The Gold Crusades: A Social History of Gold Rushes, 1849-1929

by Douglas Fetherling

Overview

Among the hordes of starry-eyed 'argonauts' who flocked to the California gold rush of 1849 was an Australian named Edward Hargraves. He left America empty-handed, only to find gold in his own backyard. The result was the great Australian rush of the 1850s, which also attracted participants from around the world. A South African named P.J. Marais was one of them. Marais too returned home in defeat – only to set in motion the diamond and gold rushes that transformed southern Africa. And so it went.

Most previous historians of the gold rushes have tended to view them as acts of spontaneous nationalism. Each country likes to see its own gold rush as the one that either shaped those that followed or epitomized all the rest. In The Gold Crusades: A Social History of Gold Rushes, 1849-1929, Douglas Fetherling takes a different approach.

Fetherling argues that the gold rushes in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa shared the same causes and results, the same characters and characteristics. He posits that they were in fact a single discontinuous event, an expression of the British imperial experience and nineteenth-century liberalism. He does so with dash and style and with a sharp eye for the telling anecdote, the out-of-the-way document, and the bold connection between seemingly unrelated disciplines.

Originally published by Macmillan of Canada, 1988.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802080462
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	12/15/1997
Series:	Heritage
Edition description:	Revised edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Douglas Fetherling, D.Litt., is a poet, fiction writer, critic, and small-press publisher. He is the author or editor of 50 books, mostly in the fields of literature and culture. He has been the literary editor of two newspapers, the Toronto Star and the Kingston Whig-Standard, and writer-in-residence at Queen's University. He divides his time between Ontario and British Columbia and writes a column on books and ideas for the Ottawa Citizen.

Editorial Reviews

'The gold rushes were among the most dynamic episodes in modern history, when people from many nations and every level of society converged, turning wilderness into colonies, crossroads into boom towns and boom towns into cities. The Gold Crusades conveys that excitement, while offering a broader perspective. Readers will find it meticulously researched, with a helpful and entertaining essays on sources appended for further reading. Anyone prospecting for a good book should find it a gem.'

—Eric Marks, New Brunswick Telegraph Journal

From the Publisher

'The gold rushes were among the most dynamic episodes in modern history, when people from many nations and every level of society converged, turning wilderness into colonies, crossroads into boom towns and boom towns into cities. The Gold Crusades conveys that excitement, while offering a broader perspective. Readers will find it meticulously researched, with a helpful and entertaining essays on sources appended for further reading. Anyone prospecting for a good book should find it a gem.'

New Brunswick Telegraph Journal - Eric Marks

'Fetherling presents his international cast of characters with skill - Cecil Rhodes, Diamond Tooth Gertie, Levi Strauss, Mark Twain, Commodore Vanderbilt, anonymous coolies and war veterans and entrepreneurs. The anecodotes are vivid and readable, but the reason this book stands out above many other social histories is that he embeds his characters in the larger patterns at work ... His eyes are clear and his facts are in order.'

The Montreal Gazette

'Fetherling situates each gold rush in a broad historical context suggesting their formative roles in developing cities such as San Francisco, which exploded from a village into a metropolis in virtually months ... Fetherling has clearly dug as avidly as the miners themselves. The book is full of characters, from the larcenous profiteers to the tragic cases ending in squandered fortunes and suicide.'

The Vancouver Sun

'The Gold Crusades is an admirable piece of social history.'

Canadian Literature

'Thanks to Fetherling's thorough research and engaging style, The Gold Crusades is an entertaining look at a raffish chapter in international social and economic history. He provides an international frame-work for the various gold rushes.'

The Globe and Mail

'What Pierre Berton did for the Klondike, Douglas Fetherling does for gold rushes everywhere. Approaching them as social history, he reaches beneath the inevitable wealth of anecdote these events supply. He examines them as a phenomenon fuelled not by gold and greed alone but by widespread freedom of movement and "the rootlessness born of optimism." Fetherling's book is well researched and lovingly written: a thorough treat.'

Books in Canada

'This warm-hearted and wonderful description ... links all the major gold discoveries into a single chain so we may see them as a whole. Not only were they marked by similar characteristics, they had many of the same characters - men (and a few women) who were in California and in Australia and in South Africa.'

The Toronto Star