel from England straight to Biscaye, to investigate the mines of that Province, and [any] others that you may judge to be interesting in the different Provinces of Spain.31

The journey by Sequeira, Andrada and Câmara demonstrated, at a practical and concrete level, the efforts of the Portuguese Government towards reforms aiming at reviving the Old Colonial System. Arrived back in Lisbon, both Andrada and Câmara immediately joined the administrative structure of the Kingdom. Andrada remained in Portugal, while Câmara was appointed Intendente General de Minas (General Mining Intendant) at the Province of Minas Gerais. In the texts written by Andrada and Câmara, proposals for modernization according to foreign examples were explicit, and among them those inspired by the German model predominated. A concrete attempt was the ‘Charta’ of 15 March 1803 prepared by Câmara in response to a request from Minister Dom Luiz de Sousa Coutinho in 1798. Câmara suggested, along with other things, the establishment of mineralogical and metallurgical schools; and specifically “the establishment of mineralogical and metallurgical schools similar to those of Freiberg and Schemnitz, which have brought those countries much admired advantages” (cited in Mendonça 1958, pp. 119–120) should be promoted. But these proposals were not implemented. Câmara presented his proposals again during the discussions about the creation of a university in Brazil, at the Constitutional Assembly of 1823, where he was a representative for Minas Gerais. However, his suggested German-style mining academy only became a reality much later, through the foundation of the Ouro Preto School of Mines in 1876. To understand this apparent paradox when analyzing the efforts made to revive mining, it is necessary to look at what happened in other countries, including Latin American ones. In countries like Nueva España (later Mexico), both the legislative reforms and the creation of a mining school were the result of demands arising from the miners themselves, not from proposals made by scholars who aimed at modernization, whatever the cost. The second point deals with the importance of mining within the two different economic contexts. Despite the decline of mining production in New Spain, it still exceeded that of the whole of the rest of Spanish America (15% higher in volume) and almost equalled that for the rest of the world (García 1991, p. 19). In Brazil, by contrast, despite all the investments made in mining, agriculture has remained dominant until the present day. Unfortunately for geoscientists, so-called agribusiness is still dominant compared to the mining industry, despite the immense changes of recent decades. REFERENCES Anonymous. 1935. Informação sobre as Minas do Brasil. Anais da Biblioteca Nacional 57: 159–186. Antonil (João Antônio Andreoni). 1982. Cultura e Opulência do Brasil por suas drogas e minas. São Paulo: EDUSP/Itatiaia. Costa, Antônio Gilberto. 2009. As minas de ouro da América Portuguesa e a cartografia dos desertões nos séculos XVII e XVIII. In: Proceedings of Simpósio Luso-Brasileiro de Cartografia Histórica.

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Biblioteca Nacional, Manuscript C–75–7–1, cited in: Mendonça (1958, pp. 26–27).

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