Professional news: my contract at Leiden ends this month so I'm leaving academia. I'm good at my job. I publish a lot (3 books, 21 articles/chapters), got great teaching evaluations and supervised 4 PhDs since finishing my own in 2016. It's not enough though. I have to accept that I will never get a permanent academic job, and have also realised I no longer want one. Working conditions at universities are deteriorating. At Leiden, I took on the work of two colleagues who had burnouts. Unsurprisingly, I found their jobs stressful!

My review of 'Settlers at the End of Empire' by @drjeansmith has been published in the @ihr_history Reviews in History. Her book is a very welcome contribution to migration history:
reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2469 Post-war migration in Britain usually means immigration to Britain. The important contribution of this book is to show that this occured alongside mass emigration from Britain, and how this changes our understanding of migration and migration policy.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Mufulira Mine Disaster, #Zambia's worst ever mining disaster. On 25 September 1970, 89 miners on the night shift were entombed when vast quantities of mud and water leaked from a surface tailings dam and inundated the mine.
#mininghistory Mufulira was the world’s largest underground copper mine, but it took only 15 minutes for the entire eastern section to flood. Survivors recalled a noise like thunder, a shockwave of air through the tunnels, then the lights going out before the wet mud rushed through the tunnels.

This photo I came across from the @TWArchives got me thinking about the global division of labour, specifically who could do what kinds of jobs in different places at the same time. The photo shows dockworkers in Sunderland manually unloading chromite from a ship in 1949. What caught my eye is that the caption labels it "East African chromite," which is probably incorrect. The chromite was almost certainly mined in Zimbabwe, in open pits in Shurugwi (then Selukwe) and then shipped to Britain via Beira.

Yesterday I spent a happy afternoon in the @ASCLibrary looking through two boxes of material on #Zambia recently donated by Frans Verstraelen. This was a mixture of books, reports, leaflets, and periodicals from the University of Zambia, some of which are now very hard to find. The focus of much of the books and pamphlets is on Christianity, Christian churches and humanism (the guiding ideology of the country after independence). Several things by and about Kenneth Kaunda as well

Thanks to @blewis2103 I have a copy of a 1972 film on the history of Kansanshi, #Zambia, featuring an interview with with 95 year-old Chief Kapijimpanga (pictured) and footage of pre-industrial smelting techniques as recalled and reconstructed by elderly locals.
#mininghistory Chief Kapijimpanga worked with the prospecting party that established a mine at Kansanshi in the 1900s and the film includes footage of the remains of that mine in the early 1970s. I think has now been obliterated by the new open pit.

Scanning of the Mineworkers' Union of #Zambia archive is complete! We now have a digital copy of the union's archive and the physical documents have been catalogued, organised and stored in acid-free boxes.
#mininghistory Scholars in Zambia (and anyone else) can now consult the physical archive with permission of the Mineworkers' Union. The archive is stored at the union's head office: Katilungu House, Obote Avenue, Kitwe.

A convincing-looking fake press release is circulating on WhatsApp in #Zambia claiming that Barrick have sold Lumwana Mine to an unknown Canadian private equity firm and the national pension fund. The motivation for this is baffling.
af.reuters.com/article/zambia…
#mining The layout and language of the press release is an accurate imitation, and Barrick really have been trying to sell Lumwana. However, the supposed buyer Metalinvest doesn't even have a website or appear to have anywhere near the money to buy or operate a mine like Lumwana.

