Duncan Money
@mininghistory
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Historian of mining, work, migration and Southern Africa. Book 'Born with a Copper Spoon' now in paperback: Email: duncanmoneyhistory @pm .me
Kampala, Uganda
Joined February 2015
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Pinned Tweet
Today is publication day! My book 'White Mineworkers on Zambia's Copperbelt: In a Class of Their Own' is now available
@BrillPublishing
! It's a history about labour, race and migration on Zambia's copper mines.
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Professional news: my contract at Leiden ends this month so I'm leaving academia. I'm good at my job. I publish a lot (3 books, 21 articles/chapters), got great teaching evaluations and supervised 4 PhDs since finishing my own in 2016. It's not enough though.
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Some depressing news: My contract at Leiden will not be renewed. While here, I will have published 2 books, 12 articles + chapters, taught, ran the graduate programme, supervised MAs and 4 PhDs, but it's not enough. I failed at only thing that really matters: getting funding.
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@ArthurAsseraf
This map was drawn by an American anthropologist who never set foot on the African continent! Truly incredible to see it re-imagined as an authentic map of Africa without colonialism.
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I have to accept that I will never get a permanent academic job, and have also realised I no longer want one. Working conditions at universities are deteriorating. At Leiden, I took on the work of two colleagues who had burnouts. Unsurprisingly, I found their jobs stressful!
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I appreciate the support I got from lots of people in Leiden. When I ran the graduate programme in my dept, the postgrads, unknown to me, organised a petition asking the dept to make me permanent. The university relies on people working on temporary contacts though.
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People often say encouraging things about my work and prospects for employment. The reality of the academic job market is that my profile has been enough to get me only one one job interview this year, despite many applications.
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A postdoc at Harvard until last year. His alt-ac career was to become an arms dealer.
South Sudan’s activist Peter Biar Ajak has been arrested and charged in the US for attempting to smuggle weapons worth $4 million to his country.
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Digitization of the Mineworkers' Union of Zambia archive has been completed!
Digital files are now at the
@IISG_Amsterdam
and at Katilungu House in Kitwe. Researchers (and anyone else) can contact the reading room or the Mineworkers' Union to request access.
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One underappreciated archival research skill is the ability to carefully untie very small knots that have not been untied in a very long time.
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Steven Mintz claims that younger historians today are much less prolific in publishing.
According to his CV, Mintz published a grand total of three articles and one book in the nine years after finishing his PhD:
“The sad facts are these: major US history journals are receiving fewer submissions, and fewer of their published articles have had impact on the field. Younger US historians are much less prolific than their predecessors.”
Job market not mentioned: bold.
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This week a publisher which made a $4m profit last year asked me to review an 84,000-word book manuscript, and reacted with surprise when I quoted my fee saying they have never paid reviewers before. This might be linked to their $4m annual profit.
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History is disappearing as a professional discipline but people still write about the past. One consequence is that we're going to see lots more sentences like "In the feudal age before 1900" and "unhappiness was the big driver of political change from 400 to 1500"
Sigh. So apparently The Atlantic is back with more Peter Turchin () on how the USA is going to collapse.
I just want to focus on one claim here and it's the one here, because the idea that you could do this over 10,000 years is not very good. 1/
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Jawdropping article on
@africasacountry
about how American televangelist Pat Robertson raised money for refugees after the Rwandan genocide and spent it on shipping equipment to a diamond mine he had been given by Mobutu Sese Seko:
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It's been a year since I was employed as an academic. I wasn't sure then what was next, but since I've steadily made a career doing research work I find interesting using skills and knowledge I developed as a historian. I'm happier, less stressed and less overworked.
Professional news: my contract at Leiden ends this month so I'm leaving academia. I'm good at my job. I publish a lot (3 books, 21 articles/chapters), got great teaching evaluations and supervised 4 PhDs since finishing my own in 2016. It's not enough though.
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Professional news: I am joining the history department in Leiden as a lecturer in a temporary post. I enjoy teaching but mostly I am relieved that I don't have to move country in the immediate future for another short-term academic job.
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Very happy that next year I will be joining the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (
@STIAS_SA
) on a fellowship.
I'll be spending six months there to write a book about the gold industry:
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Scanning of the Mineworkers' Union of
#Zambia
archive is complete! We now have a digital copy of the union's archive and the physical documents have been catalogued, organised and stored in acid-free boxes.
#mininghistory
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Found in the Mineworkers' Union of
#Zambia
archive: a poem entitled 'Die With Me', stapled to a bundle of fatal accident reports from the mines.
