Over the past two centuries, industrial societies hungry for copper – essential for light, power, and communication – have demanded ever-increasing quantities of the metal. Born with a Copper Spoon examines how the metal has been produced, distributed, controlled, and sold on a global scale. However, this is not simply a narrative of ever-increasing and deepening global connections. It is also about periods of deglobalization, fragmentation, and attempts to sever connections. Throughout history, copper production has spawned its own practices, technologies, and a constantly changing political economy. Large-scale production has affected ecologies, states, and companies, while creating and even destroying local communities dependent on volatile commodity markets. Former president of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda once remarked that Zambians were “born with a copper spoon in our mouths,” but few societies managed to profit from copper’s abundance.

From copper cartels and the futures market to the consequences of resource nationalism, Born with a Copper Spoon delivers a global perspective on one of the world’s most important metals.

Robrecht Declercq's profile page

Duncan Money's profile page

Hans Otto Frøland's profile page

Robrecht Declercq is a senior postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, Belgium, and the author of World Market Transformation: Inside the German Fur Capital Leipzig, 1870–1939. Duncan Money is a historian of central and southern Africa at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He is the author of White Mineworkers on Zambia’s Copperbelt, 1926–1974: In a Class of Their Own. Hans Otto Frøland is a professor of European contemporary history at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. He is a co-editor of From Warfare to Welfare: Business–Government Relations in the Aluminium Industry and Industrial Collaboration in Nazi-Occupied Europe: Norway in Context.

Contributors: Abdolreza Alamdar, Oskar Broberg, Nathan Delaney, Erik Eklund, Ingeborg Guldal, Frida Brende Jenssen, Brian James Leech, Susana Martínez-Rodríguez, Ángel Pascual Martínez-Soto, Jeremy Mouat, Miguel Á. Pérez de Perceval, Iva Peša, Klas Rönnbäck, Ali A. Saeidi, Alejandro San Francisco, Patricia Sippel, Ángel Soto, Dimitrios Theodoridis