A Global History of Gold Rushes

Nothing set the world in motion like gold. Between the discovery of California placer gold in 1848 and the nostalgic rush to Alaska fifty years later, the search for the precious yellow metal accelerated global circulations of people, goods, capital, and technologies. A Global History of Gold Rushes brings together historians of the United States, Africa, Australasia, and the Pacific World to tell the rich story of these nineteenth century gold rushes in global perspective. Gold was central to the growth of global capitalism; it whetted the appetites of empire builders, mobilized the integration of global markets and economies, profoundly affected the environment, and transformed global migration patterns. Together these essays tell the story of fifty years that changed the world.

Benjamin Mountford is Senior Lecturer in History at Australian Catholic University. He was formerly a David Myers Research Fellow in History at La Trobe University, and is the author of Britain, China, & Colonial Australia and coeditor of Fighting Words: Fifteen Books That Shaped the Postcolonial World.

Stephen Tuffnell, Associate Professor of Modern US History at the University of Oxford, is currently completing Emigrant Foreign Relations: Independence and Interdependence in the Atlantic, c.1789-1902, and researches US history from a global perspective.