This is an interesting thread but I think ultimately missing something important about manufacturing in Britain: export markets and Britain's imperial position.

https://twitter.com/jadehalbert/status/1253441095033380865

The conclusion is Britain's clothing industry was decimated by lack of political support in the face of competition from "cheap gear" produced developing countries who were "screwing British manufacturers".

https://twitter.com/jadehalbert/status/1253441115002470401?s=20

I did research on the early life of the anti-apartheid militant Jack Hodgson during my PhD and it's great to see that it's now been published in an edited collection on biography in African history:
brill.com/view/book/edco… Hodgson is a well-known figure for South African historians. He was instrumental in the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, in the early 1960s. As an ex-soldier and ex-miner he had practical skills with explosives to help with the turn to armed struggle

Eagerly awaiting the seminar of @CeesHeere this afternoon who is speaking this afternoon on the British World, race and the rise of Japan in the late nineteenth century, which is the topic of his recently published book. @CeesHeere His book is an attempt to under how the structures, rules and institutions of international affairs were shaped by the hierarchies of imperial power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The relentless decline of South Africa's #mining sector has attracted surprisingly little comment. These latest figures show less than 100,000 people are now employed in gold mining. In 1985, it was over 500,000.

https://twitter.com/b_gewald/status/1224642366356836355

Here's the chart on gold #mining employment over the last decade from @Mine_RSA showing the steady decline.

Started reading this fantastic book on the grim transport of Mozambican migrants to the mines and learnt something unexpected: Charles van Onselen worked underground in the 1960s as an onsetter (raising and lowering cages and skips in shafts).
#mininghistory I chaired a talk by van Onselen on the book earlier this year and he used this inhuman system of transportation to make an argument about moral judgement in history and the critique made of judging historical actors by contemporary standards.

Interesting new blog post by Margaret O’Callaghan arguing that mines in #Zambia’s North-Western Province do not constitute a 'new Copperbelt':
copperbelt.history.ox.ac.uk/2019/10/21/why… The argument is unconvincing though. O’Callaghan argues that new developments do not resemble the historical mining industry on the Copperbelt as the ore grade is low, copper is extracted in open pits and mining has not been accompanied by infrastructure development.

Fantastic trip this week to the Big Hole Mining Museum in Kimberley, site of a huge open-pit diamond mine dug following a diamond-rush that triggered industrialisation across the region. Thanks to @andycohen101 for organising the trip and the workshop.
#mininghistory There's a great museum and a reconstruction of 19th century Kimberley around the hole, but I don't think they appreciate the significance of some of the stuff in this museum.

Now @drkateskinner is speaking on the assassination of Togo's President Sylvanus Olympio in 1963 and the formation, five months later, of the Organisation of African Unity. African states had to decide whether the new government was legitimate and participate in the OAU. .@drkateskinner: The debate about the legitimacy of the new government revolved around whether the coup and assassination emerged from internal Togolese political upheaval, or whether foreign states had encouraged the coup.

Following nomination from @SannaFra, here is Day 1 of "7 days 7 books' covers", but with a comment. I read this as a child, and image of a vast, hidden and abandoned world beneath our feet has stayed with me ever since. I like the cover as well.
#shareyourbooks #favouritecovers I'm supposed to nominate someone else but I'm pretty sure everyone else did this last year.

Final paper for me at the conference is our very own Matteo Grilli (postdoc @UFSweb) on the Basutoland Congress Party and its international networks.
#ASAUK18 #ASAUK2018 Grilli: The BCP was heavily influenced by the ideas of Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore. Pan-Africanism became the ideological foundation of the party.
#ASAUK18 #ASAUK2018

Next up is @drjustinpearce with a paper comparing wartime behaviour, peace settlements and post-war politics in #Angola and #Mozambique.
#ASAUK18 #ASAUK2018 .@drjustinpearce: If opposition parties don't have a chance of taking power, then what are they for?
#ASAUK18 #ASAUK2018

Attending the panel on Portuguese-Speaking Africa Beyond Borders this afternoon. First paper is Ana Lúcia Sá on Equatorial Guinea and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
#ASAUK18 Equatorial Guinea is a case of authoritarian resilience where the state has the resources to either repress or co-opt the opposition.
#ASAUK18

Next paper is Thomas McNamara on wage negotiations and branch executives of the Mineworkers' Union of Zambia.
#ASAUK18 McNamara: wages (adjusted for inflation) for miners in #Zambia are lower today than they were in 1971. McNamara argues that this is partly due to union branch officials persuading members to except below-inflation pay offers.
#ASAUK18