What is the name of the gold rush in the 19th century. "Gold Rush" and its relapse

Kashcheeva K.

On the morning of January 24, 1848, sawmill worker James Marshall set off in search of a site to build a water mill. As he approached the banks of the American River, he noticed bright gleams on the sand, sparkling in the rays of the sun. Picking up his find, Marshall realized that he was holding in his hands a small, pea-sized, but undeniably real piece of gold. To verify this, he went to a washerwoman working at the same sawmill, and with the help of acid they were convinced that the nugget found by Marshall was pure gold (it was later valued at $ 5). Marshall immediately told John Sutter, the owner of the sawmill, about his find. This German immigrant owned thousands of acres of land in the Sacramento area, and he planned to further expand his territories in order to create a huge agricultural empire. For this purpose, it was decided to hide information about the find. However, the mystery nevertheless surfaced, and soon one of the San Francisco newspapers confirmed reports of several gold finds and miners began to flock from neighboring areas.

One enterprising merchant, Sam Brennan, decided to cash in on the news. He collected some golden sand and went to San Francisco, where he began to run through the streets with a vial in his hands and shouting: “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River! Brennan hoped that miners would pour into these places, who, of course, would buy all the necessary goods in his shop and help make a fortune. In addition, the shopkeeper began sending out newspaper clippings with a note about gold. The news quickly reached the then capital of California - the city of Monterrey, and then to the east coast of the United States, causing a real "gold rush" everywhere.

However, few people took the information about Marshall's discovery seriously until President James Polk addressed Congress in December 1848: reports of our officials. Thus, what millions have been waiting for has happened. It was essentially a call to action. Farmers abandoned their fields, merchants closed shops, soldiers abandoned their units. Everyone moved west. Already at the beginning of 1849, the "gold rush" became a real epidemic. All the men who could move their legs, and many women, left the cities and rushed to the American River. More and more gold mines began to appear there, and not far from Sutter's sawmill, the first settlement of Coloma miners in California arose.

Arriving at these places in the late 40s of the 19th century, one could see hundreds of people bustling around the trays for washing the rock. Gold literally "flowed like a river." Even the Indians, who were not allowed access to modern technology, got the hang of washing gold with their improvised means. Slowly, the center of California moved closer to gold. At the initiative of local watchmen, the construction of the new state capital began in Sacramento - closer to the fabulously rich in gold American River. The thirst for gold drove people there both by water and by land. In 1849, the “gold rush” tore off the places with a total score of about 80 thousand people, who later became known as “Forty-Nineers”. Numerous arriving gold miners needed food, clothing, housing, since it was impossible to mine gold on enthusiasm alone. Therefore, auxiliary enterprises and institutions began to grow rapidly around.

The first immigrants to search for gold were from northern Mexico, and later from Peru and Chile. But by 1850, miners came here from almost all over the world - from Europe, China, Australia. They walked the longest way - by sea, skirting South America. The second route ran through the Isthmus of Panama: first they reached it by sea, then by horseback over land and again by sea to California. There was another road, not close and not safe, which ran completely overland, through the entire continent - the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains. The rapidly increasing flow of foreigners did not please the citizens of the United States, who believed that only they had the right to mine gold here. And in 1850, under pressure from local residents, the California authorities introduced a special tax for foreigners - $ 20 per month (at that time a very large amount), thus getting rid of almost all competitors. Meanwhile, the flow of gold did not dry up. On May 1, 1850, the steamship Panama left San Francisco with $1.5 million worth of gold. According to an official report on October 26, 1850, 57 thousand people were engaged in gold mining in California.

Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925) - filmed mainly
based on the "gold rush" in Alaska (1902-1905)

However, from 1852, the growth of gold production began to decline, it became increasingly difficult to find, so fierce competition grew between the miners. Most of them barely found enough gold to cover the cost of food, clothing, and tools. Not that there was no gold at all, but it was no longer necessary to count on easy earnings. Therefore, in 1853, many people hurried back to their homes, which marked the end of the California Gold Rush, which, nevertheless, left an indelible mark on American history. Thanks to a sharp wave of migration, such cities as Stockton, Sacramento, and San Francisco have grown in the West of the USA. In the latter, for example, in 1849 there were only 812 inhabitants, and a year later the number of townspeople increased 34 times.

