The Geochemistry of Race: Copper-Working and Theories of Racial Difference in Colonial Canada, 1850-1870

• In Event: Racial Capitalism, Scientific Infrastructure and the North American Mineralogical Frontier, 1850-1920

Abstract

In this paper, I look at how race science was re-made along the mineralogical frontiers of Canada during the 19th century. I open off by conducting a close analysis of the ethnological work of Daniel Wilson (later President of the University of Toronto), who crafted new racial typologies around the supposedly uneven capabilities of the races of mankind to mobilize techniques of chemical manufacture in his 1865 book “Prehistoric Man.” I specifically show how Wilson developed his theories of racial difference by speculating on the “primitive copper-working techniques” of indigenous peoples by studying various copper items (such as kettles, arrowheads, etc.) that had been stolen from indigenous gravesites around colonial mining sites in the Great Lakes region. Attending to the circulation of Wilson’s racial theories, I turn to the writings of Thomas Sterry Hunt, then chief chemist of the Geological Survey of Canada, whose 1870 report “On the Chemistry of the Earth” is considered a foundational text in the field of geochemistry. Closely reading his report, I show how Hunt argued for the chemical origins of the earth, its subsequent stages of geochemical metamorphosis and development, and its chemo-affective role in the uneven moral and intellectual development of the races of mankind. I elucidate the ways that Hunt used geochemical insights to argue that only the liberal subject of civilized white Man had the moral and intellectual capacity to use the semiotic-material techniques of modern chemistry to properly chemically alter and make productive the rocky and bituminous lands of the new world. I argue that in the wake of Canada becoming a global center of mining capitalism, white Canadian scientists developed racial theories to affix themselves as the only race biologically capable of chemically transforming the earth’s mineral treasures into goods useful for the progressive march of colonial-capitalist modernity.

Author

• Sajdeep Soomal, University of Toronto