ERC Starting Grant · 2024
Material Authority: Managing Mineral Abundance in Early Modern Japan
Material Authority (MMA) puts mines and mining at the center of the political, commercial, and social transformations within Japan from 1520–1720. The project hypothesizes that the boom in precious metals proved decisive in shaping early modern Japan’s domestic governance and foreign relations and proposes the first comprehensive study of Japan’s “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…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.