Also, the "gold rush" played an important role in assigning California the status of a US state. On June 3, 1849, the "Constitutional Convention", a convention of people's representatives from ten California districts, was convened in Monterrey, which on October 13 voted for the adoption of the state constitution and its accession to the United States. The admission of California to the federation was accompanied by heated discussions in Congress, for a long time they could not decide what fate would befall slavery in the new state. However, in 1850, a compromise was nevertheless reached, according to which slavery was decided to be banned in California. Having finally settled all federal problems, California became a full-fledged 31st state.

Spain and Portugal, who had divided the gold reserves of the Indians of Central and South America for almost two centuries, considered North America to be an absolutely unpromising territory. The barrenness of these lands was established by the first unsuccessful Spanish expeditions to the American coast of the Atlantic, after which neither Spain nor Portugal began to prevent colonists from Great Britain and Ireland from settling North America. Subsequently, it was the English-speaking settlers who happened to play a major role in the discovery and development of fantastic gold deposits on the continent.

California Gold Rush

The first significant find of gold in the United States occurred in 1779 in the state of North Carolina and, as often happens in the ore business, this find was a coincidence. Three decades later, Georgia began a larger gold mining operation that could claim to be the first gold rush in North America. The discovery of gold in these territories is directly related to the infamous forced resettlement of Indians from their native lands. But neither North Carolina nor Georgia can match the grand epic that began in 1848 in California.

The laurels of the discoverer of gold in California went to the modest master at the sawmill, James Marshall, who on January 24, 1848, saw a bright yellow gleam in the stream bed. The discovery of the first nugget was soon followed by new successes that could not be hidden for long, especially after US President George Polk himself did not fail to mention gold in California when he wrote his annual message to Congress. Hundreds of thousands of “fortune hunters” rushed to the “Californian paradise”, who arrived in California by ships, wagons, on horseback and even walked through the jungles of Central America and the Mexican deserts.

In a few years, the population of the state, which now included immigrants from Europe, China and Asia, increased by almost 7 times and began to number about 350 thousand people. The gold rush raged here for almost 20 years, giving impetus to the emergence of many now famous cities, and also having a great influence on the formation of the foundations of US economic power. For about 100 years, the gold mines of California have been developed, providing the state with 3.5 thousand tons of gold, which is almost a third of the total amount of gold mined in the United States over the years.

The stage of the great "epidemics" associated with gold mining in North America was completed by the gold rush that broke out in Alaska, in the region of the river, the name of which eventually became synonymous with a rich source of some resource - the Klondike. Historians say that in less than three years at least 200 thousand people managed to take part in gold mining in Alaska, but no more than 4-5 thousand lucky ones really got rich.

It began in the Klondike in 1896, when three prospectors discovered impressive deposits of golden sand in Bonanza Creek. As soon as the news of the find spread among the population of the northern state, Alaskans, young and old, grabbed picks, shovels and washing trays. In the first year, almost one and a half tons of gold were mined here, most of which went on ships to San Francisco. In the summer of 1897, the ubiquitous newspapermen vigorously discussed the arrival of "gold" steamers in the city, from where the news of the Klondike gold placers spread throughout the world.

The luckiest miners were the Alaska natives, who more easily endured harsh climatic conditions, as well as those who were among the first to take part in gold mining. Most of the alien prospectors left in the Klondike not only the last money, but also their lives. By 1899, the Klondike gold rush had subsided, although gold mining there continued for several decades.

An important reason for the outflow of gold miners from the Klondike region was the discovery of new gold deposits at the western tip of Alaska - on the Seward Peninsula. Gold-bearing veins lay almost on the surface here, but in order to extract the desired metal, prospectors often had to burn fires, warming the frozen ground. By 1909, the most accessible gold deposits on Seward were devastated, the gold rush in North America came to its logical conclusion.

It is noteworthy that gold mining on the Seward Peninsula served as a pretext for numerous accusations brought against the Romanov dynasty by Russian industrialists and politicians that Alaska was sold for a pittance, and thereby Russia lost its richest gold deposits. Nowadays, most of the mines in North America have become scarce, but with enviable tenacity, searches are resumed again and again in old mines, tons of river sand are washed by prospectors for the sole purpose of discovering native gold.

On August 19, 1848, the American newspaper The New York Herald reported that gold had been discovered in California. This news provoked the famous gold rush: thousands of people rushed west to look for the precious metal.

However, the reserves of easily accessible gold quickly dried up - only a few out of tens of thousands of prospectors managed to get rich. Nevertheless, the events of the mid-19th century in the minds of Americans are equivalent to episodes of the Civil War, historians say. In their opinion, the romanticized short-term pursuit of gold has become one of the foundations of the cultural heritage of the United States.

