Over the past five hundred years, North Americans have increasingly relied on mining to produce much of their material and cultural life. From cell phones and computers to cars, roads, pipes, pans, and even wall tile, mineral-intensive products have become central to North American societies. As this process has unfolded, mining has also indelibly shaped the natural world and the human societies within it. Mountains have been honeycombed, rivers poisoned, forests leveled, and the consequences of these environmental transformations have fallen unevenly across North America.
Drawing on the work of scholars from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, Mining North America examines these developments. It covers an array of minerals and geographies while bringing mining into the core debates that animate North American environmental history. Taken all together, the essays in this book make a powerful case for the centrality of mining in forging North American environments and societies.
Edited by:
John R. McNeill,
George Vrtis
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 28mm
Weight: 816g
ISBN: 9780520279162
ISBN 10: 0520279166
Pages: 456
Publication Date: 03 July 2017
Audience:
College/higher education
,
A / AS level
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Of Mines, Minerals, and North American Environmental History George Vrtis and J. R. McNeill PART ONE. CAPITALIST TRANSFORMATIONS 1. Exhausting the Sierra Madre: Mining Ecologies in Mexico over the Longue Durée Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert 2. Reconstructing the Environmental History of Colonial Mining: The Real del Catorce Mining District, Northeastern New Spain/Mexico, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Antonio Avalos-Lozano and Miguel Aguilar-Robledo PART TWO. INDUSTRIAL CATALYSTS 3. A World of Mines and Mills: Precious-Metals Mining, Industrialization, and the Nature of the Colorado Front Range George Vrtis 4. Consequences of the Comstock: The Remaking of Working Environments on America’s Largest Silver Strike, 1859–1880 Robert N. Chester III 5. Dust to Dust: The Colorado Coal Mine Explosion Crisis of 1910 Thomas G. Andrews 6. Copper and Longhorns: Material and Human Power in Montana’s Smelter Smoke War, 1860–1910 Timothy James LeCain 7. Efficiency, Economics, and Environmentalism: Low-Grade Iron Ore Mining in the Lake Superior District, 1913–2010 Jeffrey T. Manuel PART THREE. HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE 8. Mining the Atom: Uranium in the Twentieth-Century American West Eric Mogren 9. A Comparative Case Study of Uranium Mine and Mill Tailings Regulation in Canada and the United States Robynne Mellor 10. The Giant Mine’s Long Shadow: Arsenic Pollution and Native People in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories John Sandlos and Arn Keeling 11. Iron Mines, Toxicity, and Indigenous Communities in the Lake Superior Basin Nancy Langston 12. If the Rivers Ran South: Tar Sands and the State of the Canadian Nation Steven M. Hoffman 13. Quebec Asbestos: Triumph and Collapse, 1879–1983 Jessica van Horssen Afterword: Mining, Memory, and History Andrew C. Isenberg Contributors Index
J. R. McNeill is Professor of History and University Professor at Georgetown University. His most recent books are The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 and Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914. George Vrtis is Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Carleton College.
Reviews for Mining North America: An Environmental History since 1522
Mining North America (un)covers a lot of ground. It also succeeds at its major task: describing the intertwined social and environmental consequences of mining . . . [it] will prove an effective resource for those who want to better understand environmental change on a continental scale. --H-LatAm [A] valuable find and a worthy read. --Human Ecology (09/26/2018)
