Mining in World History

I have just been re-reading the excellent Material World (posting of 13th March 2025) and noticed this time that the book Mining in World History was cited quite a few times. The author of Material World, Ed Conway, says that this is the best book that he has encountered on the history of mining, on copper but also a panoply of other materials.

Mining in World History was published in 2002 and authored by Martin Lynch, the son of Prof Alban Lynch. 

We are very fortunate to have Martin at Critical Minerals '26, where he will make a presentation arguing that substitution with aluminium may represent the most effective response to looming global copper shortages.

Mining in World History deals with the history of mining and smelting from the Renaissance to the present day, showing the interplay of personalities, politics and technology which have together shaped the metallurgical industries over the last 500 years. 

Martin opens with the invention, sometime before the year 1453, of a revolutionary technique for separating silver from copper, an event that revived the rich copper-silver mines of central Europe and the ruling ambitions of the Habsburg emperors who owned them. The flood of silver from Spain’s newly-conquered American colonies brought about the demise of these mines, and Martin then examines the far-reaching changes brought to mining and smelting by the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution. 

The book then looks at the era of the gold rushes and the comprehensive developments in mineral extraction and technology that took place in the United States and South Africa at the end of the nineteenth century, and describes the spread of mass metal-production techniques across the world amid the violent struggles of the twentieth century and the energy crises of the 1970s. 

Mining in World History was the first book to provide an account of how and why change and advance in this global industry have taken place in different eras and locations around the world. Ed Conway's Material World builds on this and the two books are highly recommended not just for those in the minerals industry, but for anyone with an interest in how the world works.

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