California to gold

California as a historical region includes an elongated peninsula on the Pacific coast of North America and the adjacent coastal regions of the western margin of the continent. The southern part of California (the peninsula itself) today belongs to Mexico, and the northern part belongs to the United States.

The first Europeans reached these places in the 16th century. The Spanish conquistadors who defeated the Aztec empire raved about the search for new super-rich states, but in California they met only poor Indian tribes who earned their living by hunting, gathering and slash-and-burn agriculture. Having not found palaces and temples, the colonialists lost all interest in this area for a long time.

Only at the end of the 17th century did the first Jesuit mission appear in southern California. The Order remained the only real European power in these places for almost a hundred years. Toward the end of the 18th century, the Spanish colonial authorities sent a series of expeditions to Northern California and founded several settlements there, in particular San Francisco. However, in general, these places remained practically undeveloped by Europeans.

At the beginning of the 19th century, representatives of the Russian-American company from Alaska also made several expeditions to California. In 1812, they agreed with the Indians on the transfer of land north of San Francisco and founded Fort Ross on them.

Fort Ross, California © Library of Congress

The Spaniards were not enthusiastic about this initiative, but the Russians emphasized that the lands in Northern California did not officially belong to Spain, and therefore the Indians were free to dispose of them at their own discretion. Spain did not want to enter into conflict with the Russian Empire, so it tried to exert only diplomatic pressure on its new neighbors.

In the 1830s, the Russian envoy Ferdinand Wrangel agreed with the leadership of the newly formed Mexican state to recognize Northern California as part of Russia in exchange for the official recognition of Mexican statehood by St. Petersburg. Since Mexico was already independent, Russia had absolutely nothing to lose. However, the deal was not destined to take place for other reasons - due to the lack of support from Nicholas I.

The inhabitants of the Russian colony in California quickly found a common language with all the neighboring Indian tribes and practically did not conflict with them. At Fort Ross, rich farms existed, animal husbandry developed, ships were built. The leadership of the colony offered the Russian authorities to start resettling liberated serfs in it, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs opposed it. After the decline in the population of the sea otter and the start of purchasing food for Alaska from the Hudson's Bay Company, the interest of the Russian authorities in California completely faded. As a result, the colony was sold in 1841 to the American John Sutter for only 42,857 rubles. Moreover, according to some reports, Sutter did not pay for it to the end.

John Sutter © Library of Congress

After the departure of the Russians, Northern California nominally became completely part of Mexico. Sutter announced that he intended to declare his part of the Pacific coast a French protectorate, but did not have time - in 1846, US troops invaded California. The Americans carried out mass arrests of the local population and organized the proclamation of the California Republic. In February 1848, the United States completely annexed Upper California. This position was finally fixed in the peace treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.

Golden fever

On January 24, 1848, near the sawmill of John Sutter, who acquired Fort Ross, one of his workers, James Marshall, discovered several grains of gold. Sutter tried to keep it a secret, but the California merchant and publisher Samuel Brennan, who learned about the find, decided to go into the gold trade and walked the streets of San Francisco, holding a vessel with gold sand mined in the vicinity above his head.

The news of this spread among the few local residents who rushed to search for the precious metal, and on August 19 the news was published in The New York Herald. On December 5, the discovery of gold in California was publicly announced by US President James Polk.

Thousands of fortune hunters rushed to California from the eastern states and from abroad. This led to a sharp deterioration in relations between Americans and the Indians of the Great Plains, who until the middle of the 19th century were practically not touched by the white colonialists. At first, the prairie warriors were outraged by the unceremonious intrusion into their hunting grounds. And then - the laying of roads and the construction of railways, designed to link the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The war, which began in the middle of the century, lasted about 40 years and ended with the complete defeat of the Indians and the seizure of their lands.

San Francisco, 1851 © Library of Congress

California's population began to grow rapidly. If in 1848 only a few hundred people lived in San Francisco, then in 1850 the population of the city reached 25 thousand, and in 1855 - 36 thousand inhabitants. In just a few years, about 300 thousand immigrants from the US East Coast, as well as immigrants from Europe, Latin America and Asia, arrived in California. What is happening began to be called the "gold rush".

As John Sutter predicted, the gold didn't do him any good. His possessions were captured by alien adventurers, and farms were plundered. The entrepreneur led a long lawsuit in Washington, but received only a pension from the government. The authorities intended at some stage to pay him compensation in the amount of $50,000, but never did so. Sutter's son John August founded the city of Sacramento, but then quickly sold the land and left for Mexico, where he became a businessman and American consul. However, towards the end of his life, things did not go well for him, and after his death, the remnants of the Mexican property of the Sutters were confiscated during the next revolutionary events. The wife and children of John Augustus returned to California at the end of the 19th century without money.

