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mininghistory.bsky.social
Duncan Money
@mininghistory.bsky.social
7.2K followers 600 following 1.5K posts
Historian and consultant. I work on mining, labour, migration and Southern Africa.
More on https://duncan.money
Contact: duncanmoneyhistory@proton.me
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mininghistory.bsky.social
Went for a walk to take my mind off work but I can't seem to avoid it.
Rural landscape with deep green grass and trees. In the background is a mountain with a forest covering the summit. In the foreground is a small white metal sign reading "Dumico Kajwi Mine Site"
November 10, 2025 at 9:47 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
I sometimes wonder how much time I have wasted working out how to disable unhelpful features that Word automatically introduces.

In this case, it's track change cards that appear whenever you move the cursor over edited text. If anyone knows how to remove these, I would be very grateful.
Blue text book with white writing. Text reads: "New Track Change Cards We've added new Track Change cards to make it easier to review suggestions made by others. Click on someone else's change to see details and accept or rejection their suggestions."
November 9, 2025 at 11:29 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
Clipping from a newspaper advert with "Copper is King" in large capital letters at the top. Advert text reads "Copper is the safest, the most profitable, the most permanent investment in the world today"
November 7, 2025 at 9:27 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
British press cartoons regularly depicted mining companies as African children in the 19th and early 20th century.

In this case, two competing tin companies in colonial Nigeria in 1913:
Newspaper cartoon showing a caricature of two black children on a see-saw. One of the children is falling off the see-saw. The cartoon caption reads "The young crossbred known as Anglo Continental has had a bad fall while the position of his dusky playmate Roppy looks exceedingly perilous"
November 6, 2025 at 9:53 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
The wonders of modern technology: I can wake up, type "Send newspaper" into my phone and instantly receive a copy of @thecontinent.org.
Screenshot of a WhatsApp covnersation with The Continent. It shows a message reading "Send newspaper" at sent at 8:32 and a reply "Here's your copy" at 8:32 with a link to a PDF newspaper.
November 2, 2025 at 1:34 PM
mininghistory.bsky.social
Fitting advert in the airport in Zambia's biggest mining region:
Large advert billboard on a wall. The advert shows a map of the world with the slogan "Thanks to Minerals Today you Fly"
October 30, 2025 at 12:23 PM
mininghistory.bsky.social
Guilty as charged. My next article:
Title page from an article. Title reads: "Fiery Collieries and Explosive Situations Towards a History of the 1972 Hwange Colliery Disaster" The words "Towards a" are highlighted in yellow.
October 29, 2025 at 8:14 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
No nonsense journal cover as well. Does what it says on the tin.
Front cover of the Journal of Australasian Mining History from October 2025. The cover shows the journal title in red capitals and the tag line "Embracing all aspects of mining history, mining archaeology and heritage" The cover image is old mining equipment in a rural setting. Possibly a stamp mill. The bottom of the cover reads "Published by the Australasian Mining History Accociation"
October 27, 2025 at 10:33 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
Another positive review of our book 'Born with a Copper Spoon', this time in the Journal of Australasian Mining History.

I'm very pleased the reviewer Ben Mountford highlighted this paragraph from the introduction, which gets to the heart of why copper is important:
Screenshot of a page of text. Text reads: "During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries copper was fundamentally entwined with the course of world history. While its use can be traced back to antiquity, it was in this period (as Born with a Copper Spoon so powerfully illustrates), that the metal first came to occupy a predominant role in shaping human society: The malleability, durability, tensile strength, resistance to corrosion, and, perhaps above all, conductive properties of copper made it the key ingredient of the Second Industrial Revolution and the first wave of globalization in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, as the essential component of undersea telegraph cables, copper literally connected the world. The lengthening of the day through artificial light, the generation of electric power, and the global spread of telecommunications all required copper, and their expansion was dependent on ever-increasing copper production. (p. 3). It is onto this broad canvas laid out by editors Robrecht Declercq, Duncan Money and"
October 27, 2025 at 10:33 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
I'm quoted @LaVanguardia about Botswana's diamond industry and what happens when someone invents a cheaper, synthetic alternative to your country's main export:

www.lavanguardia.com/internaciona...
Page from a Spanish newspaper. The page has the headline "Botsuana Los diamantes no son para siempre" and a picture of a man examining a diamond under a magnifying glass.
October 21, 2025 at 12:13 PM
mininghistory.bsky.social
Our project to digitise the Zambia Congress of Trade Union archives has now been scanning documents for a year. Over 80,000 pages scanned so far, despite severe power shortages in Zambia!
Photo of a two-storey building with cars parked next to it. On the wall of the building is a sign reading "ZCTU HQ Solidarity House" Underneath the sign is a red banner reading "Zambia Congress of Trade Unions #Solidarityforever"
October 10, 2025 at 11:41 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
The people behind @thecontinent.org have launched a new paper focused on South Africa called @thefridaypaper.bsky.social and the cover story is about gold and Johannesburg's new gold mine.

