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Life and work on the Zambian Copperbelt – a concentrated industrialised mining region along the border with DR Congo – has been a perennial subject for Africanist historians. In this book, Duncan Money for the first time focusses on the white mineworkers who monopolised skilled jobs on the mines from the 1920s to the 1960s and became one of the most affluent groups of workers on the planet. Money argues that this group was a highly mobile global workforce which constituted, and saw itself as, a racialised working class. For much of the twentieth century, this white working class moved between mining and industrial centres across and beyond the British Empire and their actions and forms of organisation were strongly influenced by their international connections and by their mobility. These transnational connections, and the white working-class militancy they produced, played a crucial role in shaping social categories of race and class on the Copperbelt and determining the evolution of a region which quickly became one of the world’s largest sources of copper.
See inside the book.
See inside the book.
Price: $155.00
Pages: 294
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Studies in the Social History of the Global South
Publication Date:
09 December 2021
ISBN: 9789004467330
Format: Hardcover
"White Mineworkers on Zambia’s Copperbelt, 1926–1974 is one of the first major works that explains the experiences of white male mineworkers on the Zambian Copperbelt. While in some ways the book is a traditional study of labour, it also offers new insights into the lives of white mineworkers, in particular into their consumption patterns. Money’s portrayal of the mineworkers’ social lifestyles highlights how critical it is to analyse the role of banks to understand white mineworkers’ use of currency and financial intelligence. The book, therefore, lays the basis for further studies to examine the dichotomy of banking and copper mining on Zambia’s Copperbelt". Jabulani Shaba, in South African Historical Journal, August 2022.
"Eloquently written, the author brings a colourful cast of characters to life.” [...] “This book is not just about Zambia, or mining per se, but has a much broader applicability: it covers mineral wealth and international capital, migration and labour, trade unions and economic development, and race in southern and central Africa. White Mineworkers On Zambia’s Copperbelt is an incredibly rich book that deserves to be widely read.” Tycho van der Hoog, in Connections, January 2023.
"Eloquently written, the author brings a colourful cast of characters to life.” [...] “This book is not just about Zambia, or mining per se, but has a much broader applicability: it covers mineral wealth and international capital, migration and labour, trade unions and economic development, and race in southern and central Africa. White Mineworkers On Zambia’s Copperbelt is an incredibly rich book that deserves to be widely read.” Tycho van der Hoog, in Connections, January 2023.
Duncan Money, DPhil. (2016), University of Oxford, is a historian and works at the African Studies Centre Leiden. He has published widely on the mining industry, labour and race and is the co-editor of Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa (Routledge, 2020).