Nevertheless, the name of the Sutters lives on in the memory of Americans. Streets, schools, hospitals, as well as the city of Sutter Creek, Sutter County and a mountain range located near the Pacific coast are named after them. Samuel Brennan, who framed Sutter, got a more tangible benefit. He made millions in gold trading, and then received the post of senator.

In the mid-1850s, the easily accessible gold began to run out and the fever began to subside. In total, during its time, according to some sources, almost 4 thousand tons of gold were mined. These reserves would be worth more than $100 billion today.

However, few of the miners got rich. States in California in the 1850s were made mainly by those who were engaged in the supply of various goods and services to workers. It was in California during the gold rush that the famous entrepreneur and inventor of jeans, Levi Strauss, began his clothing business.

In 1850, California was officially recognized as a state that is part of the United States.

Cultural heritage of America

Today California is the most populous (over 39 million people) and the richest state in America, producing 13% of the US GNP.

Although the gold rush did not last long, it became an important part of the history of the state and the whole country.

“Such “fever” took place not only in the United States, but also in other parts of the world, for example, in Brazil, as well as in Russia, but it is in the United States that the pursuit of gold is most remembered today. The fact is that in the 19th century the Anglo-Saxon world was the engine of politics on a planetary scale, a trendsetter, so hypertrophied attention was riveted to it, ”American political scientist Armen Gasparyan said in an interview with RT.

According to him, the history of the gold rush in California had a strong influence on the national consciousness of Americans.

“The race for gold in California has become a major event. From it grew the myths about the American dream, about the first dollar and million earned, the echoes of which are heard in popular culture today. Millions of people have grown up on this topic. In the mass consciousness of Americans, this is a phenomenon roughly equivalent to the Civil War. Over time, these myths began to be fueled by Hollywood. Other peoples have a more significant cultural heritage. For example, the Germans have a German epic. And for the Americans, the history of gold mining in California plays the same role,” the expert explained.

Prospectors searching for gold, California, 1848 © Library of Congress

According to the director of the Roosevelt Foundation for the Study of the United States at Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov Yuri Rogulev, the myth of the gold rush in California in the American mass consciousness is part of such a global phenomenon as the culture of the frontier.

“According to American culturologists, in the 19th century in the United States such a phenomenon as the culture of the border, the culture of the frontier, was formed. And, as they believe, such moments as the propensity of Americans to self-government, the free bearing of weapons, lynching have grown out of this culture, ”the scientist emphasized.

As Yuri Rogulev noted, the culture of America has changed a lot over a century and a half - this is already a different country, but many elements of the culture of the 19th century have been preserved.

“In the US, they write and shoot westerns, play country music, referring to a kind of rural idyll in which cowboys and gold miners built modern America. Industrialization radically changed the country, and exaggerated memories of the liberties of the time of the conquest of the Far West became something of a memory of a lost paradise. People emigrated to the United States in order to gain freedom and prosperity, and not to hunchback in factories and plants. And the romantic myths about the frontier, including the gold rush, have become a kind of outlet for them,” the expert summed up.

The first reports of a new outbreak of the "gold rush" in the American West, received in the summer of 1973, seemed at first a dubious sensation. But this outbreak has acquired a scale and character worthy of attention. Areas that a year ago did not attract the modern American were flooded with thousands of people who abandoned their usual activities, sacrificed their vacations, or despised the unhurried retirement life. To a random person who got to those parts, this picture could seem like a filming of a giant western from the life of gold miners in the middle of the last century. However, clothing and inventory testify to the modernity of the events taking place. On the banks of the American River and the Yuba River, quite today's Americans settled, obsessed, however, with the same idea as their distant, but more successful predecessors. Armed with maps and guides, motor pumps and primitive stalls, they spend long hours under the scorching California sun. On “jeeps” and on foot, they move from place to place with the sole purpose of finding gold, by all means, which has never lost its attractiveness for them, and has phenomenally increased in price over the past three years (more than three times).

It is not known where the rumor came from that a century earlier, not everything was extracted from the bowels of California. But the result was amazing: people who were in no way connected with the “gold” business rushed to places that had long been recognized as unpromising in terms of gold mining. The American press reported that the invasion of new prospectors swept not only California, but also some areas of Nevada, Arizona, Alaska. Newspapers wrote about the hardships, hardships, accidents and acts of violence that accompanied this wild story. And they invariably compared all this with what happened 125 years ago - with the famous California "gold rush" and its "heroes" (as they are commonly called, "forty-nine", "people of the forty-ninth").

