Mining the Borderlands : Industry, Capital, and the Emergence of Engineers in the Southwest Territories, 1855-1910 / Sarah E.M. Grossman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grossman, Sarah E. M., author.

Series:

Mining and society series.

Mining and society series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mines and mineral resources--West (U.S.)--History.

Mines and mineral resources.

Mining corporations--West (U.S.)--History.

Mining corporations.

Mineral industries--Mexican-American Border Region--History.

Mineral industries.

Mining engineers--Mexican-American Border Region--History.

Mining engineers.

Mineral industries--Economic aspects--Mexican-American Border Region--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Reno, Nevada : University of Nevada Press, [2018]

Summary:

"'Capital mediators' argues that mining engineers were the critical intermediaries responsible for integrating the transnational hard-rock mining districts of North America into the economic system of the United States. Working as labor managers and technical experts, mining engineers were involved in the daily negotiations which brought private US capital up to and across the southwestern border as part of an ongoing project of American territorial and economic expansion. The elite social networks and gendered discourse of "expertise" invoked by these technocratic professionals were key components of the negotiations that led to the success or failure of the massive capital-intensive mining ventures of the nineteenth century. By integrating the history of technical expertise into the history of the transnational mining industry, this close look at borderlands mining contributes to an understanding of the process by which American economic hegemony was established in a border region peripheral to the federal governments of both Washington, D.C. and Mexico City."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Industrial transnationalism in the late nineteenth century

Early mining in the borderlands : the limits of "intelligence and capital"

Instituting expertise : mining education in the United States

Westering easterners : class, masculinity, and labor

Rhetoric and risk : the performance of objectivity at the Copper Queen Mine

Corporate capitalism : engineers and the birth of mass mining

Legibility and the technocratic landscape.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781943859849

1943859841

OCLC:

1031040343