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Paper short abstract

The paper analyses the art of managing tailings by the community of mining enterprises in negotiation with the colonial authorities in the post-flood era. The mitigation measures were designed to relocate pollution and protect the polluting companies.

Paper long abstract

At the height of colonial mining in Malaysia, the Great Flood of 1926 prompted mining companies to engage with the colonial authorities to manage the risks of flooding and tailings. This paper is divided into three parts.

The first part examines how the mining companies’ community positioned, navigated and negotiated the politics of river governance. To what extent were collective strategies designed to mitigate and manage the environmental crisis in the post-flood era? How did they reconfigure a new pattern of practices, norms and regulations in colonial extractive industries?

The second part analyses the outcome of the negotiations between the mining companies and the colonial authorities. There were two mitigation measures: relocating tailings and protecting polluting companies. To what extent were these measures modelled and implemented? How did they forge or reinforce social and environmental ramifications?

The final part draws an exception case study to general governance policy: a Japanese iron company developed its own strategy to reduce environmental impacts. How did the Japanese company deal with the tailings and menaces to rivers with autonomy? To what extent did its resources and motivations shape its decisions and tactics to reduce risk? The research shows that the Japanese company was more willing to adapt to relatively less destructive measures than the general mitigation policy.

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Paper short abstract

From 1912 to 1932, the second largest coal producing company of the French colonial empire was at the heart of two major environmental controversies with colonial administrative bodies, which accused it of deforestation and water pollution. I explore the making and unfolding of these controversies.

Paper long abstract

From 1912 to 1932, the second largest coal producing company of the French colonial empire in terms of production, employees and profit, the Société des Charbonnages du Dong-Trieu (SCDT), was at the heart of two major environmental controversies. The Municipal Council of Haiphong (MCH), in charge of administrating the second most important town of Tonkin (northern Vietnam), accused the SCDT of polluting its supplying waters despite their legal sanctuarization. Meanwhile, the colonial forest administration in Tonkin blamed the SCDT for being the main responsible of the deforestation of a forest reserve.

On mostly hygienist and techno-solutionist grounds, and marginally environmental ones, the MCH requested from the SCDT the respect of the existing regulations, the implementation of preventive sanitary measures, and its financial participation to the creation of a sewage treatment plant. Meanwhile, on conservationist grounds, the forest administration in Tonkin required the respect of the existing forest regulations and the financial and material assistance of the SCDT in its struggle against illegal logging in the reserve.

The acceptation by the SCDT of these demands implied significant financial expenses without economic benefits in the short and medium term. There was thus an insurmountable contradiction between the interests of the SCDT and those of the other parties.

My contribution thus aims to explore the making and unfolding of two major environmental controversies in colonial Tonkin by looking at the conflicting interests, strategies, representations and discourses of the involved parties, as well as the arbitration of the controversies by the upper colonial administration.

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Paper short abstract

Commercial mining activities in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) date back to the late 1920s, and led to the emergence of the Zambian Copperbelt. This paper examines mining practices and regulation under colonial rule, highlighting how they contributed to the environmental decline of the region.

Paper long abstract

Decades on mining commercial mining on the Zambian Copperbelt have resulted in what is now referred to as ‘historical’ environmental challenges. Indeed, the physical evidence of enormous slag dumps (locally referred to as ‘black mountains’) and barren spaces void of natural vegetation bears testimony to this. Detrimental mining practices date back to the colonial era, during which time little regard was given to the impact of mining on the environment. Instead, the demand for increased production and need to maintain a strong and healthy workforce intensified efforts to maintain a strong and healthy workforce at the expense of environmental safety.

This paper will examine mining practices and regulation in the Northern Rhodesia mines during British colonial rule. It will highlight mining methods introduced during that time, which marked the beginning of environmental challenges on the Copperbelt. Furthermore, it will briefly explore health and safety measures introduced on the mines, particularly those focussing on pollution-related diseases such as silicosis. In so doing, the paper will demonstrate the passive attitude of mining and colonial government officials towards environmental safety.

The paper will argue that mining developments during the colonial era contributed to challenges in mining-related environmental management beyond independence; and that that the need to meet increased copper demand had a detrimental impact on the environment.

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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the production of industrial and natural spaces in Tunisia’s phosphate mines, showing how capitalism relied both on cheapening labour and distributing environmental harm. To trace capitalism's ecology, it collapses the boundary between environmental and social history as fields.

Paper long abstract

In the early twentieth century under French colonialism, phosphates from Tunisia’s Gafsa region fed Europe’s appetite for chemical fertilizers. This paper explores how French capitalists, doctors, and scientists imagined discretely bounded “industrial” and “natural” spaces in 1920s-1930s Gafsa, revealing how capitalism has relied both on cheapening labour and distributing environmental harm. These processes depended on raced and gendered French claims about what was “natural” to places and peoples. For the French-owned mining company, industrial sites were zones of regulation, where degradation could be managed. But degradation could pass without accountability in spaces imagined as natural. Gafsa’s North African residents developed strategies for resistance and survival that co-opted and challenged the industrial-natural binary. They developed aetiologies of disease for tracing “manufactured germs” that flowed through wind and water. To narrate the protracted, multi-decade conflict over how far the industrial workplace extended, this paper draws on doctors’ reports, biomedical papers, company documents, and oral histories.

Tracing capitalism’s ecology requires merging environmental and social history, honouring both fields while collapsing the boundary between them. By centring labour and resistance, this paper provides a methodological way to embrace both social history’s commitment to non-elite humans and environmental history’s commitment to a more-than-human world. At stake is an expanded conception of capitalism that accounts for the multiple ways it is ecologically embedded: not only at the systemic level, as scholars in world ecology have shown, but also in lived experience, in the variegated and contested environmental sacrifice zones that developed in specific, colonial contexts.