It is surprising that American historians have not so often turned to the topic of the “gold rush” of the middle of the last century. Academic science, training courses assign it a place in a series of nothing more than entertaining episodes that do not deserve scientific evaluation. A significant role is played here, apparently, by the fact that this phenomenon is considered well-known, “sung”, so to speak, to which it owes hundreds of literary and especially cinematic crafts that still do not leave the screens. Meanwhile, elucidation of the socio-economic and psychological causes and consequences of the “gold rush”, considered in the general context of American history, as well as the very course of events that made it up, can fundamentally expand our understanding of the important features of the development of the United States and the formation of that “American character”, which Sociologists and historians write so much.

1. The discovery of gold and the invasion of California

It is curious that the "gold rush" could break out a few years before 1849. Back in the time of the Mexican possession of California, seven years before its apogee, one of the ranchers, digging a bunch of wild onions on a hill northeast of Los Angeles, came across gold. Local residents started mining the yellow metal and in three years they washed it for 8 thousand dollars. Two dozen ounces were even sent to the Philadelphia mint, but none of this impressed anyone or caused any noticeable excitement. “The reason could be,” notes the American historian and writer J. Farnas, “that the man who dug up the onion was called Francisco Lopez, and history preferred to postpone the gold rush until it happens with the assistance of gringos (so Latin Americans called the Yankees. - A. Sh.)”.

Between the discovery of gold and the “gold rush”, California experienced, perhaps, the most dramatic page in its history. together with the 2nd Army of General W. Scott, he took possession of vast lands, which later became the states of California and New Mexico. Mexico, which was defeated, was forced to recognize the Rio Grande del Norte as its border. When starting the war, the United States did not take into account the "golden" future of California. They saw it first of all as an area of ​​strategic importance and, moreover, with rich agricultural land.

The development of new lands was carried out, in particular, by Captain J. Sutter, a Swiss by birth, a man of a bizarre and ultimately unhappy fate. It was he who was sold the Russian colony of Fort Ross, and then he acquired other California lands. On a January day in 1848, a certain J. Marshall, who was working for Sutter, widening the channel of a ditch near a sawmill near Sacramento, discovered grains of yellow metal. The owner, having learned about the precious find, ordered to keep quiet. Soon, however, one of Sutter's men, while in the San Francisco market, betrayed the secret, and word of it spread at lightning speed throughout the village and nearby towns and farms. Something incredible has begun. The testimonies of contemporaries and descriptions of historians allow us to recreate a picture of the unbridled excitement that struck the Californians, and soon the inhabitants of the outlying states. "Farmers left the fields, artisans - workshops, teachers - schools, pastors - flocks, soldiers and sailors deserted." Sailors made up an impressive part of the people who succumbed to the general movement - they were teams of merchant and even military ships that arrived in the San Francisco harbor with household goods, weapons and took away skins and other simple products made by local residents. Henceforth, upon arrival at the harbor, the ships were instantly empty. The flight of the sailors endangered the return voyages. The captains were in despair, unless, of course, they themselves left the ships along with their teams. About 200 ships rusted in the harbor. In mid-June of that year, San Francisco was left without its newspaper: editors, publishers, compositors rushed to the placers. Many bureaucrats and policemen rushed there too.

By autumn, rumors of Californian gold had reached the eastern states, and then spread around the world: the discovery became known in South America, Europe and Asia. And thousands of motley streams of people who decided to try their luck, who left their families, businesses, and land, were drawn to the American West. In 1849, 81 thousand people arrived in California, and in 1850 the number of immigrants reached 100 thousand. Within a year, the population of the humble village that San Francisco used to be with its 800 inhabitants grew to 40,000. The way to California for the majority of future gold miners was not easy and not close. Actually, there were two ways. One - by sea, around Cape Horn to the Isthmus of Panama, and from there by land along the coast - was long, but relatively safe. The second, which ran across the entire North American continent from east to west, was shorter, but abounded in many dangers. Those who elected him equipped a linen wagon drawn by horses. On the way of 3 thousand miles, it was necessary to overcome forests and swamps, and then the waterless steppes and deserts of the Far West. “Here there was a danger of dying of hunger, Indians, sometimes cholera and several terrible cases of cannibalism,” writes J. Farnas. The comic episode in Chaplin's "Gold Rush" (its action is played out, however, in Alaska), when the hero boils and eats his shoe, was not just fiction: it had a real basis. But on the way, the future prospectors entered into bloody skirmishes with the Indians who defended their ancestral lands. Having settled down, gold diggers from time to time staged a genuine hunt for the natives, sparing neither women nor children. After the epic of the 1850s in California, only a tenth of the local Indians who lived in Catholic missions survived.

