A new book Mining and Financial Imperialism: The Central African Copper Bonanza by Timo Särkkä analyses the Western colonial origins of the mining industry and its post-colonial legacies in the Central African Copperbelt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

A long-term perspective on mining finance revealed that thus far the colonial governments have been the main focus in the history of colonialism in Central Africa, with little focus in many instances on the mining companies which have outlived them.

The burning issue of climate change has in recent years been the prime mover behind the ever-growing demand for metals of high industrial use such as and cobalt and copper, so sorely needed for electric transport and communications.

The world’s single most important source of cobalt and copper is the Central African Copperbelt which supplies approximately 70 percent of world’s cobalt and 10 percent of the world’s copper.

The quest for base metals such as copper was fuelled by the rising tempo of Western electrical industrialisation in the 1890s. Demand for copper and other chemical elements in the ore such as cobalt gave the rise to the Western mining industry, which dominated the Central African Copperbelt until the end of the colonial era.

In the post-colonial era, Chinese investors have been the most noticeable stakeholders in the development of mines and related infrastructure in the Copperbelt. Today, the extractive industries lobby themselves as being in the service of the transition away from fossil fuels, claiming to be in the business of mining minerals necessary for the green transition.

In addition to the discourse that the increasing consumption of minerals is essential to sustaining the modern lifestyle and industrial growth, accelerating climate change has touched off an increasingly urgent discourse of the generic, global ecological challenges. These changes in orientation have triggered a growing interest in documenting the extractive industry’s history in Central Africa.

The book is in a significant contribution to the economic, financial and business history of mining and extractive industries, Central Africa, the City of London and early forms of financial capitalism. It is published Routledge Explorations in Economic History book series and its Open Access version is available at the publisher’s website at Mining and Financial Imperialism: The Central African Copper Bonanza

The author, Dr. Timo Särkkä works as a Senior Researcher at the Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. The research was conducted in collaboration with the Division of Global History Studies, Institute for Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives, Osaka University, Japan.

For more information, please contact the author, Dr. Timo Särkkä, timo.sarkka@jyu.fi