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Home > The Cornish in Latin America > A New World Order: the 1820s “Boom” |
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A
NEW WORLD ORDER: THE 1820s “BOOM”
British
Mining Companies formed to operate in Latin America in the years
1824-25. In
Latin America, governments acted quickly to create the prerequisite
conditions for foreign intervention in the mining industry. Newly
independent Mexico in 1823 rescinded those articles that had barred
foreigners from the mining industry of colonial Mexico, believing the
mines to be the touchstone of the country’s prosperity and the basis
on which foreign trade rested. The Brazilian Government too, relaxed
restrictions imposed on foreigners by its ancient laws. Highly
inflated prospectuses were issued by companies set up to work mines
across Latin America, containing claims based more on the myths of their
colonial past, than on fact or scientific grounds. Many prospectuses
drew on the reports of German, Baron von Humboldt (who had travelled
extensively in South and Central America and was considered something of
an expert), and contained two basic points. Firstly, that the mines
worked in colonial Latin America had been profitable, but had been
hampered by a lack of modern technology and a dearth of geological
knowledge. Secondly, and more importantly, it was believed that the
introduction of British capital, technology and skilled labour would be
able to surmount any difficulties in developing a modern metalliferous
mining industry in Latin America. Almost
a third of the mining companies set up in the 1820s had Cornish
Directors, many of whom invested considerable capital into the
enterprises. Although miners from other parts of Britain such as Wales,
Cumberland, Derbyshire and Scotland were recruited, as well as men from
America, France, Hungary and Germany, miners from Cornwall far
outnumbered them. This was due mainly to the fact that the Cornish
Directors appointed mine managers from Cornwall, who in turn recruited
men known to them in Cornish mines.
The
head offices and annual general meetings might have been held in London,
but at their inception most of the logistical arrangements were
conducted in Cornwall as well as the manufacture of machinery and
equipment. Here the great
foundries such as Sandy’s, Carne and Vivian, and Harvey’s, both of
Hayle, Holman’s of Camborne, and the Perran Company Foundry of
Fox-Williams built the Cornish steam engines, boilers, pumps and stamps
(ore crushing machinery) for Latin American mines, spawning a world
class export market in mining machinery which lasted into the twentieth
century. Smaller manufactories made everything from safety fuse and
miners’ boots and clothing, theodolites and ropes, to dags (picks),
shovels, bucking irons (flat faced hammers for grinding ore),
copper riddles (sieves) and kibbles (iron buckets). The
export of men and machinery was facilitated because of Cornwall’s fine
network of ports. Primarily
a maritime area, Cornwall had a long and historic association with the
ocean that surrounded her and in Falmouth she could boast the third
largest, deepest natural harbour in the world. One of Britain’s
premier naval ports with ships calling there ‘for orders’ Falmouth
was also home to the Packet ships, by virtue of being granted official
Packet Status in 1688. At first operating ships to the Iberian
Peninsula, Falmouth’s Packet fleet soon commanded routes to the West
Indies and North and South America, forming dense transatlantic trade
and communication networks. Although some men and machinery were dispatched from Swansea, Portsmouth, Plymouth and Liverpool, by far the most was exported through the port of Falmouth. In 1825 it assumed an even greater profile, the Royal Cornwall Gazette describing its streets as ‘thronged with people…the hotels and principal houses consequently filled… as the agents and others engaged for the different mining speculations abroad are assembled and waiting to sail for their various destinations.’ This early nineteenth century migration of British capital, technology and labour to Latin America marked the beginnings of the international mining economy and its attendant labour market, in which the Cornish were to play a central role for over a century. |
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