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Paper short abstract

Around 1850, iron ore extraction began in Aïn Mokra, Algeria. A gigantic production mobilizing a huge workforce transformed territories disciplining workers to do so. This paper propose a socio-environmental history of Aïn Mokra seen as an observatory of industrial and colonial capitalism.

Paper long abstract

In the mid-19th century, the Aïn Mokra iron mine in Algeria began operations. Within a few years, more than 300,000 tons of iron ore were extracted annually from the site, feeding a French steel industry in constant search of raw materials. Extraction mobilized a workforce of nearly 2,000.

This paper will first look at the land history of mining. As in mainland France, but according to singular procedures specific to the colonial situation, the mining concession gave rise to numerous conflicts. The concessionaire found himself at odds with the rural Algerian population, forest concessionaires and the state itself.

The transformations brought about by mining are those that characterize the transition from a rural to a mining territory, including urbanization, industrialization and connection to the "world system". While this history is related to that of metropolitan mining, the colonial situation produces specific features that this paper aims to examine.

One of these is the presence of forced laborers on the site. These categories of workers, both colonial and colonized, are exposed to excess mortality, as documented by the archives of the Bône military hospital and by the printed sources of colonial medical doctors. The aim of this paper is to link environmental and social history to understand the historical transformations proceeding from this mining activities.

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Paper short abstract

Through the historical maps, this study explores the significant 'discovery' of coal in 19th-century colonial Chotanagpur. This paper also studies this discovery’s societal and environmental impact and also focuses on ecological conditions which prompted local migration to collieries.

Paper long abstract

This research delves deep into the exploration process and implications surrounding the 'discovery' of coal in the late 19th

century within colonial Chotanagpur. At this time, the region was

already grappling with severe deforestation and ecological crises,

primarily due to the extensive logging of Sal trees for railway tracks

and the large-scale clearance of forests to facilitate experimental

plantations. However, this ecological turmoil took a momentous turn with the revelation of coal and other valuable minerals.

The presence of coal, although potentially known to indigenous

communities, emerged as a sensational 'discovery.' The meticulously

crafted maps from that era provide compelling evidence of the palpable excitement surrounding the forthcoming prospects of subterranean colonization projects. This revelation not only transformed the landscape but also initiated profound socio-economic and environmental changes in the region.

Incorporating highly detailed cartographic representations, this paper vividly portrays the historical 'discovery' of coal in Chotanagpur, shedding light on the far-reaching impacts on society and the environment. Furthermore, it dedicates extensive attention to a comprehensive analysis of the ecological conditions that necessitated the migration of local inhabitants to collieries in search of employment. This research, therefore, strives to offer a holistic and well-rounded understanding of the intricate interplay between

environmental factors, industrial transitions, and human mobility in the context of coal mining within Chotanagpur.

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Paper short abstract

This paper focuses on the changing relationship between value creation, supply chains and the social and environmental costs of extracting tin in a colonial and post-colonial context (1850-1980).

Paper long abstract

The environmental history of mining is dynamic and varies depending on specific minerals, regulatory frameworks, technological, regional and temporal contexts. Today, there's a growing awareness of the environmental and social impacts of mining, especially in ecologically sensitive areas and in communities where mining takes place. This paper explores the changing relationships in value accumulation, the shifts in composition of global supply chains, and the impact of social, political and environmental conflicts that emerged during these processes in both the colonial and post-colonial context. The paper takes the Dutch Billiton Maatschappij as a case. This company that was founded in 1852 played an important role in tin mining in the 19th and 20th centuries in Indonesia. While the economic benefits of mining were significant, particularly for the colonial powers and the mining company, there were also long-term environmental and social costs and sovereignty issues associated with the extraction of tin in this part of the world. The paper shed light on how some of these issues changed, while others remained after decolonization. If focusses on changing roles of markets and the responsibility for social and environmental issues. The case of Billiton is emblematic of the broader story of resource extraction in colonial and post-colonial contexts. It highlights the intricate relationship between economic development, environmental impact, and social consequences. It also serves as a case study for understanding the challenges of balancing economic interests with environmental sustainability.

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Paper short abstract

This paper focuses on the seemingly "abandoned" company town of Serra do Navio, located in the Brazilian Amazon, exploring its process of creation, abandonment, and its afterlife as heritage, spanning from the 1950s to the present.

Paper long abstract

This research aims to investigate Serra do Navio, a mining company town located in the Brazilian Amazon (Amapá State). This once-model village acts as a case study of the heritagization processes that abandoned industrial places are submitted worldwide. After being established in the 1950s to accommodate workers employed in the mineral extraction activities in the Amazon, Serra do Navio was progressively abandoned by its residents in the 1990s. In 2010, despite the severe environmental damage caused by mining in the region's landscape and environment, the city was declared heritage by the National Heritage Institute (IPHAN). To interrogate this polemic recognition, overly focused on the modernist architectural legacy, this research plays with the ambiguity of utopia and dystopia. It applies those concepts to discuss the past and present life of the Company Town Serra do Navio, once deemed a utopian modernist city and nowadays struggling to maintain its formerly praised socio-economic legacy. To investigate this, the work combines both archival and ethnographic research to analyse the former mining enterprise of Indústria de Comércio de Minério (ICOMI). This industrial settlement went from being the first mining company town to settle in the Brazilian Amazon region to an afterlife as a national heritage. Through these investigations, this paper illuminates the failure of Brazilian developmentalist projects while it sheds light on the possibilities and challenges brought by deindustrialization beyond the abandonment status.