Gold Influences

• Three great gold discoveries
  • Australia
  • South Africa
  • USA
    • includes discovery of silver in West
• all had similar characteristics
  • gold discoveries remote and difficult to access
  • prior to discovery all reasonably poor
    • USA - cost of civil war
    • Australia - essentially still a settler society powered by convict labour
    • South Africa - tension between Boer farmers of interior and Anglo coastal settlements
  • All had unresolved conflicts with indigenous population
  • All had large populations of rootless men
    • Australia - ticket of leave men and discharged convicts
    • USA - ex civil war soldiers who had lost everything
    • South Africa - large number of carpet baggers from elsewhere