Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Alluvial Gold Mining and Trade in Nineteenth Century South Central Africa |
Author: | Phimister, Ian R. |
Year: | 1974 |
Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
Volume: | 15 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 217-228 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Zimbabwe |
Subjects: | gold mining trade gold history 1800-1899 Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment History and Exploration Economics and Trade |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/180670 |
Abstract: | Because the attention of archaeologists and historians has been concentrated primarily on gold reef mining, alluvial goldwashing has received comparatively little attention, although it was apparently practised by Africans both before and after the period during which they exploited golf reef mines. Probably at its greatest volume between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, the gold trade thereafter declined, but the mining and trading of alluvial gold continued to be relatively important in the nineteenth century in what is now north-eastern Rhodesia. Largely a seasonal activity, goldwashing was normally organized on a village basis, often only with women workers. After 1896, gold-washing, was increasingly subject to interference and attempted suppression as settlers sought to exploit alluvial areas themselves and force Africans into wage labour. This attempted suppression did not always have the intended results but may be seen generally as part of the wider structural underdevelopment of the African peasantry and precolonial industries in Southern Rhodesia, Notes, summary, map. |