Project description
Mining power in early modern Japan
In early modern Japan, a surge in precious metal mining reshaped the nation’s governance and global influence. From 1520 to 1720, rich silver and copper deposits propelled Japan to the forefront of global production, rivalling Spanish America. However, the role of mines in shaping domestic political authority and international relations remains underexplored. The ERC-funded MMA project seeks to change this by investigating Japan’s mineral politics. Analysing famous mines like Iwami and Sado alongside lesser-known sites, MMA examines how mining catalysed governance, economic management and cultural exchange. By integrating archival research, on-site visits and international seminars, the project connects resource extraction with transformative shifts in power, offering insights into Japan’s pivotal historical transitions.
Objective
Material Authority (MMA) puts mines and mining at the center of the political, commercial, and social transformations within Japan from 15201720. The project hypothesizes that the boom in precious metals proved decisive in shaping early modern Japans domestic governance and foreign relations and proposes the first comprehensive study of Japans mineral politics at this time. Examining mines well-known (Iwami, Sado) and less-appreciated (Ikuno, Naganoburi) from across the archipelago, MMA departs from quantitative analyses prioritizing mineral production and investigates how authority materialized through mines, and how mines and mineral extraction authored power in Japan. Rich new silver deposits were first tapped in the 1520s; at the turn of the seventeenth century Japans silver production was second only to the mines of Spanish America, and at the turn of the eighteenth century it was the worlds largest producer of copper. Material Authority integrates and interrogates many of the landmark transitions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: protracted conflict yielding to political unification, a rapid expansion and curtailment of foreign relations. Mines and mining occupy a niche in the accounts of these transformations but have never been offered as an organizing principle by which to examine each and their effects on one another. To this end, the project team will pursue three lines of research: exploring how mines shaped authority, catalyzed management, and facilitated exchange. A paleography seminar will facilitate collaboration and develop skills honed by research in Japan conducted at archives and through on-site visits. A parallel research seminar will spotlight scholarship on mineral politics and resource management across geographical specialty and model a final goal of Material Authority: to inform inquiry into the entangled transformations in material extraction and human power across the early modern world.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- social sciencessociologygovernance
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrytransition metals
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
08193 Cerdanyola Del Valles
Spain