There ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough: Ownership, redistribution, and extraction of natural resources, 1800-2000

Session organizer/s: Kasper Hage Stjern

Natural Resource Constraint on Fiscal Capacity: Evidence from Canadian Municipalities

Session: 5

Authors: Clara Dallaire-Fortier

Co-authors: Giacomo Rella

Abstract: In Canada, the provision of public services is intrinsically linked to the capacity of the state to mobilize revenues and to the ways responsibilities are distributed between federal, provincial, and municipal governments. The provision of public services thus depends on economic conditions at the macro and micro levels, and therefore on economic shocks at these different scales. Resource-dependent municipalities provide a rare opportunity to better understand the resilience of public services to shocks. The mining industry follows mineral price cycle is highly volatile. This article studies the link between fiscal capacity of municipalities and the wave of mine closures that affected Canada after 1980. Using a novel database on mineral production, we investigate how spending for social services changes after mine closures in at municipal level, and study if mine closures constraint the capacity of local government in providing relief and support with consequential implications for socio-economic precarity These questions echo broader concerns about how much municipalities depend on extractive activities to provide for services to their citizens, and inform current debates on the implications of the ecological transition for local governments.

The value of practical knowledge: Skilled workrs’ job switching within, to and from mining in Norway from ca. 1787 to 1940

Session: 5

Authors: Kristin Ranestad

Co-authors: NA

Abstract: This paper provides an empirical analysis of skilled workers’ work careers in mining in Norway, 1787-1940. It seeks to give new insights into recruitment to mining and job switching within, to and from, this industry, which were at the time undergoing radical technological changes. With the aim of exploring the value of “practical (tacit) knowledge”, gained through work experience, the analysis shows that skilled workers (workers with formal education) frequently switched jobs throughout their career. This seemed to be an unusual long-lasting “tradition”. On the one hand, skilled workers switched easily between mining branches (silver, copper, iron etc.), in fact it was more common to switch between mining branches than within. On the other hand, they switched between mining branches and “technologically linked” sectors, notably mechanical workshops, energy sectors, the chemical industry and infrastructure. Although the reasons for job switching were many, it indicates that mining employers valued work experience which was closely related to their own, yet with certain different knowledge specialisations from which they could learn. Finally, many skilled workers with long working experience in the field ended their careers in public mining institutions. Thus, a significant share of “practical mining knowledge” ended up there. This supports the argument that the state played an active role in advancing the mining industry from early on, and throughout in this period.

This land is my land: A Global and Comparative History of Regulation of Agricultural Land c. 1789-1913

Session: 5

Authors: Pål Thonstad Sandvik

Co-authors: Pål Thonstad Sandvik

Abstract: Land use has been regulated since the dawn of civilization. Land was the key resource in premodern and preindustrial societies. Land policy, land use and land ownership varied greatly across geographical, political, and ethnic boundaries. This paper provides the first global overview of land policy during the long 19th century. Some main lines of development can be identified: States (and colonies) introduced increasingly formal and legalistic systems for land rights. Landed property increasingly became a commodity which more freely could be bought and sold on the market. The acreage of tilled land was expanded, often with state support, and often at the expense of nomadic and/or indigenous peoples. (The US Homestead Act of 1862 and The Canadian Homestead Act of 1872 were just two examples of a broader global phenomenon.) The increasing commoditization of land was accompanied by a parallel, and in many cases related, development, namely the gradual dismantling of property rights in human beings (corvée, serfdom and slavery). However, it should be noted that the extent and speed of these developments varied greatly, not just between different continents, but sometimes also within a given country. The paper will also examine the main aims of state policy, namely increased agricultural output and the creation of a stable rural tax base, to secure the interests of privileged ethnic groups, and in some cases to reduce economic inequality.

“Societal Interests demands that this splendor remains in the hands of the village”: The Issue of Usage and Ownership of Norwegian Mountain Ranges, 1915-1940.

Session: 6

Authors: Kasper Hage Stjern

Co-authors: NA

Abstract: Around the turn of the twentieth century, state regulatory ambitions and interventions increased in favor of economic nationalism. A key part of this economic nationalism was the issue of natural resources, namely who owned and benefitted from the usage of these resources. Previous research has shown that this was not a uniform phenomenon, and that how these issues manifested differed from country to country, and region to region. Norway implemented a number of laws around this time that regulated a number of resources, such as watercourses, minerals, forests, limestone, farmland, and so on. However, one of these laws concerned mountain ranges, which was as much about who had access to nature as it was about the extraction of resources. This paper is a qualitative empirical study of the law regulating mountain ranges from its implementation in 1915 until 1940. The paper combines parliamentary papers and the archival material from the agency tasked with managing the regulatory regime for mountain ranges to examine both the reasoning for regulation, and how it was implemented in practice. The study finds that social considerations such as local communities’ access to hunting and nature were as important as the economic benefits arising from grazing and the sale of hunting rights.

Skilled workers’ job switching within, to and from mining in Norway from ca. 1787 to 1940

Session: 6

Authors: Kristin Ranestad

Co-authors: The value of practical knowledge:

The making and breaking of an “international order” of mineral extraction in the long 19th century

Session: 6

Authors: Andreas R.D. Sanders

Co-authors: NA

Abstract: Mineral extraction played a crucial part in the globalization drive following the Second Industrial Revolution. From the middle of the 19th century to the First World War, total extraction of non-ferrous metals increased more than ten times. At the same time, mineral production and trade became a much more globalized affair. From 1875 to 1913, British foreign direct investments in non-ferrous metal mining rose from just over £11 million to £240 million, with foreign direct investments in mining also emanating from other industrial nations. While Europe as a whole remained the largest consumer of minerals, by 1913 only 14% of copper and 4% of tin was mined in Europe.

This begs the question, how was this internationalization of the mineral industries created? What institutions – or lack thereof – underpinned and guarded this great liberalization of minerals? How ‘open access’ was this system? And how did these systems influence the decisions on how to regulate investment and trade? Taking a birds-eye view of over a hundred years of mining history, this paper and presentation will shed light on these questions, and outline some of the broader and contradictions which shaped the rise and fall of the global mineral industry in the long 19th century, both from the “centre” and in the “periphery”. In addition, the paper will also as explain how the Scandinavian histories fit into this wider picture.