All That Glitters: Mining, Society and the Environment in Southern Africa since the 19th century - Semester 2 - HIS00226H

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Module summary

The recent upsurge in the global demand for strategic minerals such as tantalum, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements has seen global powers such as the US, China, Russia, and India manoeuvring to secure long-term mining deals with minerals-rich African countries. This contemporary scramble for African mineral deposits has brought Africa’s long history of mineral extraction and its different legacies to the fore. This module critically examines the history of mineral resource extraction in Southern Africa since the 19th century, providing students with an in-depth exploration of the region’s cutting-edge labour, social, and environmental history.

We will explore how mining turned Southern Africa into an arena for global extractive capital, triggering massive regional population movements, the rise of mining centres which became sites of new modernities and workplace/political identities, and reshaping societies and environments. We will also consider how the global geopolitics engendered by the demand for strategic minerals played out in the region.

This Special Subject Area is split into two Modules taught over two semesters. Semester 1 focuses on themes covering the period from the 19th century to the Second World War. Semester 2 covers the period from the Second World War to the post-colonial period. Students will engage with a diverse range of primary source materials, including archival records, oral histories, photographs, documentary films, and media sources, among others. Students will use specific case studies to explore and analyse the applicability of concepts and theories such as “resource curse”, “conflict minerals”, “blood diamonds”, and ‘extractivism.

Related modules

Students taking this module must also take the first part in Semester 1.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 2 2025-26

Module aims

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce students to in depth study of a specific historical topic using primary and secondary material;
• To enable students to explore the topic through discussion and writing; and
• To enable students to evaluate and analyse primary sources.

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will:

• Grasp key themes, issues and debates relevant to the topic being studied;
• Have acquired knowledge and understanding about that topic;
• Be able to comment on and analyse original sources;
• Be able to relate the primary and secondary material to one another; and
• Have acquired skills and confidence in close reading and discussion of texts and debates.

Module content

Students will attend a 3-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of semester 2. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW). Students prepare for and participate in eight three-hour seminars in all. A one-to-one meeting between tutor and students will also be held to discuss assessments.

Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:

1. World War II and Africa’s Strategic minerals
2. Chrome, the Cold War, and US Foreign Policy Towards Southern Africa
3. Africa and the Global Uranium Rush
4. Boom and Bust in the Copperbelt
5. Platinum Mining: Land, Labour and Mining Informal Settlements
6. Resource Curse and Conflict Minerals
7. Waste, Pollution, and Mining Afterlives
8. Artisanal and Small-scale Mining

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

For formative assessment, students submit an essay draft of 2000-words.

For summative assessment, students complete a 4000-word essay relating to the themes and issues of the module. This comprises 100% of the overall module mark. Summative assessments will be due in the assessment period.

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Module feedback

Following their formative assessment task, students will receive a one-to-one meeting with the tutor to discuss the essay and their plans for the assessed essay.

Work will be returned to students with written comments in their tutorial and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to make use of their tutor’s student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.

For summative assessment tasks, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.

Indicative reading

For semester time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:

• Renni Eddo Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race (London: Bloomsbury 2017), Chapter 1, “Histories”.
• Stuart Hall, Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017).
• Ian Sanjoy Patel, We Are Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire (London: Verso, 2021).