#mininghistory
#Copperbelt
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Even if you know the history, the sheer extent of Johannesburg that was reserved for whites under the 1950 Group Areas Act is astonishing.
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Thank you for the many, many kind messages. I feel a bit overwhelmed but in a good way. Twitter can be a good place sometimes.
Professional news: my contract at Leiden ends this month so I'm leaving academia. I'm good at my job. I publish a lot (3 books, 21 articles/chapters), got great teaching evaluations and supervised 4 PhDs since finishing my own in 2016. It's not enough though.
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Found a slice of paradise at Bookends Bookshop in Carlisle. Four floors of this.
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Personal news: I'm moving to Uganda so drop me a line if you're in Kampala, or passing through.
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I sometimes wonder much of my life-span I have wasted looking up the city where a book was published for footnotes.
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Everyone is horrified by apartheid in South Africa in retrospect, while support is conveniently forgotten.
In 1987, German MPs commissioned research that ostensibly showed coal miners in South Africa were satisfied with their jobs and opposed sanctions and majority rule.
It is often imagined that world opinion was always united in its opposition to apartheid in South Africa—it wasn’t. Today, global indifference to Palestine is changing too.
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Write a smash-hit academic book and let the money roll in year after year. I just got my annual royalties for 'Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa', a grand total of £2.31 this year.
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It's also worth noting that Mintz was appointed a professor at the University of Houston without having produced a single publication, as he published nothing during his PhD. Today's young historians can hardly measure up to such prolific output.
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I can do a convincing impression of a successful academic, but I'm not. I don't have a job. My article about why I had to leave academia in
@timeshighered
:
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The project to digitise the Zambia Congress of Trade Union archives has officially begun! Today we catalogued the first file.
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It is utterly bizarre to see a 1950s map drawn up by an American anthropologist who worked on Pacific islands and never did any research in Africa re-imagined as an authentic representation of pre-colonial Africa.
This map shows all of the African nations before Europeans showed up.
Each shade on the map shows the land mass of a different nation/ethnic group (btw - African ethnic groups are often racistly described as 'tribes').
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Ruined city of Gede in Kenya. Established in the 11th century and abandoned during the 17th.
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Professional news: Next month I'll be embarking on a world cruise as a speaker with Holland America Line.
People often contact me with unusual and interesting work offers but this is the most unusual so far!
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I am overwhelmed by the response to this. Thank you all for all the supportive messages, it is truly appreciated.
Some depressing news: My contract at Leiden will not be renewed. While here, I will have published 2 books, 12 articles + chapters, taught, ran the graduate programme, supervised MAs and 4 PhDs, but it's not enough. I failed at only thing that really matters: getting funding.
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Gabon's Minister of Forests (or possibly ex-minister as the government has been overthrown in a coup) is not who I expected it to be.
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One problem with the endless series of articles about the crisis in the humanities is that the senior academics who write them simply do not understand what is happening and make basic factual errors like this.
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Calls for population control for 'environmental' reasons always neglect to include detail about who produces carbon emissions for some reason.
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@valavoosh
Tsafendas is a fascinating figure. Before he assassinated Verwoerd, he tried to have himself reclassified from 'white' to 'coloured' under apartheid racial laws (he was born in Mozambique and was of mixed descent).
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I taught a class last year about conservation and colonialism and it's really one of those topics that teaches itself.
President Kagame received Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, who visited Rwanda as part of his work as President of African Parks. The Government of Rwanda has agreements with African Parks to manage Akagera and Nyungwe National Parks.
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All the talk of a new copper boom is a good opportunity to share one of my favourite ever graphs: the World Bank's predictions of copper prices, and the actual price.
Net zero: “We’re going to need more copper in the next 30 years than we have mined to date.”
Click the image to read the full article
Partner Content with
@bhp
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This is a good illustration of something I keep going ona about: mining no longer employs that many people.
8.5 million people are employed in the production of raw materials
800,000 people worked in the mining of copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium in 2019.
- IEA Global Energy Employment
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The National Archives of Namibia must be the best-equipped national archive in the region, with new computers, microfilm readers and air-conditioning. However, on the morning I visited, it was completely deserted.
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I lost interest in Twitter after the site was redesigned a few months ago, but life continues offline. The digitization of the Mineworkers' Union of
#Zambia
is *almost* finished. Pictured is the remaining material vs. how much we started with
#mining
#mininghistory
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@BretDevereaux
"Nowadays you have to pay rent and work in office but in Athens you would have been Pericles himself, and in Florence you wouldn't fester away on the fifth floor, oh no, you would have been on intimate terms with the Medici"
August Endell, 'The Beauty of the Metropolis' (1908)
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I am very happy to learn that I have been elected a Fellow of the
@RoyalHistSoc
. The Society supported my PhD research with grants to attend conferences, so I am really pleased to join.
