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Aluminum Ore: The Political Economy of the Global Bauxite Industry . Edited by Robin S. Gendron , Mats Ingulstad , and Espen Storli . Vancouver : University of British Columbia Press , 2013. xii + 387 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, tables, index. Cloth, $95.00. ISBN: 978-0-7748-2532-0 .
Book Reviews
Almost no global histories of the aluminum industry exist, apart from business histories of a single transnational company, such as Alcoa, or national histories that describe the multinational aluminum interests within a given country, such as Jamaica or Guinea. This edited volume on the political economy of the global bauxite industry is therefore a much-needed and welcome addition to the literature. Successfully spanning multiple countries and world regions, it includes chapters dedicated to Jamaica, Greece, the Gold Coast/Ghana, Guinea, Guyana, India, and Norway, as well as analysis of companies involved in the British Empire (from Africa to Australia), Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.
The introduction by the editors and the opening chapter by Espen Storli offer useful global overviews of the industry as a whole across the twentieth century. The main focus falls between about the 1920s and the 1980s, although a few chapters extend earlier and later. The book also covers a wide range of companies involved in bauxite mining and aluminum smelting, including not only Alcoa, Alcan, Reynolds,...