This article provides a rare opportunity to follow the inception of mining and mine exploration economy in the first years of the European presence in colonial Zambia and Katanga as seen through the eyes of prospectors and mining experts working for the London-based company Tanganyika Concessions Limited. It draws on company records as well as the personal records ...

In the wake of the South African war, the indenture and transport of over 63,000 Chinese men to gold mines in the Transvaal sparked a rush to supply smoking opium to a literally captive market. Embroiled in a growing political economy of mass intoxication, state lawmakers shifted official policy from prohibition to provision. Their innovation of an industrial drug ...

From 1904 to 1910, the transport and confinement of over 63,000 men from north-eastern China, recruited and indentured as unskilled mining labour, stimulated a new market for opium on the Witwatersrand, at the very moment when other British colonies and other empires were pushing towards co-ordinated action to curb the trade. This article plots the development and ...