Those who arrived in California flooded San Francisco and nearby villages, settled directly in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada on the banks of the American River and Yuba River, drove in bid posts. A shovel, a pickaxe, a tray for washing gold-bearing sand - this, perhaps, was the entire inventory of the then miners. The German writer F. Gerstacker, a direct participant in the California epic, testified about how the fishery developed in his diary entries: “If you believe the cards that are sold almost everywhere, or those people who meet on the way, you can conclude what to find in a day an ounce of gold is pretty easy. Like nothing special. In fact, most gold miners have to work hard 12-14 hours a day to scrape together four or five dollars. There were, of course, more lucky ones who made a good impression, but, in fact, we all eked out a miserable existence there. And many of us would gladly accept any job for two dollars a day, if one could be found. I will not deny that some have made fortunes on these mountains. But at the same time, I must admit that the pick and shovel are the most cruel tools ever invented by man.”

Who did this peculiar community of prospectors consist of, from what sources did it replenish so quickly? Socially and ethnically, it presented an extremely mixed picture. The Californians - American colonists were joined by seekers of happiness arriving from the east, people of various social origins and professions, immigrants from Europe who had recently settled on American soil. Immigration itself also increased sharply, as shown by the following figures: in 1848, 229,483 people immigrated to the United States; in 1849, 299,683; in 1850, 380,904; 1852 - 397,343, in 1853 - 400,982, in 1854 - 400,474, in 1855 - 230,476 people. It is not difficult to notice the increase in immigration in 1849-1851. and its significant reduction in 1855. This was the reaction to the outbreak and then to the decline of the gold rush. Of course, the immigration wave owes its fluctuations not only to this. It is quite clear that not all those who arrived in the US flocked to California; some of them, as before, settled on the East coast. But it is equally obvious that among the thousands of people who flooded California, there were many people from the Old World - the British and Germans, Irish and Scandinavians, which is confirmed by many documents and evidence.

“In California, there was, one might say, an almost lightning-fast shift in ethnic composition: a phenomenon quite rare outside of a military situation ... The discovery of gold caused a huge one-time influx of a very large number of people of very different nationalities.” The fate of the Mexican inhabitants of California was different. Some, belonging to the local "elite", tried to merge with the new owners through the establishment of business ties and mixed marriages. Others - small ranchers - were for the most part driven out of their own land and ruined, turning into day laborers and workers in the mines. In general, however, the number of Mexicans did not decrease in those years. Moreover, it increased due to the influx of workers from Mexico, mainly from the Sopora region. Attracted by the "gold boom", miners from Nehru and Chile also flocked to California. Hispanic newcomers concentrated mainly in the south of California, while the north was clearly dominated by migrants from the east and European immigrants.

As already noted, a motley variety of people went to the prospectors: artisans and merchants, sailors and criminal elements, counting on easy prey. Not all of those who flooded into California were in need before. J. Farnas, on the basis of epitaphs on the graves of dead and dead gold miners, established that among immigrants from the northeastern states there were quite a few quite wealthy people, even college graduates. There were, of course, workers there, for whom exodus to California offered not only a chance to get rich, but also an opportunity to get rid of entrepreneurial arbitrariness. The socio-psychological portrait of the then American proletarian, given by F. Engels, allows us to draw a conclusion about the motives that prompted American workers to participate in the California epic. F. Engels wrote: “Until 1848, one could speak of a permanent, indigenous working class only as an exception: its few first representatives in the cities in the east at that time could still hope to turn into peasants or bourgeois.” The Gold Rush seemed to reinforce these hopes.

2. The manners of the prospector freemen

The discovery of gold placers coincided with the definition of the political status of California. The territory that had just been conquered from Mexico, which had temporary administration, it would seem, could very quickly acquire the rights of the state. The matter, however, was seriously complicated by the fact that the new lands, their political fate, became the object of sharp fights at the federal level between representatives of the bourgeois states of the Northeast and the slave-owning states of the South. At that time, the balance of their forces was equal: there were 15 states each, and the entry of California into the United States in one status or another would upset the balance in the flaring confrontation between the North and the South. In this conflict, much depended on California, on its internal political situation. California was given the right to determine whether it would become a free state or introduce slavery.

