This is not without historical precedent! Henry Ward was a US meteorite hunter (among other things) who salivated at the thought of confiscating Mexican meteorites in the early 20th.

Good spot for a labour history conference: pleasant views with a bit of heavy industry in the background.

✨Day 1 of our workshop was a great success! ⚒️🏔️We explored mining's role in sovereignty, state management & labor, using case studies from pre-hispanic Mexico, Japan, China & Sweden, and ended with an engaging archives roundtable on Central European mining collections. On to Day 2! 🏛️🔍 #Scarce

Lots of nice insights at the workshop: Copper mining in Tokugawa-era Japan was not lucrative as the state bought copper at a fixed price. However, mineowners had economic and social privileges connected to mining, and they had to keep mining to retain these privileges.

🌍⛏️ Kicking off our FWF-SCARCE workshop “Political Economies of Mining in the Early Modern World”! Mining shaped pre-modern economies, driving global networks, commerce & power. We’ll explore its role across Africa, Asia, Latin America & Europe. Let’s dig into its global and historical impact! 💡📜

Grey, rainy morning in Vienna brightened by attending a workshop on mining history.

Fascinating gov't archives on Dutch energy scenarios of the late 70s and early 80s: in the wake of the Arab oil boycot and intense public debate about nuclear energy different policy scenarios for 2000 and 2025 were developed, including a zero-growth one.

🚨Don't miss our workshop "Political Economies of Mining in the Early Modern World" @univie.ac.at organised by @eclaaire.bsky.social and @gbba.bsky.social. 📅 25–26 September 2025 !Please register! 📃 Program & info: bit.ly/4pslQfs #Scarce #histsci #histeco #mining

Energy historians: the Hagley Museum and Library is hosting "The Power of Energy" conference on October 30-31. It's an online conference and registration is now open. This will be a great chance to hear some exciting new research. Hope to see you there (virtually) www.hagley.org/research/con... 🗃️

Latest in the National: I spoke with Rachael Muir, Business Archives Surveying Officer for Scotland, who told me about her work across the country, investigating, organising, and sometimes rescuing archives. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 www.thenational.scot/culture/2548...

The EU spending €12m on a hydroelectric power station to power bitcoin mining in a Congolese nature reserve run by a Belgian aristocrat could not be more bizarre. Great work by @oli4vb.bsky.social: www.ftm.eu/articles/bit...

If you write professionally in the UK, make sure to sign up to ALCS for your fair share of royalties

This is very cool!

The artist Sana Ginwalla has created an online photo archive based on 1000 uncollected negatives, slides and prints that she found in the attic of Lusaka’s oldest photo studios. What a great initiative: www.zambiabelonging.com

#MondayMotivation from today's freshly catalogued archives

It's September payout time at @alcs.co.uk! It's always lovely to get royalties collected on my behalf. My usual reminder to UK writers who contribute to magazines, journals, books, TV and radio: do sign up if you haven't already.

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.

I'll be in Austria this week, in Vienna and then Linz

#OtD 21 Sep 1945 200,000 coal miners in the US went on strike in support of supervisory employees' demand for collective bargaining; part of a wave of strikes in the wake of WWII. Learn more in this great book which tells the story of those strikes: shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/...

Come share all your papers! about.hcommons.org Also, you only need an account to upload. If you just want to read and download PDFs, you don't need to register.

A Zambian court has sent two men to prison for “attempting to use witchcraft” to kill President Hakainde Hichilema. The case relied on a colonial-era law. It’s the first time the country’s courts have handed down such a conviction.

All Protocol Observed Welcome to Issue 214 of The Continent The shoes and handbags cost thousands. The workers earn just enough to eat. Inside Kano’s leather pits — and the quiet fight for change. Read it here: bit.ly/214_TC

As the great powers battle over access to Africa's critical minerals the trading hub of Singapore has a different target: its carbon credits www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Does anyone have access to any of this, please? academic.oup.com/book/60513

"Taking its cue from the weather wars that unfolded around the Alps in the eighteenth century, this article..." What a wonderful way to begin an article. Sometimes you read something that suddenly opens up hitherto unknown areas of history. In this case, 18th century Alpine weather wars.

All other academic conferences need to raise their game

I'm quoted making this same point in @edstoddardza.bsky.social's column in the @dailymaverick.co.za: "It’s a case of our legitimate protection of national interests, on one hand, and your unjust interference with foreign investors on the other." www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025...

New book on the miners' strikes in Britain during the Second World War by Ariane Mak: editions.ehess.fr/ouvrages/ouv...

Academia dot edu licensing agreement says it can use your likeness and voice and publications in any manner they want, world wide.

It’s out! The Price of Gold is available NOW to order through @mcgillqueensup.bsky.social and fine retailers online. Will be frantically peeking in bookstore windows soon!

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.

E-books are, essentially, evil

Always interesting what gets framed as 'resource nationalism' and 'state intervention' and what doesn't. Canada's Prime Minister apparently threatened to block the merger between Anglo American and Teck unless they moved the headquarters to Canada: www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art...

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.

Dinosaurs were ecosystem engineers! Like modern elephants, Dinosaurs knocked down trees, creating open floodplain landscapes with meandering rivers. After their extinction, Paleocene landscapes became dense forests with coal swamps. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s43...

September 14, 1769, birthday of German mining engineer, naturalist & explorer Alexander von Humboldt. This hand-drawing by Humboldt shows magmatic dikes near Predazzo in the Dolomites, a site that played an important role in the history of geology ⚒️ www.bressan-geoconsult.eu/alexander-vo...

16th-century painting showing an African knight of the order of Saint James of the Sword. Chafariz d’el Rey (The King’s Fountain) painting in the Alfama District, ca. 1560-1580, Lisbon. www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/investigat...

Funded by the pension fund of Britain's then state-owned coal industry, the National Coal Board.

🚨SAVE Pambazuko! Protect African journalism🚨 We are fundraising to save Pambazuko, the pioneering free Swahili-language news platform read by over 300,000 people a week - one of the most important sources of independent news in Africa. #SavePambazuko www.gofundme.com/f/save-pamba...

I'm quoted in this @thecontinent.org story on the slump and potential collapse of Botswana's diamond industry: “The appeal of diamonds was always partly based on scarcity. And now they are no longer scarce”

20 years ago, I worked at a diamond mine in Botswana. We knew even then this was coming. This week's @thecontinent.org

Botswana owes its fortunes to the promise that ‘diamonds are forever’. But in the current market slump, shrinking company reserves and the dwindling of mining towns, suggest that forever may have already come and gone.

A relic from a different era at the offices of the Mineworkers Union of Zambia.

Small mining companies with African operations will often have on their boards former European government ministers, retired senior military figures and businessmen whose personal wealth is not dissimiliar to the GDP of the country they are investing in.

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...

Someone is trying to set up an "Amazon of raw materials" if you need to order any manganese ore or anthracite Coal. Minumum purchase is 5000 tonnes though and you pay extra for shipping: hibarri.com/listing/mang...

It's totally unfair to judge the Israeli state based on the actions of the Prime Minister, Defense Minister, Finance Minister, National Security Minister, Diaspora Minister, Foreign Minister, and Settlements Minister. You're also taking their calls to flatten Gaza and kill everyone out of context.

Tshiamiso Trust ( #tuberculosis settlement) makes concession to #Lesotho, easing requirements to make it easier for families of deceased #Basotho #miners to get settlement money: #Mining #Silicosis #Development #Apartheid #MigrantLabor lestimes.com/requirements...

People in northern Australia using coins minted in East Africa is a genuinely incredible historical detail.

AJP Taylor - not a referencing guy