You can read it for free here: www.thecontinent.org/_files/ugd/2...
Front cover of a newspaper called "The Friday Paper". The cover image is a drawing of the central Johannesburg skyline showing skycrapers and beanth the skyscapers are horizontal layers of pastel-coloured rock.
October 6, 2025 at 10:20 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
Good spot for a labour history conference: pleasant views with a bit of heavy industry in the background.
View over a city on a sunny day. There is a wooded hillside in the foreground and industrial buildings in the background.
September 26, 2025 at 12:25 PM
mininghistory.bsky.social
Grey, rainy morning in Vienna brightened by attending a workshop on mining history.
Photo of two paper booklets sitting on a white tabletop. One booklet is titled "Political Economy of Mining in the Early Modern World" and has a picture of a hill with two pillars on it. The second booklet is titled "Maps".
September 25, 2025 at 8:48 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
Real early 20th century lives here:
Born in Lithuania, educated in Moscow, emigrated first to Philadelphia and then Johannesburg, and moved again after their shop was razed to ground during an insurrection to open a pharmacy in the rural Free State.
Page from a book. Text reads: "In Wolmaransstad, the key to that particular door lay in the local chemist shop. Leonard and Sonia Wolpe, then in their late forties, hailed from the small village of Shavel, near Vilna, in Lithuania, and had both qualified as apothecaries under Sonia's father in Moscow before emigrating to the United States in 1911. From Philadelphia, the couple had gone to Johannesburg where Leonard had formed a strong personal association with the Labour Party activist Morris Kentridge while practising as a pharmacist in the white working-class stronghold of Fordsburg until the family shop was destroyed in the bombardment of the suburb by Prime Minister Smuts's troops during the 1922 mineworkers' strike."
September 22, 2025 at 10:25 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
New book on the miners' strikes in Britain during the Second World War by Ariane Mak:

editions.ehess.fr/ouvrages/ouv...
Front cover of the book "En guerre et en grève. Enquêtes dans les cités minières britanniques (1939-1945)" The image on the front cover is a black and white photo of two men walking on a road with a mine headgear behind them.
September 18, 2025 at 8:24 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
Nice graphic from @vcelements.bsky.social showing global gold production by region.

Actual gold production from Africa is even higher than the figures provided here as gold is smuggled from the continent in large quantities and not captured in official statistics.
Chart showing world gold production by region. Different regions are represented as different sized gold bars. Africa is the largest, followed by Asia, CIS, Central and Southern America, North America, Oceania and Europe.
September 17, 2025 at 8:58 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
China's massive expansion of metal industries gets a lot of press but the Gulf states have done something similar.

This is Emirates Global Aluminium's Jebel Ali smelter in 1990, when it produced 149k tonnes of aluminium, and three decades later, when it produced 2.5m tonnes.
Aerial view of an industrial facility along an arid coastline. The facility is a series of long buildings arranged in a square block. Caption for the photo reads: "Figure 1. EGA's Jebel Ali smelter in 1990." Aerial photo of a large industrial facility on a coastline. The facility takes up much of land area visible in the photo. Photo caption reads "Figure 2. EGA's Jebel Ali smelter in 2022"
September 15, 2025 at 12:15 PM
mininghistory.bsky.social
A relic from a different era at the offices of the Mineworkers Union of Zambia.
Old, torn poster on a white noticeboard. The poster has red edges. I nthe middle is a drawing of a miner and a policeman on horseback with a truncheon raised. The slogan on the poster reads "Hands off British National Union of Mineworkers"
September 12, 2025 at 11:01 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
One unexpected detail in the revelations about Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein is they were involved in a mining deal in Congo-Brazzaville:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09...
Screenshot of an email. Email reads: "FWD From: STALEY, Jes To: EPSTEIN, Jeffery Sent: 7 October 2010 From: MANDELSON, Peter In Congo Brazzaville last week, I talked at length with President Sassou N'Guesso, including about the above new mine. Exploration, he told me, has been undertaken by a consortium of investors backed by JP Morgan. The government is reaching a final decision on whether to issue a full mining licence. I spoke to the Minister of Mines about this, who is favourable to the licence, but the President wanted to discuss it further with me. No obligation but if there is anyone in JPM who might want to talk to me privately about this, please shout. I would be grateful for no approaches to other third parties about this in meantime. Hope you are well. Sorry not to see you in London this week."
September 11, 2025 at 12:48 PM
mininghistory.bsky.social
On a related note, international support (from South Africa and elsewhere) for coal miners in Britain locked out during the 1926 dispute is under-researched:
Clipping from an old newspaper. The header of the newspaper reads: "Official organ of the South African Mine Workers' Union" Headline reads "The Coal War in Britain Rand and File Still Solid"
September 8, 2025 at 9:49 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
The context was Churchill's role in Britain's 1926 miners' strike, which the union suggested he should be executed for.

The union's political radicalism was combined with racial fears and support for segregation. This article is from the same year:
Clipping from an old newspaper column. The headline reads "Are White Races Doomed? Professor Says Yes! Reversion to Mongols"
September 8, 2025 at 9:49 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
South Africa's mines have long generated a kind of confrontational militancy and radical politics that has survived successive major political changes.

This is from the whites-only miners' union a century ago:
Clipping from an old newspaper. The headline reads "Should Winston Churchill be Hanged?" Underneath is a sub-heading "Miners' Children to Perish"
September 8, 2025 at 9:49 AM
mininghistory.bsky.social
It seems fairly accurate too. I only spotted a couple of errors: Cornwall's famous South Crofty Mine has been moved to a field in northwest England and Palabora Copper has shifted several thousand kilometres north into the Sahara.
Screenshot from Google Earth. It shows a satellite image of the eastern Sahara with a red dot showing the Palabora Copper near the River Nile. Screenshot from Google Earth. It shows a satellite image of northern England with a red dot reading "South Crofty Mine"
September 5, 2025 at 12:47 PM
mininghistory.bsky.social
Amazing free resource created by the ICMM: a global dataset of mining and processing sites that can be integrated with Google Maps!
Download here: www.icmm.com/en-gb/resear...
Screenshot from Google Maps. Satellite image of Southern Africa with red dots showing the location of mines and processing facilities. A text box shows information about Lumwana Mine including its name, location, commodity and asset type.
September 5, 2025 at 12:47 PM