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Abstract 150 years ago, the carefully-planned Presbyterian settlement of Dunedin was torn apart by the discovery that nearly every stream in Otago was laden with gold. The population exploded, adding the accents of Greece, Tipperary, Victoria, California, Guangdong and the King Country to the Scots burr which had been predominant. Almost immediately a myth of identity emerged, typified by goldfields balladeer Charles Thatcher’s ‘Old Identity and New Iniquity’ and boosted by the histrionics of a press enamoured of the romanticised machinations of the Otago goldfields ‘digger’. This popular mythology conflates the imagery of California, Victoria and early Gabriel’s Gully to perpetuate stories of desperate, gold-mad miners swarming across the province fighting, drinking and whoring away sparse winnings in a vast and lawless land, where bodies float down the Clutha, diggers battle corrupt police and vast fortunes are won and lost. This thesis seeks to construct a de-mythologised account of the rush for Central Otago gold, examining the engineering processes, social dynamics and communal relationships implicit in the development of claims, the construction of goldfields structures, the growth of towns and the emergence of financial networks. This explains and reveals the social, technological and economic developments of the gold rush that wrought a profound change on the Otago landscape and to New Zealand’s history. Focussing on the New Zealand Department of Conservation’s historic reserve at Bendigo as an exemplary site, this thesis focuses on the people of the goldfields who left traces of themselves in archives, letters, newspapers, court records and in the heritage landscape to explain their mining, commercial and family lives, and concludes by exploring the remnants of their existence in the relic-strewn ghost-town. By elucidating the depth and breadth of relationships, processes and lives of the residents, miners and merchants, I refute the pervasive myth of innocent simplicity around the era to replace it with a surprisingly complex reality. This complexity is revealed in the new conclusions I draw around the myriad processes behind identity formation, rush events, water race construction, quartz mine development and labour relations, merchant finances and heritage remnants.

The A.J. Goddard, a steamboat built for the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1898, wrecked in 1901 on Lake Laberge, Yukon Territory, where it lay undisturbed until its rediscovery in 2008 by the Yukon River Survey Project, directed by John Pollack. The complete and undisturbed nature of the wreck site, which is the only known site from this period to show such remarkable preservation, provides an unparalleled opportunity for studying the construction features of one of the Klondike steamboats and its associated material culture. The wreck of the A.J. Goddard is the only known surviving example of a small, prefabricated sternwheeler from the Yukon River's sternwheeler days. Due to the nature of its construction and building material, the A.J. Goddard represents a period of vast change in shipbuilding techniques, and is part of the fascinating juxtaposition between traditional wooden boats and a new, prefabricated industrial solution to boatbuilding. Work thus far has revealed that the A.J. Goddard possessed a simple design and construction, likely not one developed specifically for the Yukon River. It appears that the need to carry it over a mountain influenced its design more than the qualities of the Yukon River. Modifications were made over the course of its short career to make it more suitable, but its tragic end indicates that it was not a good choice for open-water navigation, though it admirably and successfully fulfilled its mission of serving throughout the gold rush. Though it was not ideally suited for the river and lakes environment where it was built, the quickness and ingenuity with which the vessel was constructed made it one of the few vessels, out of the thousands that set out for the Yukon in the summer of 1898, to actually make it to Dawson in time for the gold rush without being delayed by ice in the north, as so many were. Field seasons were conducted in 2009 and 2010 that focused on recording the boat's construction features and artifacts. Select artifacts were recovered for study and display in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory with the intention of creating an exhibit for the Yukon public.

This thesis analyzes the differences between the fictionalized madam of the American West and the historical madam are analyzed to understand how racial and gender hierarchies normalized themselves in the American West and disempowered women and people of color. This thesis uses Gold Rush San Francisco, and two madams, as a case study of this phenomenon.

