By the time the “Scramble for Africa” among European colonial powers began in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally connected for centuries. Its gold had fueled the economies of Europe and the Islamic world for nearly a millennium, and the sophisticated kingdoms spanning its west coast had traded with Europeans since the fifteenth century. Until at least 1650, this was a trade of equals, using a variety of currencies—most importantly, cowrie shells imported from the Maldives and nzimbu shells imported from Brazil. But, as the slave trade grew, African kingdoms began to lose prominence in the growing global economy. We have been living with the effects of this shift ever since. With A Fistful of Shells, Toby Green transforms our view of West and West-Central Africa by reconstructing the world of these kingdoms, which revolved around trade, diplomacy, complex religious beliefs, and the production of art. Green shows how the slave trade led to economic disparities that caused African kingdoms to lose relative political and economic power. The concentration of money in the hands of Atlantic elites in and outside these kingdoms brought about a revolutionary nineteenth century in Africa, parallel to the upheavals then taking place in Europe and America. Yet political fragmentation following the fall of African aristocracies produced radically different results as European colonization took hold. Drawing not just on written histories, but on archival research in nine countries, art, oral history, archaeology, and letters, Green lays bare the transformations that have shaped world politics and the global economy since the fifteenth century and paints a new and masterful portrait of West Africa, past and present.

Gold districts of California

There are countless prospecting books out there. They all teach the same general theories and show the same diagrams. While they are not bad books, in fact many are great, this book is written to take a different and simpler approach. A prospectors lifetime of knowledge is simplified and condensed into an easy to read and understand guide that will hopefully benefit those who never even held a gold pan as much as those who have spent a few years prospecting but might still have a few questions they are seeking answers to. It is the intent that this is the prospecting book that will read as a novel, and teach every bit as much as an informational guide. What are the types of equipment available and how do I use them? What is it that I am looking for when I am prospecting? What do I do with my gold once I find it and how do I sell it? Are my black sands worth anything? What are black sands made out of? How do I find a place I can go and prospect? Is there a way to know where I should dig in a stream? How do Mining claims work? These are some of the many questions that this book was written to address. While there is no guide that can tell you how to get rich mining for gold, this guide has been written for the purpose of helping you be more likely to find gold on your future prospecting trips. It is easy to become discouraged as a prospector, or allow yourself to believe others when they say "there is no gold left to be found, the old-timers got it all". You are just a few pages away from learning the facts; and that the gold has not all been taken and how you can get your share!

GOLD MINING IN THE 1990's--This one book outlines EVERYTHING a beginner will need & want to know about getting started at gold mining today, either as a hobby or as a small-scale commercial activity. In easy to understand language, supported by clear photographs & graphic demonstrations, this book covers all of the important subjects--including what gold is & looks like, where it comes from & where to find it, how gold deposits & how to find & recover it, & also touches on the legal aspects of how to claim the gold for yourself. The book covers the up-to-date mining procedures of panning gold, sluicing, dredging, high-banking, drywashing, electronic probing, hardrock mining, basic refining techniques, cleaning procedures, selling gold, & much, much more. Herein lies the most comprehensive & thorough work on electronic prospecting techniques (locating gold with metal detectors) available in any publication on the market today. Virtually an encyclopedia of modern gold mining techniques, there is no other book available more up to date, more simple to understand, or which covers the entire subject as thoroughly as this manual.

Newly reprinted, this guidebook delves into the history of the most important gold-bearing areas and offers the modern prospector and gem hunter interesting and valuable tips about these districts. Organized by county and by mining district--includes maps, descriptive text of mining sites, where and what gems and minerals can be found, and a short history of local ghost towns.

Building on the tradition of Little Bee, Chris Cleave again writes with elegance, humor, and passion about friendship, marriage, parenthood, tragedy, and redemption. What would you sacrifice for the people you love? KATE AND ZOE met at nineteen when they both made the cut for the national training program in track cycling—a sport that demands intense focus, blinding exertion, and unwavering commitment. They are built to exploit the barest physical and psychological edge over equally skilled rivals, all of whom are fighting for the last one tenth of a second that separates triumph from despair. Now at thirty-two, the women are facing their last and biggest race: the 2012 Olympics. Each wants desperately to win gold, and each has more than a medal to lose. Kate is the more naturally gifted, but the demands of her life have a tendency to slow her down. Her eight-year-old daughter Sophie dreams of the Death Star and of battling alongside the Rebels as evil white blood cells ravage her personal galaxy—she is fighting a recurrence of the leukemia that nearly killed her three years ago. Sophie doesn’t want to stand in the way of her mum’s Olympic dreams, but each day the dark forces of the universe seem to be massing against her. Devoted and self-sacrificing Kate knows her daughter is fragile, but at the height of her last frenzied months of training, might she be blind to the most terrible prognosis? Intense, aloof Zoe has always hovered on the periphery of real human companionship, and her compulsive need to win at any cost has more than once threatened her friendship with Kate—and her own sanity. Will she allow her obsession, and the advantage she has over a harried, anguished mother, to sever the bond they have shared for more than a decade? Echoing the adrenaline-fueled rush of a race around the Velodrome track, Gold is a triumph of superbly paced, heart-in-throat storytelling. With great humanity and glorious prose, Chris Cleave examines the values that lie at the heart of our most intimate relationships, and the choices we make when lives are at stake and everything is on the line.