In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 Introduction California: The Quicksilver State It was, of course, the discovery of gold that got California off to a flying start, and set in motion its chain-reaction, explosive, self-generating pattern of development. —Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception, 25 California is the Golden State, and has been linked with gold ever since the rush started in 1848. Gold colors our understanding of California and its history; there are elaborate myths of the gold rush emphasizing rugged individualism , democracy, manifest destiny, and cycles of boom and bust. This is the history of the California Dream, a history that excels at stories of innovation, change, dynamism, and reinvention. As a metaphor for California, gold conveys the image of prosperity, youth, and vigor. Being golden also implies opportunity and success, and California has provided opportunity for millions, as well as exploitable resources for tremendous financial success for a few. Writer Carey McWilliams, in his 1949 classic California: The Great Exception, argues that the “magic equation” for understanding the exceptionalism of California’s development , in relation to the development of the rest of the United States, is “gold-equals-energy.” For McWilliams the gold rush and the energizing effect of gold as a catalyst and as an economic pump-primer for the state established the “chain-reaction, explosive, self-generating pattern of development ” that has characterized California.1 McWilliams’s insightful ideas guide our historical understandings of the state. However, although gold in many ways is an excellent metaphor for the state, in still other ways it obscures and misrepresents other histories in its blinding glare. Not all of California history matches the mythical ideals of the gold rush. This book asks what we can learn of the history of California if we move our focus, our metaphor, for California from gold to quicksilver. What if, instead of the Golden State, California were the Quicksilver State? Before the discovery of gold, quicksilver was mined in California—the state was the largest producer of the element in the Western Hemisphere, and the single richest mine of any type in the state was a quicksilver mine. For California, the cultural associations of mercury can be just as fitting as those of gold. Although mercury is associated with abundance and commercial success, it is also associated with eloquence, ingenuity, and thievishness, california: the quicksilver state 2 qualities that are often applied to the accumulation of wealth. A mercurial nature implies that one is erratic, volatile, and unstable—all acknowledged characteristics of California’s development. Following Carey McWilliams, if we were to invent an equation involving quicksilver for understanding the development of California, it would be mercury-equals-power. For although gold was the catalyst and economic pump-primer for California’s explosive development, the control of the production, trade, and use of quicksilver was the tool that a handful of elites used to secure their wealth and position as heads of vertical monopolies and to shape a pattern of development serving a wealthy elite. If gold, at least the gold of the California Dream, represents the rugged individualist succeeding by his or her own energy and industry, then quicksilver represents the elite and the self-reproducing power of global capital and concentrated wealth. Unlike gold, which was valuable because it was money, mercury was valuable for its ability to form an amalgam for gold and silver recovery; without mercury gold and silver were much more difficult to extract. This property made the control of the production , trade, and use of mercury a powerful tool for the British merchant capitalists, their partners, and their successors who established the mercury industry in California. Mercury mining in California predates the discovery of gold by a few years. The first mercury mine, and the first commercial mine of any sort in the state, New Almaden, was just south of San Jose and by 1851 accounted for half of annual global production , disrupting the Rothschild cartel’s control of the world quicksilver markets. That California was producing, by 1851, half the world’s supply of a commodity as valuable as mercury is evidence of the great power and wealth to be gained through its control. However, unlike the everyman’s spectacle of the gold rush, mercury production and trade in early California were controlled by a few very rich and powerful figures who conducted their business of mercury production and trade largely behind the scenes. the Forgotten history of Mercury Mining The story of quicksilver mining in California is...

Share