Over the past two centuries, industrial societies hungry for copper – essential for light, power, and communication – have demanded ever-increasing quantities of the metal. Born with a Copper Spoon examines how the metal has been produced, distributed, controlled, and sold on a global scale. However, this is not simply a narrative of ever-increasing and deepening global connections. It is also about periods of deglobalization, fragmentation, and attempts to sever connections. Throughout history, copper production has spawned its own practices, technologies, and a constantly changing political economy. Large-scale production has affected ecologies, states, and companies, while creating and even destroying local communities dependent on volatile commodity markets. Former president of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda once remarked that Zambians were “born with a copper spoon in our mouths,” but few societies managed to profit from copper’s abundance.
From copper cartels and the futures market to the consequences of resource nationalism, Born with a Copper Spoon delivers a global perspective on one of the world’s most important metals.
Introduction: Worlds of Copper? / Robrecht Declercq, Hans Otto Frøland, and Duncan Money
Part 1: Connections, Technologies, People: Creating the Global Fabric of Copper
1 The Gains of Going Global: The Return on Investment in International Copper Mining during the Second Industrial Revolution / Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg, and Dimitrios Theodoridis
2 Futures Markets as Trustbusters: The Secrétan Copper Cartel and the London Metal Exchange, 1887–89 / Nathan Delaney
3 American Mining Engineers and the Global Copper Industry, 1880–1945 / Duncan Money
4 The Path to Dominance: American Copper Mining, 1880–1916 / Jeremy Mouat
5 Comparing Copper Nationalism in Zambia and Papua New Guinea, 1964–74 / Ingeborg Guldal and Frida Brende Jenssen
Part 2: Grounding Copper: Communities and Socio-Ecological Transformations
6 Copper Mining in Cuba at the Beginning of Mining Internationalization, 1829–70 / Ángel Pascual Martínez-Soto, Miguel Á. Pérez de Perceval, and Susana Martínez-Rodríguez
7 Copper Communities on the Central African Copperbelt, 1950–2000 / Iva Peša
8 Confronting Kennecott: The Lost City of Bingham Canyon and the History of Mining-Induced Resettlement / Brian James Leech
9 Global and Local Interactions: The Great War, Global Trade, and Community Impacts in the Australian Copper Mining Industry, 1900–20 / Erik Eklund
Part 3: Haves and Have-Nots: Copper in the Age of National Control
10 The Copper Industry as National Enterprise in Modern Japan / Patricia Sippel
11 Katanga and the American World of Copper: Mechanization, Vertical Integration, and the Territorialization of Colonial Capitalism, 1900–30 / Robrecht Declercq
12 The Establishment of Iran’s Copper Mining Industry: The Downfall of Anaconda and Selection Trust in the 1960s–70s / Abdolreza Alamdar and Ali A. Saeidi
13 Copper in Chile: From the New Deal to Full Concessions, 1955–81 / Ángel Soto and Alejandro San Francisco
14 Producer Cartel, International Commodity Agreement, and the Role of the US Government Copper Stockpile / Hans Otto Frøland
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