Migration, Mining, and the African Diaspora

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

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2. Introduction

   • Barbara P. Josiah

   Pages 1-8

3. African Diaspora Migrant Miners and Guyana’s El Dorado

   • Barbara P. Josiah

   Pages 9-22

4. Migration and Mining Strategies in a Colonial Society

   • Barbara P. Josiah

   Pages 23-37

5. Mining Factors in a Diversified Economy

   • Barbara P. Josiah

   Pages 39-56

6. The Perils of Labor in Mining: Migration and Mortality

   • Barbara P. Josiah

   Pages 57-70

7. Aspects of Infrastructure Development: Gold and Diamonds

   • Barbara P. Josiah

   Pages 71-91

8. Another Approach: Organizing Bauxite Production

   • Barbara P. Josiah

   Pages 93-108

9. Evolving Relations: Mining and Trade Unionism

   • Barbara P. Josiah

   Pages 109-128

10. Internal Migration and Village Dynamics: Families and Communities Coping

    • Barbara P. Josiah

    Pages 129-144

11. Knowledge Transfer and Cooperativism: Agriculture and Mining Eras

    • Barbara P. Josiah

    Pages 145-155

12. African Continuities, Jewels, and Economic Linkages to Mining

    • Barbara P. Josiah

    Pages 157-173

13. Conclusion

    • Barbara P. Josiah

    Pages 175-178

14. Back Matter

    Pages 179-274

    PDF

From the late 1800s, African workers migrated to the mineral-rich hinterland areas of Guyana, mined gold, diamonds, and bauxite; diversified the country's economy; and contributed to national development. Utilizing real estate, financial, and death records, as well as oral accounts of the labor migrants along with colonial officials and mining companies' information stored in National Archives in Guyana, Great Britain, and the U.S. Library of Congress, the study situates miners into the historical structure of the country's economic development. It analyzes the workers attraction to mining from agriculture, their concepts of "order and progress," and how they shaped their lives in positive ways rather than becoming mere victims of colonialism. In this contentious plantation society plagued by adversarial relations between the economic elites and the laboring class, in addition to producing the strategically important bauxite for the aviation era of World Wars I & II, for almost a century the workers braved the ecologically hostile and sometimes deadly environments of the gold and diamond fields in the quest for El Dorado in Guyana.

• Africa
• Familie
• migration

'Barbara Josiah, a US-based academic, has written a loving and detailed account of mining in Guyana in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century...a thorough piece of historical sociology...' -Richard Bourne, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, The Round Table

Barbara Josiah is an assistant professor of history at CUNY-John Jay College. She has published articles in The Journal of African American History andThe Journal of Caribbean History, among others.

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