A Global History of Gold Rushes

"At long last we have the gold rush phenomenon presented in a truly global and comparative fashion--from California to Alaska, and from eastern Australia to Ghana. This collection of essays by esteemed scholars changes the way we think about any particular gold rush as well as the complex social, economic, and political manifestations they brought about." --David Igler, author of The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush "An outstanding collection of essays exemplifying global history at its best--dynamic, interconnected, and original. Gold rush societies brought people together from all over the globe; everyone came from somewhere else. In California and the Australian colonies, Chinese migrants sometimes comprised up to a quarter of all fortune seekers. Cosmopolitan in composition, these jostling, rapacious, New World communities were also crucibles of nationalist exclusion. This superb book charts the material, political, and social changes effected by these momentous events." --Marilyn Lake, author of Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform "Richly detailed and conceptually adventurous, this book shows how the rush for gold catapulted the nineteenth century into rapid globalization. Everything was affected--labor, capital, demography, environment, politics--as this collaboration of leading historians reveal. Global history at its best." --Alison Bashford, author of Global Population: History, Geopolitics, and Life on Earth