Chrome Trust: The Creation of an International Cartel, 1908-38
Author(s)
Phimister, Ian
Abstract
This article is concerned to trace the origins, development and structure of chrome mining and marketing. It pays close attention to the key role played by Edmund Davis in the creation, particularly after the First World War, of an international cartel. At the same time, this paper also examines the issue of market considerations versus technological pressures in the growth of extractive industries, as well as the extent to which global patterns of mining finance and development were determined by the centre rather than the periphery. It concludes that if the history of the chrome mining industry is anything to go by, metropolitan considerations prevailed more often than not.