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People often talk about African societies undergoing an abrupt transition from rural life in the 20th century.
This is the site of Britain's first nuclear power station, only 25 years before it was built.
Got this slim read for Christmas (what to get for the man who has everything, etc.) and enjoyed it.
Rural areas in Britain were transformed in the mid-c20th by state-led development projects involving the construction of large-scale infrastructures, which are now being demolished
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Our book 'Born with a Copper Spoon' is published today by
@UBCPress
! Thanks to our contributors
@sumaro76
,
@IvaPesa
,
@brianleechphd
,
@ErikEklund10
,
@RezaAlamdar2
and many others.
More more details see:
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Preview of our Global History of Copper book: this is the draft map (so ignore spelling errors, etc.) showing the places covered in the chapters. Final version of the manuscript should be finished soon!
#mininghistory
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Fascinating article arguing that the rapid opening of new universities in the 19th century was made possible by profits from gold rushes. New universities then developed technologies that prolonged mineral rushes.
Free to read as well:
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What an amazing project. 10,000 images of everyday life in northern England digitised and made available online.
Some incredible images, like this one of Wellington Pit in Cumberland, around 1920:
The Sankey Photography Archive website goes live today with access to over 10000 images taken by the Sankey family, Barrow late 1890s-1970s of Cumbria and beyond. Rural scenes, people at work, lakes and fells, seaside images, ship and submarine launches
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I've never before worked in an archive with a swimming pool.
The Zambia Congress of Trade Unions has one in their back garden.
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Amazed that someone thought this was a good name for a beer. There's a special kind of historical amnesia in the Netherlands.
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For a hefty fee, I will go to your enemy's viva and say "assuming for a moment that all you argue here is true, my question is: So what?"
For a small fee I will go to your enemy's thesis viva and say, 'what you have here is a research justification. What is the research problem?'
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@hagenilda
During my PhD I had to attend a training session on motivation where an enthusiastic presenter asked the attendees what motivated us to get out of bed each morning. There was a pause and someone said: "after a while you get hungry"
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Over 50% of DR Congo's diamond exports now go to UAE
Until 15 years ago, almost 90% went to Belgium, Congo's former colonial ruler.
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There is an ugly symmetry of Israel planning to expel Palestinians to Congo while recruiting workers from across Africa to replace the Palestinians being expelled.
“The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister-site Zman Yisrael reports that Israeli officials have held clandestine talks with the African nation of Congo and several others for the potential acceptance of Gaza emigrants.”
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Malawians recruited to work in South Africa's gold mines during the 20th century had the same contracts: a chunk of their wages were remitted to them only at the end of their contracts.
The Israel-Malawi labor agreement sounds like a script from a slavery movie. It's disconcerting that workers can only access their funds at the contract's end. This raises concerns about fairness. Additionally, the Honorary Consul's letter comes across as rude and condescending
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Our article about the destruction and loss of archives in Zambia is now Open Access so can be read for free:
Sent in the proofs for this one this morning. It should be available soon.
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Very welcome news: the archives of Britain's National Union of Mineworkers are now available to historians. This is a huge collection, occupying 300 metres of shelf space.
Download the list and see what’s new
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The first steps are underway to begin a project to digitise the archives of the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions! Still much work to be done though.
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Housing for African workers at Copper Queen Mine in c.1927, near Gokwe in Zimbabwe. Huts were built in straight lines with minimal vegetation between them so residents could easily be monitored.
As the caption says, this gives a good idea of the way employees were cared for.
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Wits University is opening a new mining archive in the Education Library.
Big news for me and maybe five other people.
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Today is the 100th anniversary of the crushing of the Rand Revolt, a strike by white miners across South Africa's Rand that escalated into an armed insurrection aimed at toppling the state.
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I found the ultimate 1990s book: a sunny optimistic account of privatisation programmes across the world and how much money can be paid. It lists state-owned companies sold off in 46 countries during 1995, to the tune of $72bn.
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1630 map of Zambezia by the Portuguese cartographer João Teixeira Albernaz showing copper mines north of the Zambezi River and gold mines to the south.
Minerals were being mined and exported from this region long before colonial rule.
