Case

Central Europe is an ideal case for this investigation. It has a long tradition of state-managed mining which resulted in an excellent archival record. Central Europe is a complex historiographical term; here it refers pragmatically to territories between the Baltic and the Mediterranean Sea. This includes, among others, the Carpathians, the Ore Mountains, the eastern Alps, and the Harz. In this region, mining flourished around 1500 when rich silver deposits were exploited to meet a soaring global demand. By 1550 it was in decline as the best ores were exhausted, and competition from Spanish American mines stiffened. Nascent territorial states across Central Europe began to maintain mines when many of them suffered and perished. They were inclined to do so as mining-related income (taxes, rents, sales) made monarchs more independent from parliamentary control and supplied funds for military campaigns. A legal framework based on princely rights to mineral resources, similar across the region, allowed state officials to assume active management roles. An emerging cadre of technical expert-administrators included: managers and foremen who organized the everyday allocation of labour; technical experts (e.g. mechanics) and office clerks who maintained and expanded regional infrastructure; and legally-trained councillors who reported to the monarch. This process occurred most notably in the territories of Habsburg Lower Hungary, Saxony, and Brunswick, but not, until around 1800, in Prussia.

Central Europe’s internal diversity enables SCARCE to make fine-grained comparisons with mining regions across the early modern world. Globally, it was not unusual for states to be concerned with mining as metallic resources were often considered the ruler’s prerogative. Notably in Spain/Spanish America, Tokugawa Japan, Qing China, and the West African Asante empire, state officials were concerned with the management of mineral resources, often by granting concessions and collecting taxes. The value of placing Central Europe in a comparative framework is enhanced by the fact that early modern mining regions were increasingly entangled through movements of books and manuscripts, displaced workers and travelling experts. Integrated payment systems for trade and colonial extraction relying largely, if not exclusively, on silver/gold currencies emerged as a global matrix for the management of metallic resources in the early modern period.