71 - Dr. Andrea McDowell, We the Miners: Self-Government in the California Gold Rush

Today, we have Dr. Andrea McDowell on the show. Professor McDowell is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School and holds a Ph.D. in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania. She is an expert on the legal and social history of Ancient Egypt; her many publications in that area include a book on Ancient Egyptian legal procedure as well as a more general work on Village Life in Ancient Egypt. Professor McDowell has taught Egyptology at Leiden, Oxford, and Johns Hopkins universities.In recent years, Professor McDowell has turned to American legal history.

She recently published a book called “We the Miners.” about Americans and self-government in the California gold rush Americans of the 19th century were not only skilled in self-organization but also enthusiastic about making their own rules. In the gold rush, the miners' meetings were the only government. Using parliamentary procedure, now known as Robert’s Rules of Order, the American miners adopted law codes, decided property disputes, and held criminal trials, even after the State of California established the official court system. McDowell is particularly interested in the dynamics of crowd and individual, including the openings for sober minded men, using parliamentary procedure, to take back the initiative from the loudest and angriest members of the crowd. She is equally interested in the failure of the same sober men to intervene when a subset of the population slaughtered Native Americans and expelled foreigners from the mines, even though at least some Americans strongly disapproved of what was happening. This book is the focus of our conversation and we explore many interesting topics along those lines and others.