SCARCE

The extraction of mineral resources has sharply increased over the past hundred years, and the ongoing transition to "green energy" means increased future demand for minerals such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt. ERC project SCARCE "Administration of Mineral Resource Extraction in Central Europe, 1550-1850" examines the history of resource management to better understand long-term consequences of policy decisions by companies and states.

Sebastian Felten and his team will analyse thousands of archival documents about mining in pre-industrial Central Europe, using automated text recognition and a new method based on historical epistemology. The aim of SCARCE is to gain a new understanding of capitalist development models, technoscientific innovation and the emergence of modern sustainability thinking. SCARCE will establish how Central Europe compared with mining regions in Iberian America, West Africa, and East Asia.