Arbeitswelten, Migration, sozialer Protest und Globalisierung im Kupferbergbau zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts: Der chilenische Kleine Norden im Vergleich mit dem Mansfelder Land

Abstract

In the middle of the 19th century, miners and smelters in the Central German copper region Mansfeld lived in the corporative world of the Prussian mining industry. At the same time, Europe’s growing demand for copper and silver contributed to the rise of in the Chilean Northern provinces Atacama and Coquimbo, the so-called Norte Chico, as the leading supplier worldwide. The region was able to maintain this position between 1840 and 1870. The long running boom generated a new multicultural working class in the mining regions in the Norte Chico. Whereas Mansfeld’s mineworkers in Germany did neither participate in the hunger riots of 1847 nor the revolutionary actions of 1848, workers from the mining districts in Chile’s Norte Chico belonged to the most radical groups during the revolutions against President Manuel Montt in 1851 and 1858–9. On the basis of these two examples, this comparative study challenges some general claims of the Dependencia theory, according to which economically advanced regions in 19th century Chile had lacked the more progressive social structures of highly industrialised regions in Europe at that time.