Mining in world history / Martin Lynch

Mining in World History deals with the history of mining and smelting from the Renaissance to the present day, drawing out, in an engaging and fast-paced fashion, the interplay of personalities, politics and technology which have together shaped the metallurgical industries over the last 500 years. Martin Lynch opens with the invention, sometime before the year 1453, of a revolutionary technique for separating silver from copper, an event that revived the rich copper-silver mines of central Europe and the ruling ambitions of the Habsburg emperors who owned them. The author shows how the flood of silver from Spain's newly-conquered American colonies brought about the demise of these mines, and goes on to examine the far-reaching changes brought to mining and smelting by the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution.