ABSTRACT

For most of the twentieth century tin was fundamental for both warfare and welfare. The importance of tin is most powerfully represented by the tin can - an invention which created a revolution in food preservation and helped feed both the armies of the great powers and the masses of the new urban society. The trouble with tin was that economically viable deposits of the metal could only be found in a few regions of the world, predominantly in the southern hemisphere, while the main centers of consumption were in the industrialized north. The tin trade was therefore a highly politically charged economy in which states and private enterprise competed and cooperated to assert control over deposits, smelters and markets.

Tin provides a particularly telling illustration of how the interactions of business and governments shape the evolution of the global economic trade; the tin industry has experienced extensive state intervention during times of war, encompasses intense competition and cartelization, and has seen industry centers both thrive and fail in the wake of decolonization. The history of the international tin industry reveals the complex interactions and interdependencies between local actors and international networks, decolonization and globalization, as well as government foreign policies and entrepreneurial tactics. By highlighting the global struggles for control and the constantly shifting economic, geographical and political constellations within one specific industry, this collection of essays brings the state back into business history, and the firm into the history of international relations.

chapter |21 pages

Introduction "The Path of Civilization is Paved with Tin Cans"

The Political Economy of the Global Tin Industry

chapter 1|24 pages

Not by Tin Alone

The Polymetallic Context of Primary Tin Production and Cornwall's Role in the International Mining Industry

chapter 3|15 pages

Summer's Food for Winter's Tables

Tin Consumption in the Americas

chapter 4|34 pages

Banging the Tin Drum

The United States and the Quest for Strategic Self-Sufficiency in Tin, 1840–1945

chapter 5|19 pages

Tin and the German War Economy

Scrap Drives, Blockade Running and War Looting

chapter 6|27 pages

Tin, Tin in the Congo

From Imperial Asset to Conflict Mineral

chapter 7|33 pages

The Trouble with Tin

Governments and Businesses in Decolonizing Malaya

chapter 8|19 pages

The Birth of the World's Largest Tin Merchant

Philipp Brothers, Bolivian Tin and American Stockpiles

chapter 9|19 pages

Increasing Developing Countries' Gains from Tin Mining

The Boom Years from the 1960s to 1985

chapter 10|31 pages

"The Strategic Wolf Hidden beneath the Clothing of the Economic Sheep"

Tin and the Strategizing of Raw Materials