In September 1901 the North-West Mounted Police learned that a group of American miners, calling themselves the Order of the Midnight Sun, were planning to take over the Yukon. The Conspiracy, as the plot to overthrow the Mounted Police and establish an independent republic in the Alaska boundary region was known, appealed to Americans in the region. The location of the Alaska boundary was not set when the Klondike Gold Rush (1897-1899) brought thousands of miners and traders into the Yukon, northern British Columbia, and Alaska. The Canadian government’s efforts to maintain order and protect its interests in the Alaska boundary dispute angered American miners and businessmen and led them to support the Order. After the Conspiracy was discovered, the Mounted Police and the Canadian government launched a full scale investigation and response. To fully investigate the Conspiracy during the Alaska boundary dispute, the Mounted Police, a domestic force, had to operate in Canada and the United States and cooperate with American authorities in Skagway. The Dominion Police were also involved in the investigation and they too had to work with American authorities in Seattle and San Francisco. But the Mounted Police did not view the Conspiracy as a serious threat. Their experience in the north had shown that such threats rarely amounted to anything. The Canadian government, however, responded differently. Canadian officials in Ottawa feared that the Conspiracy would cost Canada in the Alaska boundary negotiations and they took steps to ensure that the Mounted Police could defend the region and prevent further unrest. This thesis examines the Mounted Police and Canadian government responses to the Conspiracy and the reasons for these different responses, within the context of the Alaska boundary dispute.

La thèse étudie les périples et les récits des voyageurs français (une quarantaine) en Californie pendant la Ruée vers l'or jusqu'à 1915. On propose une typologie des voyageurs et une analyse de leurs récits de voyage.Après une introduction faisant l'état des lieux de la France au milieu du XIXe siècle et du jeune État californien qui vient juste d'entrer dans l'Union au moment de la découverte de l'or, la thèse se divise en trois parties : la première partie porte sur le voyageur (un être aventurier et pionnier, son épopée californienne, son rapport au temps outre-Atlantique), la deuxième partie concerne le récit de voyage (entre épopée et ethnographie, les realia et topoï californiens, la naissance d'un nouveau genre littéraire, le « western littéraire » à la française), la troisième partie propose l'étude approfondie de trois variantes significatives du « western littéraire ».La thèse est accompagnée de cartes, de portraits de voyageurs et de gravures. / The thesis studies the journeys and the travel relations of French travellers (about fourty), visiting California during the Gold Rush until 1915. It aims to establish a typology of the travellers and to analyse their travel relations.After an introduction presenting the context in France in the middle of the 19th century and in California which just became the new State of the United States of America after the discovery of gold, the thesis is divided in three parts: the first one focuses on travellers (adventurers and pioneers, their epic California, their time perception in the Far West), the second part analyses the travel relations (between epic and ethnography, californian realities and places, the birth of a new genre in literature, the French « literary western »), the third part presents a choice of three particular examples of « literary western ».The thesis also includes maps, portraits of travellers and engraved pictures.

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This thesis represents the first anthropological perspective to be offered on the nature of the Klondike Gold Rush population. In order to better understand the experience of the average gold rusher, morbidity and mortality patterns are examined for the residents of the Yukon Territory following the discovery of gold in the region (1898-1904). Infectious diseases such as measles, pneumonia, smallpox and typhoid fever are the primary focus of this study, however local factors such as the severe climate and the seclusion of the gold fields from the outside world also offers an interesting opportunity to examine the consequences of leading a particularly harsh and physically demanding lifestyle in an inhospitable environment. / October 2008

This thesis represents the first anthropological perspective to be offered on the nature of the Klondike Gold Rush population. In order to better understand the experience of the average gold rusher, morbidity and mortality patterns are examined for the residents of the Yukon Territory following the discovery of gold in the region (1898-1904). Infectious diseases such as measles, pneumonia, smallpox and typhoid fever are the primary focus of this study, however local factors such as the severe climate and the seclusion of the gold fields from the outside world also offers an interesting opportunity to examine the consequences of leading a particularly harsh and physically demanding lifestyle in an inhospitable environment.

This thesis represents the first anthropological perspective to be offered on the nature of the Klondike Gold Rush population. In order to better understand the experience of the average gold rusher, morbidity and mortality patterns are examined for the residents of the Yukon Territory following the discovery of gold in the region (1898-1904). Infectious diseases such as measles, pneumonia, smallpox and typhoid fever are the primary focus of this study, however local factors such as the severe climate and the seclusion of the gold fields from the outside world also offers an interesting opportunity to examine the consequences of leading a particularly harsh and physically demanding lifestyle in an inhospitable environment.