I spent the morning writing a narrative bibliography of my own work, at least partially to work out where I'm going next: www.williamcarruthers.co.uk/blank-3

A fair point! Gold was a curse for many people in the region.

I sadly don't think so. SA does not have the minerals required for renewable energy, etc. in sufficient quantities. SA's biggest mining exports are coal, gold and platinum, hardly the minerals of the future.

You should tell them absolutely do not do this! There are still some good reasons to do a PhD but there are massive costs and the sector they aim to join may not even exist when they finish in 3-4 years.

Replacing Customs Revenue with Taxes on Income and Domestic Consumption: The South African Experience The world is currently witnessing two contrasting economic policy experiments. On the one hand, President Donald Trump aims to replace other tax revenues with tariff revenues. All empirical evidenc...

The data was kindly provided by Krige Siebrits, co-author of an article on the history of income tax and customs in South Africa in @jsas-journal.bsky.social:

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The increase in mining taxes after 1948 only led to a modest increase in the share of total government revenues as revenues from income taxes increased sharply in these years.

Graph showing mining tax revenues in South Africa from 1913 to 1959. The graph has two lines showing mining tax as a percentage of overall revenues and mining tax in absolutely terms. Both increase sharply in the early 1930s and the mining tax in absolute terms increases again in the early 1950s.

Mining taxes in South Africa as a % of overall revenue and in absolute terms.

Two things stand out: a massive increase in the 1930s as the gold industry boomed, and a big increase after 1948 as the apartheid government sought new revenues to pay for harsher racial segregation.

Update on the most moral army in the world.

You would assume 20th century history had gone very differently on learning that a ship of the Preußische Bergwerks- und Hütten-Aktiengesellschaft passed unscathed through a major warzone as no-one dared fire on it.

I was moored up next to this ship earlier this year. It is absolutely massive.

The Prussian Mine and Foundry Company (today known as the package holiday provider TUI) triumphs again.

Photograph of MRC exhibition space, with four cases containing original archives relating to the 1926 General Strike.

Photograph of the University of Warwick Library lobby, showing some of the display boards about the 1926 General Strike.

Photograph of the MRC exhibition space, looking towards a back wall covered with images of archives from the General Strike. A couple of the display cases (containing original archives) can also be seen.

Photograph of MRC exhibition space. It's taken at an angle that looks a little as though the photographer is in the process of falling over, but shows some of the contents of a display case on the 'Coalfield Roots' of the 1926 General Strike.

Cases filled and exhibition ready!

'Nine Days in May: Remembering the 1926 General Strike' will run until 5 June - featuring archives on the strike, its causes and consequences

Want MORE General Strike content? Our digitised sources and resources are free online at warwick.ac.uk/services/lib...

Thanks!

Thanks! Doing my best

Note to editors, people are calling this essential reading:

bsky.app/profile/rach...

I'm writing a longer history of Anglo American and what it meant for the region over the last century but struggling to think of where I could publish it. There's not an obvious venue for this kind of stuff.

Opening page to the RHS guide to becoming a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. With full abstract: :Fellowship is one of several ways to join and belong to the Royal Historical Society. Fellows are elected to this position by the Society in recognition of their work for the historical discipline and profession. There are many different routes to Fellowship, just as there are different kinds of contributions and careers within the discipline of history. Today’s RHS Fellows are history practitioners from a very wide range of backgrounds (within and beyond higher education) who have contributed to historical understanding and knowledge through a body of work. These contributions take many forms: from academic publications of different formats, to editorial and curatorial work, history programming and public history. This post addresses common questions asked by those considering applying to join the Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society. If you are interested in making an application, we hope this helps."

The Society's Fellowship is a UK / worldwide gathering of historians who've contributed to historical understanding and knowledge through a body of work.

If you're interested in joining them, we've a brief guide to the many activities of RHS Fellows and how to apply bit.ly/3OzhoxK #Skystorians 1/2

Screenshot from the Mercurcia website. The Mercuria company name and round logo are at the top of the page. Text underneath reads: "Overview A strategic turning point for the DRC’s economic sovereignty Since the end of the 1990s, marketing of metals produced on Congolese territory has been mainly carried out by foreign third parties, depriving the State of the ability to make optimal use of its national production. The establishment of Congolese structures for the marketing of metals produced in the country is a historic return to the global value chain for the country, and will facilitate better integration for the DRC into the physical and financial flows from its mining production."

You know the mining boom is getting weird when commodity traders are talking about Congo's economic sovereignty and how foreign companies have exploited the country.

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

“Wealth-in-People” and “Wealth-in-Land” in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence.

www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Must be a long term closure. I visited Castello Estense (which was fantastic) in 2023 and tried to visit the monastery afterwards, and it was closed then too.

#OtD 19 Apr 1912 miners in Kanawha County, West Virginia, went on strike after bosses refused their demand for wages equal to other mines. Largely ended by May 1, the strike continued in Paint Creek and Cabin Creek resulting in many dead. More in our pod: workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e57-...

True enough. Much fewer of a younger generation in County Durham though.

No Cornish miners left to be suspicious of, and not many Cornish Methodists left either for that matter.

Walking dragline against a very blue sky

Sign board detailing the sunshine miners landmark memorial explaining the history of the walking dragline on the site

Unexpected mining heritage on a day out at St Aidan’s RSPB site! Beautiful sunshine and an electric Tramper chair to borrow - hurrah!

Filmed at Buffelsfontein Mine near Stillfontein apparently and that's been closed since 2013 according to Wiki. The scenes of the descent down the sub-vertical shafts are really something!

Source is Derrik Scott's history of the Great Strike, though he is referencing an article in 'Bands and Banners', a now defunct publication of Durham NUM.

Paragraph of text reading: "The Durham miners have long memories. The Rev. Colin C. Short, a Methodist Minister writing in “Bands and Banners” vol. 3, Autumn 1999 reports that when he first came to the north-east to be minister of churches at Burnhope, South Moor and Craghead in the Stanley Circuit in 1980, he was asked by the husband of one of his members where he came from? On replying “East Cornwall” he was called a “black jack”. Apparently, this was the term used by the Durham miners of the 19th century to Cornish men who were “strike-breakers” in the 1832 and 1844 strikes."

Memories in mining communities: a Cornish Methodist minister reported in 1980 that he was called a 'black jack' on arriving in County Durham because Cornish miners had been used to break the Great Miners Strike on the coalfield, in 1844.

Ah, that makes sense. It looks like it was filmed somewhere on the Far West Rand (maybe in KOSH?) or the southern Free State goldfields.

Interesting. Didn’t know there was dredger tin mining in Thailand (it's more commonly associated with Malaysia). Any references to hydraulic mining at the site?

Got to climb around on a dredger like they used to mine tin in Thailand historically