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I've written an article for
@HistoryinAfrica
reflecting on the practical and theoretical challenges of the project to digitise the Mineworkers' Union of Zambia. This might be useful for other digitisation projects:
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Last year, Taylor & Francis made an operating profit of £216m from revenues of £556m. Profits made from the free labour of those who write journal articles, and who then have to pay for them. What could be a more lucrative business model than this?
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There is something about this, from Kenneth Kaunda's obituary, that I find very poignant. Kaunda outlived almost his entire political generation. He was a consummate showman, but his audience had gone.
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Interesting snippet in
@The_EastAfrican
on remittances to Kenya relevant to the discussion about how much higher wages are now in the US than the UK.
Remittances per Kenyan in the US in 2022: $14870
Remittances per Kenyan in the UK in 2022: $2390
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Last year my book was rejected by a publisher and I thankfully got a lot of advice, suggestions and support on here. After re-writing and lots of help, I am both happy and relieved that my book will be published later this year by
@BrillPublishing
:
I do a lot of "I am thrilled to announce..." on here so in the interests of fairness and balance I am very not thrilled to announce that I received the first readers' report on my book manuscript and it's pretty damning. Probably time to look for another potential publisher
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I do a lot of "I am thrilled to announce..." on here so in the interests of fairness and balance I am very not thrilled to announce that I received the first readers' report on my book manuscript and it's pretty damning. Probably time to look for another potential publisher
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Celebrating today the success of Dr Chibamba Jennifer Chansa, who was awarded her PhD (virtually) from
@UFSweb
for her thesis on a history of pollution and environmental regulation in Zambia's mining industry.
#UFSGraduation2021
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Johannesburg city centre in 1935. An island of high rises among mine dumps.
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Update: I moved.
Personal news: I'm moving to Uganda so drop me a line if you're in Kampala, or passing through.
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Book launch! I'll be launching my book 'White Mineworkers on Zambia's Copperbelt' on Thurs 24 March at an online and in-person event
@ASCLeiden
with
@IvaPesa
and Alfred Tembo as discussants.
To join the event, register here:
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Happy and relieved to submit our edited book on a global history of copper to the publisher for review. It includes contributions on North America, Latin America, Europe, Southern Africa, Middle East, East Asia and Oceania.
#mininghistory
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I've always been struck by this image. Paul Robeson singing to a group of Scottish miners at Woolmet Colliery near Edinburgh.
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@suryabowyer
@DrJSchramm
This recent article about white ants and empire argues paper was the key material foundation of colonial rule in India:
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My review of Dune 2: Needs more detail on the mining and processing of spice.
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His profile at Harvard's Kennedy School (where he is still a non-resident fellow) was updated three days ago to say he's on "administrative leave". There are worse sanctions for arms smuggling.
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If anyone ever doubted that academic publishing is the way to riches, I have just received my annual royalties statement from Routledge: £8.16.
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Productive negotiations concluded with Uganda Revenue Authority at Entebbe cargo depot. My books have arrived! All 190kg of them.
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Very pleased to see that my article on nationalism, xenophobia and the removal of non-Zambian Africans from the mines in
#Zambia
has been published in
@JSAS_Editors
. 50 free online copies are available! Click now to avoid disappointment.
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Sent in the proofs for this one this morning. It should be available soon.
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Back on dry land after a couple of weeks at sea. I enjoyed giving talks onboard the ship a lot and it wasn't what I expected. Passengers were very interested in history and some took notes!
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Our article about the loss of archives in Zambia is now available and there are 50 free copies to read:
Sent in the proofs for this one this morning. It should be available soon.
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My article about how 'expatriate' was created as a racial category by mining companies in Zambia at independence has been published on
@TC_Africa
:
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The satellite view of this mine dump looks like a painting in a frame.
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Our article about the global history of copper and our book 'Born with a Copper Spoon' has been published on
@TC_Africa
! Me and
@rdeclerc
summarise the central questions and claims of the book:
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The competition to produce the most bananas map of Russia in Africa is really heating up.
🚨🚨🚨 If the pro-Russian 🇷🇺 coup in Niger is a success, it is EXTREMELY serious for Europe.
🇫🇷 absolutely did not expect to be ousted from Niger (4th country…). 1/3 of uranium ☢️ used by 🇫🇷 comes from Niger
Congrats Emmanuel. Add Chad, & this will be 🇷🇺’s new colonial empire:
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@sadpphicstanza
Until around 2010, there was still the even older graffiti "No H Bomb" visible on New College Lane.
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One of the most useful things I ever did for my research was place a short article in a local newspaper asking anyone who had a family connnection or interest in my topic to get in touch. Years later, people still do.
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