Mining the borderlands : industry, capital, and the emergence of engineers in the Southwest Territories, 1855-1910

Summary: "'Capital mediators' argues that mining engineers were the critical intermediaries responsible for integrating the transnational hard-rock mining districts of North America into the economic system of the United States. Working as labor managers and technical experts, mining engineers were involved in the daily negotiations which brought private US capital up to and across the southwestern border as part of an ongoing project of American territorial and economic expansion. The elite social networks and gendered discourse of "expertise" invoked by these technocratic professionals were key components of the negotiations that led to the success or failure of the massive capital-intensive mining ventures of the nineteenth century. By integrating the history of technical expertise into the history of the transnational mining industry, this close look at borderlands mining contributes to an understanding of the process by which American economic hegemony was established in a border region peripheral to the federal governments of both Washington, D.C. and Mexico City."--Provided by publisher.