Home is not so Very Far Away
Home is not so Very Far Away
Civilizing the South African Frontier
This chapter shows what American engineers were doing in South Africa in 1895. California engineers converged in South Africa at the end of the nineteenth century for several reasons. In the 1880s, new technical and scientific knowledge expanded hard rock mining activity around the world. A great gold rush began in 1886 along the high, dusty ridge of the Transvaal Republic, the Witwatersrand. It coincided with Judge Lorenzo Sawyer's injunction against hydraulic mining in California in 1884, which decreased opportunities for local engineers. Many Californians thus joined exploration companies that sent them abroad, some to South Africa. There, they worked for British businessmen, helping to develop the Rand's deep-level mines, Johannesburg's domestic water supplies, and irrigated agriculture in Rhodesia, Cape Colony, and the Transvaal.
Keywords: American engineers, South Africa, California engineers, scientific knowledge, hard rock mining, gold rush
North Carolina Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
