The history of resource nationalism in Southern Africa

Miles Larmer

Chapter 4 in Handbook of Resource Nationalism, 2026, pp 69-81 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Southern Africa's abundant mineral resources generated significant wealth and power for some African societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and a powerful incentive for European colonial annexation. The imposition of racialized capitalism in existing (e.g., the Copperbelt) and new (e.g., the Witwatersrand) mineral-producing regions generated new systems of gendered labor migration and destabilized social order in many African societies. The profoundly unequal distribution of mining wealth fueled anti-colonial resistance and led nationalist movements to demand its redistribution. Following national liberation, independent governments nationalized and/or sought greater state participation in foreign-owned mining corporations, but this sometimes conflicted with workers’ and mine communities’ own visions of resource nationalism. The limited achievements of early post-colonial resource nationalism were undermined by low mineral prices and the end of the global ‘long boom’. This chapter, in analyzing the history of Southern African resource nationalism, enables instructive comparisons with more recent/contemporary iterations of the phenomenon.

Keywords: Nationalism; Mining; Decolonization; Borders; Labor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035333431
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