Over the past two centuries, industrial societies hungry for copper – essential for light, power, and communication – have demanded ever-increasing quantities of the metal. Born with a Copper Spoon examines how the metal has been produced, distributed, controlled, and sold on a global scale. However, this is not simply a narrative of ever-increasing and deepening global connections. It is also about periods of deglobalization, fragmentation, and attempts to sever connections. Throughout history, copper production has spawned its own practices, technologies, and a constantly changing political economy. Large-scale production has affected ecologies, states, and companies, while creating and even destroying local communities dependent on volatile commodity markets. Former president of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda once remarked that Zambians were “born with a copper spoon in our mouths,” but few societies managed to profit from copper’s abundance. From copper cartels and the futures market to the consequences of resource nationalism, Born with a Copper Spoon delivers a global perspective on one of the world’s most important metals.

"Born with a Copper Spoon examines how the metal has been produced, distributed, controlled, and sold around the globe. Over the past two centuries, industrial societies hungry for the highly conductive, corrosion-resistant metal--essential for light, power, and communication--have demanded ever-increasing quantities of copper. From copper cartels and the futures market to the consequences of resource nationalism, Born with a Copper Spoon has a global scope. However, this is not simply a narrative of ever-increasing and deepening global connections, as global history often is. It is also about periods of deglobalization, fragmentation, and attempts to sever connections, as was the case in the mid-twentieth century, when a bitter contest over ownership of mineral resources briefly threatened to cause a major realignment of the world economy. Throughout history, copper production has spawned its own practices, technologies, and a constantly changing political economy. Large-scale production has affected ecologies, states, and companies, while creating and even destroying local communities dependent on volatile commodity markets. The first president of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, once remarked that Zambians were "born with a copper spoon in our mouths," but few societies managed to profit from copper's abundance. Contributors to this far-reaching collection cover the finance, technology, labour, business, politics, and environmental impact of what is one of the world's most important metals."--

In seeking to cultivate external relations with African countries, China has long stressed its commonly shared roots with African nations as a developing country rather than a Western state, and as such the symbolic attraction of China clearly reverberates with many African elites who seem to look on China as a positive development model. However, it should be noted that this has not been embraced solely by dictatorial or authoritarian regimes but in fact China’s approach to non-interference has struck a chord even with those democratically elected leaders in Africa. While such practices clearly benefit African elites, it is remains doubtful that they do so for ordinary Africans, although sustained analysis suggests that potential exists, albeit hampered by the modalities of governance on the continent. This book brings together experts on the topic to throw light on some of the more contentious aspects of the relationship. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.

This volume adds to the plurality of global histories by locating the global through its articulation and manifestation within particular localities. It accomplishes this by bringing together interlinked case-studies that analyse various temporal and spatial dimensions of the global in the local and the interactions between the local and the global. The case-studies apply a spatial approach to analyse how global questions of space, movement, networks, borders, and territory are worked out at a local level. The material draws on the Nordic countries, Europe, the Atlantic world, Africa, and Australia and ranges from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. It is further divided into sections that address topics such as the translocality of humans and goods, local articulations of identities and globalities, parliamentarism and anti-colonialism, the organization of knowledge and the construction of spaces of representation and memory.

"One of the most comprehensive histories of modern capitalism yet written." —Michael Hirsh, New York Times An authoritative, insightful, and highly readable history of the twentieth-century global economy, updated with a new chapter on the early decades of the new century. Global Capitalism guides the reader from the globalization of the early twentieth century and its swift collapse in the crises of 1914–45, to the return to global integration at the end of the century, and the subsequent retreat in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

"This work covers the entire sweep of Milner's career, exploring fully in themselves overlooked areas, including Milner's place in the newspaper "information milieu," his attempts to bring working men into the Unionist fold (before, during, and after the Great War), his conspiratorial role in the 1914 Ulster Crisis, his key, but mostly forgotten, place in the First World War, the Peace of Paris and, throughout, his private life. The book reveals, as has no other, relationships with Margot Tennant (later Asquith), to whom Milner first proposed marriage, his mistress Cecile Duval, the novelist Elinor Glyn, and his two-decades-long liaison with Violet Cecil, who became his wife in 1921, only four years before Milner's death."--BOOK JACKET.

No detailed description available for "Winners and Losers".