Raum und Macht – Eine Stoffgeschichte des Goldes im frühen 20. Jahrhundert

Focusing on the major flows of gold in early 20th century offers new perspectives on the various and often overlapping political, sociocultural and economic spaces that are linked to the production, transport, marketing and consumption of gold around the world. A material, but not materialistic, biography of gold helps to overcome the narrow “centrist” logic that still dominates many narratives of globalization as well as the historiography on gold. The paper studies different spatial impacts such as the geology and geographical conditions of the places where gold was found, the newly built infrastructures for energy and water with far-reaching effects, the political segregation of different ethnic groups, the systems of migrant work across national and imperial boundaries, work in mines on the surface and underground, channels of transport, the informal arrangements to direct the international flow of gold towards London, strategies of workers and unionists, the difficult conditions of peasant families in India as well as in South African reserves, and the important question of by whom and from where the global commodity chain of gold may have been directed.