The Underground Wealth of Nations by Graulau Jeannette;

Author:Graulau, Jeannette; [Graulau, Jeannette;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300249576
Publisher: YaleUP
Published: 2019-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

The Rest of the Known World

Known to the Chinese chroniclers as Hin-du-sz, Indian mines figure in some medieval literary accounts.282 An envoy sent by Chinghiz Khân in A.D. 1222, described ‘rich silver mines’ located in northwest India.283 After his return from the ‘West,’ the envoy, Wu-ku-sun Chung tuan, stated about the lands of Hindustan:

The people have thick beards, the hair of which is entangled like sheep’s wool, and of different color, black, or yellow in different shades. Their faces are almost entirely covered by hair; and only the nose and their eyes can be seen. All their customs are very strange.’ The Mu-su-lu-man Hui-ho (Mussulman) are very bloodthirsty and greedy. They tear flesh with the fingers and swallow it [. . .] There are further the Hui-ho of Yin-du (Hindustan), who are black and of good character [. . .] The people are all living in cities, there are no villages. The roofs of their houses are covered with clay. All the woodwork in the houses is carved. They use white glass for their windows and for vessels. The country is very rich in silver, pearls, cotton, hemp, etc.284

Persian historian Ali Al-Mas’ūdī (A.D. 896–956) included ‘gold and silver mines’ in his description of ‘the strength of the kingdom of Gudjarāt.’285

India offered no ideal condition for the development of capitalist silver-mining industries, despite the development of advanced metallurgy in pre-historic and modern times. India was the land of zinc and copper. In Zawar, Rajasthan, northeast India, zinc was the main mined metal. According to Paul Craddock, here stands the earliest dated zinc mine of the world, and the earliest Indian lead-zinc ore beneficiation plant.286 The territory originally extended from the Indus to Bundelkhand in the east, before ‘Muslim invasions forced the Rajput southwards and they took refuge in the wild tracts of Rajasthan.’287 The famous zinc and tin deposits in Mochia Magra and Ballaria, rediscovered in the late fourteenth century, were worked until ‘the great famine’ of 1812–1813.288 ‘The mines,’ stated English Colonel James Tod (A.D. 1782–1835), ‘were very productive in former times, and yielded several lacs289 to the princes of Méwar.’ He added:

The rich tin mines of Jawara produced at open time a considerable proportion of silver. Those of copper are abundant, as is also iron in the now alienated domain on the Chumbul; but lead least of all.290

Nothing further is known about these operations, except that ‘the riches of the mines of Jawura were expended to rebuild the temples and palaces levelled by Alla’ in the fourteenth century.291

India has a large ‘copper belt,’ an eighty-kilometer-long mineralized zone ‘with Khetri at the north end, at an altitude of 350 meters and higher,’ in the words of Lynn Willies.292 The ores are formed in rocks containing garnet, chlorite, and quartz. The most spectacular mining operations along the belt took place before the twelfth century and after the sixteenth century. Silver outputs, if any, came from this mineralized zone, but evidence of galena mining is inconclusive. Neither gold nor silver attracted the

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