Ownership of the earth forever and ever: engineering nature, race, and labor in Southern Africa and North America, 1860-1924

This dissertation considers the networks, methods, and practices of a group of mining engineers active in Canada, the United States, and South Africa in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth century mining engineers to map new geographies of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and territories of extraction. By tracing the careers of these mining engineers, most from the United States, I show that as embodiments of “white extractivism,” mining engineers were instrumental to establishing and furthering imperial regimes. Using archival material from Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as many engineering periodicals, I argue that although engineers’ prescriptions were cloaked in scientific reason, in fact engineers were fortified by faith in whiteness and hypermasculinity as a means to master both the earth and workers. Mining engineers viewed the earth and the people living upon it were nothing more than problems suited to mechanical and “objective” solutions. In practice, as I show, mining engineers set in motion a process of slow violence and differential exposure to death on a vast scale. Nevertheless, these attempts at mastery were subject to challenge, disruption, and unintended consequences at every turn.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Jones, Douglas R.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Barnes, Teresa
• Burton, Antoinette
• Hoganson, Kristin
• Lichtenstein, Alex
• Roediger, David

• history
• global history
• south african history
• us history
• history of engineering
• mining
• whiteness
• masculinity
• racial capitalism
• environmental history

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Douglas Jones

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115916

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115916