From Underground to End-Users
Global Monetary History in Scientific Context

Moneta 194

Meeting at the University of the Pacific,
San Francisco, Stockton, 16-22 May 2016

This volume contains proceedings of a 2016 California meeting, following the pattern established by the DAMIN program La Dépréciation de l’Argent Monétaire et les relations Internationales – Silver Monetary Depreciation and International Relations. This series of conferences encourages cross-disciplinary conceptualizations of monetary history in global context. Past meetings have encouraged fruitful interchanges among numismatists and monetary historians and the 2016 California conference was designed to encourage inclusion of mining historians – along with contributions from Geology – in coordination with contributions by numismatists, monetary historians, and business historians. Specialized expertise is essential for advance of scholarly research, of course, but insights from one specialty can (and do) trigger innovative ideas across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Contents of this volume attest to benefits from cross-disciplinary fertilization.

Given emphasis upon nineteenth-century topics at this 2016 California conference, organizers decided to meet initially for two days in San Francisco, a city founded in response to California’s post-1848 Gold Rush, yet propulsion of metropolitan San Francisco to global status depended upon post-1859 Comstock Lode silver discoveries in Nevada (as emphasized in conference presentations). The conference venue shifted on Day 3 eighty miles eastward to the School of International Studies, University of the Pacific, in Stockton, a deep-water port founded at the time of the California Gold Rush. A lecture at Lake Tahoe on Day 4 focused on provision of water from the Nevada-side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains – gravity fed eastward down into the Carson Valley – then pushed up to the Comstock Lode farther eastward during the 19th century. The venue for Day 5 was historic Virginia City, Nevada, which is sinking due to its location directly atop a vast maze of mines shafts of the Comstock Lode, world dominant source of silver for decades. (There was also a side-visit to Sutro Tunnel, designed to drain wastewater from deep within Comstock Mines westward down into the Carson Valley.) An afternoon in Old Town Sacramento, historic port-city and railroad town through which Nevada silver was exported, highlighted the return trip to San Francisco on Day 6. It is hoped that in-person views of California/Nevada geological formations, challenging transportation routes, mines, coins, and environmental legacies have helped participants to visualize integrated systems that have historically linked – and continue to link – underground activities to diverse end-market destinations over thousands of years.

This volume is the proceedings of the San Francisco/Stockton/Lake Tahoe/Virginia City/Sacramento conference with the participation of Simon James BYTHEWAY (Nihon University, Tokyo), CAO Jin 曹晉 (Tübingen University), Julien CAVERO (Labex TransferS, ENS, Paris) Georges DEPEYROT (CNRS, Paris), Dennis O. FLYNN (University of the Pacific, Stockton), Saul GUERRERO (Independent scholar, London), Claudia de LOZANNE JEFFERIES (City University, London), Ursula KAMPMANN (Lörrach), Ivar LEIMUS (Estonian History Museum and Tallinn University), Michael MÄRCHER (National Museum, Copenhagen), David J. ST. CLAIR (California State University), Brigitte TOUITOU-MICHON (Paris) Agnès TRICOCHE (Labex TransferS, CNRS, Paris).

G. Depeyrot et D. O. Flynn (éd.). From Underground to End-Users. Wetteren : Moneta, 2016 (Moneta ; 194), 190 p. ISBN 978-94-91384-62-2