Among the inhabitants of the future state, opponents of slavery clearly prevailed. It was not characteristic of California even before its conquest. There were practically no slave owners among the gold seekers who flooded the region, and the artisanal trade in its nature did not need slave labor. All this, of course, influenced the mindset of the representatives elected by the population who gathered in September 1849, who were supposed to work on the development of the constitution of the future state. The constitution, which did not allow the introduction of slavery, was adopted in December of that year, and the legislature turned to the Union Congress with a request to admit California to the United States as a free state. But the California appeal became the subject of a lengthy and heated debate in Congress. The southerners took up arms against the northerners, fearing their possible strengthening, especially since the status of New Mexico and Utah, where the positions of slave owners were also under threat, was being considered at the same time. The famous orators of that time J. Calhoun and D. Webster urged not to infringe on the interests of the South. Serious concessions were made to southerners: the status of New Mexico and Utah was not finally determined, slavery in the District of Columbia was not abolished, and a law on the return of fugitive slaves was passed. But California still became the 16th free state. This happened in September 1850.

While the legislators in the capital fought verbal battles, other battles were fought on California soil. More and more crowds of gold miners attacked the mountain slopes, eroding and tearing them up in order to extract yellow metal from the unyielding, deceptively generous bowels. And to this day, scars and scars have not healed on this earth. Absorbed by one passion, the gold miners did not really care about the question of whether they should somehow interact with the authorities and observe the newly established legal order. This order was still rather unsteady. The powers of the governor were indefinite, and from the previous Mexican rule they inherited and for some time still retained the power of the alcaldes (community foremen), who performed both executive and judicial functions. However, the alcaldes, as it turned out, could not cope with the motley stream of prospectors that flooded into California.

The root cause of many of the conflicts that the authorities had to deal with was that California lands, partly free and partly owned by Mexican rancheros or American dealers like J. Sutter, were seized by prospectors, who thus became squatter farmers. The squatter, often not having the funds to buy land and not bothering to register his purchase with the local authorities, simply occupied the site he had chosen. At the same time, bloody skirmishes broke out with the landowners and with representatives of the authorities who spoke in their defense. Sometimes the landowner managed to restore his rights through the court. Then the squatters decided to act in an organized manner and in early 1850 united in an association designed to protect their rights to the land.

Soon the association had an opportunity to show itself in action. In May of the same year, one of the squatters, J. Madden, was deprived of the right to the land he occupied by a court decision, and his property was subject to confiscation. In response, the association declared the court's decision illegal on the grounds that the right to land was bestowed on the squatters by "country, nature and god", and they decided to "turn to arms to protect their sacred rights, if necessary, at the cost of their own lives." Armed squatters guarded Madden's house. The sheriff arrested several people. A day later, however, a group of squatters, numbering about 40 people, moved through the streets of Sacramento, heading towards the prison to free their comrades. The mayor of the city X. Biglow called for the help of "respectable" citizens and, together with the policemen, met the detachment. But in response to his demand addressed to the squatters to drop their weapons and disperse, shots rang out. The mayor was injured. Several people were killed in the ensuing firefight. The squatters dispersed, some of them managed to be arrested. By evening, a military detachment and an additional detachment of policemen were brought into the city, declared under martial law. The next day, the McKinney County Sheriff and police officers combed the city looking for rioters. A group of squatters were surrounded in a hotel, but they decided not to give up. The gunfire went up again. This time the sheriff fell victim. The forces, however, turned out to be unequal, and after a fierce firefight, the resistance of the squatters began to weaken: some of them were killed, others were arrested. This event, known in US history as the "squatter mutiny of 1850," is, of course, far from the only one in the long chain of skirmishes, disobedience to authorities, and lynching that characterized the squatter freemen.

However, in the chaotic, anarchic life of the mining communities, some very peculiar elements of organization soon appeared. Prospectors often took on managerial and judicial affairs. These cases were usually resolved at a general meeting of mining towns and settlements, where the size of the declared plots was established, disputes between "indigenous" and "newcomers" were settled. The judges selected by the meeting were engaged in the analysis of this kind of "current cases", guided by the codes developed by the miners themselves. For some time in many prospecting colonies it was possible to maintain relative order, to avoid unauthorized seizures of previously declared sites, and theft. Soon, however, this came to an end. The speculators and criminal elements who rushed to California did not want to reckon with the code of a kind of gentlemanship of prospectors. Violence has become the norm. “In the mines, drunken fights, thefts, robberies and murders were commonplace. Since the authorities were either absent or unable to protect the offended, everyone had to personally take care of their safety. Hunting knives and revolvers were a vital necessity."

