The California Gold Rush
How gold in California inspired a rush of migrants from Chile to China and across the USA, making fortunes for some while destroying the lives of many, especially Native Americans
From 1849, hundreds of thousands of prospectors from across the USA headed for California in the hope of finding gold. Some made great fortunes, and there was a new Californian dream for these 49ers, willing to risk everything and, if they failed, to try again. California was to become the engine house of the US economy, while expanding so rapidly that it unbalanced the free and slave-owning states and hastened the USA towards civil war. Yet the new arrivals also drove out competing miners from around the Pacific who had reached the goldfields first, and destroyed the lives of Native Americans there, and excluded Chinese people who had begun to settle, with lasting consequences.
Joining Bridget Kendall to explore who won and who lost in the California Gold Rush are Cliff Trafzer, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside; Mae Ngai, Professor of History at Columbia University, and author of the forthcoming book The Chinese Question, a study of Chinese gold miners; and HW Brands, Professor of History at The University of Texas at Austin and author of Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West.
(Image: Gold Nuggets Credit: bodnarchuk/Getty Images)
Last on
More episodes
Broadcasts
- Thu 14 May 2020 09:06GMT91热爆 World Service
- Thu 14 May 2020 23:06GMT91热爆 World Service
- Sun 17 May 2020 13:06GMT91热爆 World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
- Sun 17 May 2020 14:06GMT91热爆 World Service except Americas and the Caribbean, East and Southern Africa, South Asia & West and Central Africa
- Mon 18 May 2020 03:06GMT91热爆 World Service
Featured in...
Luxuries and obsessions—The Forum
How the world's desires were fuelled
Do you think political or business leaders need to be charismatic? Or do you prefer highly competent but somewhat stern people?
Podcast
-
The Forum
The programme that explains the present by exploring the past