'Green gold' : the contribution of new caledonia's nickel industry to the 'age of steel' 1870-1920

Abstract

This thesis explores the local and global contexts for the New Caledonian nickel industry, from the first discovery, in 1864, of a previously unknown type of silicate nickel ore in weathered rocks and soils in the mountains of a small Pacific island that had just eleven years earlier been annexed by France. New Caledonia began exploiting its nickel deposits in 1873 and by 1880 had become the world's major supplier of nickel. In 1890, the demonstration that the addition of nickel toughened steel transformed nickel into an essential component for special steels used in naval shipbuilding, armour plate and armaments; nickel came to play a critical role in the armaments race leading to World War I. The thesis follows two different but intersecting strands. The first, centred on New Caledonia, tracks the development and success or failure of strategies designed to mine and produce nickel metal from the new silicate ores. The New Caledonian narrative focuses on the provision of labour, the colony's infrastructure, and the effects of metropolitan and colonial administrative policies on the colony's economic and social life and its mining industry. The initial exploiters and financiers of the local industry were largely Australian, but the involvement of the French branch of Banque Rothschild in providing venture capital for what would become, in 1880, La Societe le Nickel, provided the stability necessary for that company to expand and grow. A second company, Maison Ballande, emerged in 1909, after overcoming opposition from Le Nickel and its associates, to establish the first large-scale smelter industry in the colony. These two local companies remained French-owned and both built and operated smelters and refineries in Europe and North America. The second strand adopts an international perspective, tracing the innovations and political and other events that drove the changes in demand for nickel, which then impacted locally on the New Caledonian industry. The discovery and development of the Canadian nickel deposits and the capture of that resource by powerful US steel - makers and their associates posed the first external challenge to New Caledonian nickel. 'Canadian nickel' entered the market in 1892 and swiftly equalled and then exceeded the output of New Caledonia. Prior to World War I, New Caledonia and Canada were the world's only suppliers of nickel. Since the European countries and the USA had no significant nickel deposits, their steel industries were forced to devise a variety of strategies to ensure their access to the metal. Tacking between these local and global contexts, this thesis shows how the New Caledonian nickel industry contended with local conditions and a lack of support from metropolitan France, while enmeshed in a widening global market in which the dominant producers sought to destroy any competitors. Differences in the nature of industrial capitalism and attitudes to cooperation between the European family firms compared with comparable industries operating within the US corporate environment are revealed, as the thesis follows the emergence of a fully globalised industry in the first decades of the twentieth century.