From time immemorial, gold has attracted people with its beauty and plasticity. It has been mined for 6 thousand years, but until 1492 the total amount of production was only 12.7 thousand tons. Today, world gold reserves barely reach 200,000 tons. If you collect all the gold in one place, you get a cube with a side of 20 meters. We will tell you how such a rare metal was mined and how the gold rushes of the 19th century changed the world.

brazilian gold rush

The first gold rush known to the world began in Brazil in 1690. It was at the same time the longest and most massive: over 133 years, more than 400 thousand prospectors from Portugal and half a million slaves from Africa took part in it. The fever had such a huge impact on the country that the government had to move the capital from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro. 1000 tons of gold and 3 million carats of diamonds were mined here.

caroline gold rush

The first gold in the United States was found in 1799. It all started with the fact that while walking along the river bed, teenager Conrad Reed found a stone of a funny shape. The boy took it home and used it as a support for the door. A few years later, the owner of the house drew attention to the stone. What was lying underfoot every day turned out to be an almost 8-kilogram nugget! A few weeks later, the news spread around the country and miners from all over the United States began to flock to the Carolinas.

Fever in Georgia

It was from Georgia that the gold boom in America began. Gold mining was hindered by the Indians living in these territories. 100,000 Indians were evicted to the reservations. The vacated lands were sold to miners. The government held 8 land lotteries, the participants of which could get ownership of land enriched with gold. The capital of the mines was the city of Dahlonega (the name is translated from the Cherokee language as "yellow"). The US Mint even opened a branch here to mint coins from local gold.

Gold Rush in Siberia

In 1812, the Senate of the Russian Empire gave the citizens of the country the right to mine gold for its further sale to the treasury. It was possible to extract precious metals only to persons of certain classes. Alluvial gold was found in Kuzbass in 1828. Gold was mined in tens of pounds and caused a real stir. The village of Kiyskoye grew at the expense of prospectors and turned into the city of Mariinsk. There were recruitment centers for miners and taverns where you could spend the money you earned. In this area, the phrase "rowing money with a shovel" was born - it meant the land that was thrown with a shovel in search of nuggets. Unlike the United States, there was no concept of free mining in the tsarist empire. The prospectors were obliged to hand over the gold to the merchant who owned the land. Often they became miners by force - they were driven to the mines into exile. Peasants were also cheap labor. Poor and hungry, they became a convenient tool in the hands of the owners of the mines. Private gold mining ceased in Siberia in 1921.

California Gold Rush

Before the fever began, San Francisco was a tiny community. With the beginning of the mines, the city was filled with migrants and small traders. The population has increased 25 times in two years. People had to live in tents. nevertheless, one could find a casino and a tavern in every tent quarter. The city plunged into chaos: robberies, murders, epidemics of typhoid and cholera. One of the ships had to be equipped with a prison. Despite all the troubles, over the years of mining, it was possible to find gold worth several billion dollars in today's equivalent. Although some miners returned home empty-handed, they were at least alive.

Klondike gold rush

At the end of the 19th century, gold was discovered in Alaska near a stream that flows into the Klondike River. This was an incredible stroke of luck, because the region had been under American flags only a few years earlier and huge amounts of money were needed to develop it. Gold mining led to the opening of navigation in Alaska and the development of cargo ports: gold could be exported in tons. It was in this region that the phrase "bonanza" was born. The phrase is attributed to Robert Henderson, who filled a hard drive case with gold when he was exploring a new deposit. The stream where the prospector found the nuggets was later named Eldorado.

Gold Rush in New South Wales and Victoria

The first fever in Australia began in 1851. A prospector who returned from the mines in California discovered a deposit. As a result, thousands of people from an already sparsely populated country were drawn here. After the discovery of the first gold, the population of Australia tripled. The Victorian government tried to stop the exodus of residents to New South Wales and promised money to anyone who finds gold. And he was found six months later. So much so that in a couple of years the state became the world leader in gold mining. From here, up to two tons of precious metal were sent to Melbourne every week. Soon the Chinese began to come to Australia. The local population was not happy with the visitors, which led to riots and uprisings. The government of the country introduced taxes on entry into the country, and the whole situation as a whole led to the formation of a new society and politics of white Australia.

The world knows many more gold booms around the world. We have only talked about the most famous of them. As you can see, people got gold for hundreds of years with sweat and blood. Today, becoming the owner of gold is much easier. It is enough to become a member of the Solomon Mines Club and accumulate gold bars in the amount that suits you. You don't even need to leave your home to do this.