El Dorado in West Africa. The Gold-Mining Frontier, African Labor, and Colonial Capitalism in the Gold Coast, 1875-1900.(Review)

From California in 1849, to Australia, New Zealand and the American South-West in the 1850s-70s and on to the Transvaal, Yukon and the Klondike in the 1880s-90s, the great gold rushes of the nineteenth century are a potent symbol of the frenzied expansion of the frontiers of capitalism, imperialism and European settlement. El Dorado in West Africa. The Gold-Mining Frontier, African Labor, and Colonial Capitalism in the Gold Coast, 1875-1900, by Raymond E. Dumett (Oxford: James Currey, 1999; pp. xviii+396. 40 [pounds sterling]; pb. 16.95 [pounds sterling]), broadens our understanding of this process by examining one of the lesser-known mining frontiers of the Victorian age, that …