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7 books match the query 'Copper industry and trade'

cover of Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana's Smelter City

Anaconda

Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana's Smelter City

Laurie Mercier

University of Illinois Press, 2001

Laurie Mercier's look at "community unionism" examines the distinctive culture of cooperation and activism fostered by residents in Anaconda, Montana, home to the world's largest copper smelter and the namesake of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. 

Mercier depicts the vibrant life of the smelter city at full steam, incorporating the candid commentary of the locals ("the company furnished three pair of leather gloves . . . and all the arsenic [dust] you could eat"). During five decades of devoted unionism, locals embraced an "alternative Americanism" that championed improved living standards for working people as the best defense against communism. Mercier also explores how gender limits on women's political, economic, and social roles shaped the nature and outcome of labor struggles, and traces how union rivalries, environmental concerns, and the 1980 closing of the Anaconda smelter transformed the town. 

A fascinating portrait of how community molds working class consciousness, Anaconda offers important insights about the changing nature of working class culture and collective action.

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cover of Colonel Greene and the Copper Skyrocket: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of William Cornell Greene: Copper King, Cattle Baron, and Promoter Extraordinary in Mexico, the American Southwest, and the New York Financial District

Colonel Greene and the Copper Skyrocket

The Spectacular Rise and Fall of William Cornell Greene: Copper King, Cattle Baron, and Promoter Extraordinary in Mexico, the American Southwest, and the New York Financial District

C. L. Sonnichsen

University of Arizona Press, 1974

Winner of both the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's Western Heritage Award and the Western Writers of America's Spur Award

"A solid account of a southwestern 'character' who has flitted in and out of frontier and economic history."—American Historical Review

"A creditable work on a fascinating individual. In delightful writing style he has reconstructed Greene's life, explaining the ambitions as well as the frailties of this extraordinary entrepreneur."—History

"A rewarding study of the later days of mining."—Arizona and the West
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cover of Copper for America: The United States Copper Industry from Colonial Times to the 1990s

Copper for America

The United States Copper Industry from Colonial Times to the 1990s

Charles K. Hyde

University of Arizona Press, 1998

This comprehensive history of copper mining tells the full story of the industry that produces one of America's most important metals. The first inclusive account of U.S. copper in one volume, Copper for America relates the discovery and development of America's major copper-producing areas—the eastern United States, Tennessee, Michigan, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Alaska—from colonial times to the present. Starting with the predominance of New England and the Middle Atlantic states in the early nineteenth century, Copper for America traces the industry's migration to Michigan in mid-century and to Montana, Arizona, and other western states in the late nineteenth century. The book also examines the U.S. copper industry's decline in the twentieth century, studying the effects of strong competition from foreign copper industries and unforeseen changes in the national and global copper markets.

An extensively documented chronicle of the rise and fall of individual mines, companies, and regions, Copper for America will prove an essential resource for economic and business historians, historians of technology and mining, and western historians.
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cover of Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet

Mass Destruction

The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet

Timothy J. LeCain

Rutgers University Press, 2009

The place: The steep mountains outside Salt Lake City. The time: The first decade of the twentieth century. The man: Daniel Jackling, a young metallurgical engineer. The goal: A bold new technology that could provide billions of pounds of cheap copper for a rapidly electrifying America. The result: Bingham's enormous "Glory Hole," the first large-scale open-pit copper mine, an enormous chasm in the earth and one of the largest humanmade artifacts on the planet. Mass Destruction is the compelling story of Jackling and the development of open-pit hard rock mining, its role in the wiring of an electrified America, as well its devastating environmental consequences.

Mass destruction mining soon spread around the nation and the globe, providing raw materials essential to the mass production and mass consumption that increasingly defined the emerging "American way of life." At the dawn of the last century, Jackling's open pit replaced immense but constricted underground mines that probed nearly a mile beneath the earth, to become the ultimate symbol of the modern faith that science and technology could overcome all natural limits. A new culture of mass destruction emerged that promised nearly infinite supplies not only of copper, but also of coal, timber, fish, and other natural resources.

But, what were the consequences? Timothy J. LeCain deftly analyzes how open-pit mining continues to affect the environment in its ongoing devastation of nature and commodification of the physical world. The nation's largest toxic Superfund site would be one effect, as well as other types of environmental dead zones around the globe. Yet today, as the world's population races toward American levels of resource consumption, truly viable alternatives to the technology of mass destruction have not yet emerged.

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cover of Red Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture

Red Gold of Africa

Copper in Precolonial History and Culture

Eugenia W. Herbert

University of Wisconsin Press, 1984

The classic history of copper working and use throughout Africa
A finalist for the 1985 Herskovits Prize
First Paperback Edition
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cover of Smoke and Tailings: An Environmental History of Butte and Anaconda, Montana, 1880–1930

Smoke and Tailings

An Environmental History of Butte and Anaconda, Montana, 1880–1930

Fredric L. Quivik

University of Nevada Press, 2026

Smoke and Tailings explores the environmental history of copper-smelting industry in Butte and Anaconda, Montana. Situating within the emerging “Envirotech” field, Smoke and Tailings blends environmental history and the history of technology. Author and historian Fredric L. Quivik integrates these disciplines with political, legal, and business history to provide a comprehensive analysis of the industry’s environmental legacy.

Butte’s history, a long-standing subject of historical inquiry, gains new depth as Quivik examines the technological developments pioneered by local mining companies. He challenges the simplistic narrative of a powerful corporation imposing its will on helpless agricultural communities. Local communities mounted strong opposition to the industry’s polluting methods; Quivik acknowledges this dynamic while also revealing efforts by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company to address environmental issues. The company developed and implemented technical solutions to minimize resource waste and mitigate damage, driven by both economic interests and litigation pressures. While these advancements lessened some of the environmental harm, they were insufficient to prevent long-term consequences. The operations in Butte and Anaconda ultimately created the largest Superfund complex in the United States, requiring billions of dollars in remediation.

Quivik’s nuanced approach opens the “black box” of technology, showing how innovations both alleviated and exacerbated the environmental challenges of mining, milling, and smelting. In addition to contributing to the rich literature on smelter smoke, this book breaks new ground by examining the underexplored environmental impacts of tailings, offering a fresh perspective on the intersection of industry, technology, and environmental change. The cultural landscapes of Butte and Anaconda retain many features of the region’s history of both environmental degradation and remediation. Smoke and Tailings is an essential addition to the study of Butte’s industrial and ecological history.
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cover of There Used to Be Order: Life on the Copperbelt after the Privatisation of the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines

There Used to Be Order

Life on the Copperbelt after the Privatisation of the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines

Patience Mususa

University of Michigan Press, 2021

In There Used to Be Order, Patience Mususa considers social change in the Copperbelt region of Zambia following the re-privatization of the large state mining conglomerate, the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM), in the mid-1990s. As the copper mines were Zambia’s most important economic asset, the sale of ZCCM was considered a major loss to the country. More crucially, privatization marked the end of a way of life for mine employees and mining communities. Based on three years of ethnographic field research, this book examines life for those living in difficult economic circumstances, and considers the tension between the life they live and the nature of an “extractive area.” This account, unusual in its examination of middle-income decline in Africa, directs us to think of the Copperbelt not only as an extractive locale for copper whose activities are affected by the market, but also as a place where the residents’ engagement with the harsh reality of losing jobs and struggling to earn a living after the withdrawal of welfare is simultaneously changing both the material and social character of the place. Drawing on phenomenological approaches, the book develops a theoretical model of “trying,” which accounts for both Copperbelt residents’ aspirations and efforts.
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