"Golden Mountain, is there a golden mountain in the world?"
In the classic martial arts movie "Huang Feihong's Ambition", in the face of the "gold rush propaganda" of foreigners, Huang Feihong has always been suspicious of the temptation of "stepping on gold if you are not careful".
In fact, there is indeed a "golden mountain" on the other side of the ocean: in the 19th century, the gold mine in California was accidentally discovered, and the news soon spread throughout the United States and even crossed the ocean to cause a global shock, and countless people rushed to California to find and excavate gold buried in the mud and sand, setting off a gold rush.
Movie "Wong Fei Hung's Ambition"
This dramatically changing historical picture has become the darling of film and television works, weaving golden dreams through images. From "Gold Rush" starring comedy master Chaplin to "The Sands of Blood", which is hailed as "the greatest gold rush film in the history of cinema", to the "Three Series of Bodyguards" by Italian Western film grandmaster Sergio Leon, Western films reflecting the gold rush have always been shrouded in a shadow of "violence".
Gunshots are constantly on the screen, and in real historical contexts, is the 19th-century "San Francisco" as violent, predatory and cruel as we think?
Through the rain of bullets and bullets, Professor John Humberke, director of the Economic Research Center of Purdue University in the United States, through a large number of letters, contracts, documents and other precious historical materials, combined with solid economic theory analysis, used the book "The Property Rights Study of the California Gold Rush" to remove the heavy filter of westerns for us, returned to the California gold rush site, and observed how gold diggers came out of anarchy and built rules and order.
Madness, violence, chaos:
A stubborn label that Western movies can't tear off
"We're going to develop!"
Gold diggers flock to the gold mines of California in the western United States, and in the face of the gold at their fingertips, they are ecstatic and eager to quickly get rid of the embarrassing life and achieve "wealth freedom". This wave of gold digging even swept around the world, and many Chinese crossed the ocean, or joined the gold rush or became laborers involved in public construction and domestic services, they gathered together to form "Chinatown", and gave California a desirable name - San Francisco.
Movie "Gold Rush"
However, where there is interest, there is competition, gold resources are limited, and California was in a state of anarchy at that time, so people took this land for granted that this land was a place where there was frequent violence under the competition of interests, and this impression was vividly displayed in Western movies.
First, Western movies tend to be cloudy. Whether it is early black-and-white images or colorful modern films, California on the screen has never been a pure place of yearning, but a sky full of sand and smoke. It is firmly believed that in the chaotic anarchy, the huge temptation of interests will inevitably breed violent competition, coupled with the proliferation of guns, which is bound to cause frequent murders.
From working together to pan for gold to "get rich" to the ghost fetuses after finding gold and then to the final cruel fight with each other, "Blue Blood Golden Sands" focuses on the greed of human nature; cowboys, killers, and Jiangyang thieves continue to fiercely duel for gold, and "Three Golden Darts" has done the wild to the extreme... Gunfights have gradually become a favorite scene in Western movies, and directors frequently use intense gun battles to push the story to a climax.
Movie "The Golden Three"
The yellow sand in the sky, the western cowboys with hats on horseback, the incessant gunshots, duels and deaths... These elements have been tried and tested, repeatedly reinforced and eventually branded into the indelible imprint of Western cinema.
Gold breeds violence, violence causes chaos, and the film infinitely renders the madness and restlessness of that era, constantly amplifying the greed and viciousness in human nature, and constituting an unbreakable narrative chain of Western cinema. These stubborn labels seem to imply that in the borderlands where gold is buried, human reason is lost and a just and peaceful agreement cannot be born.
Is violence, the tragedy of the commons, inevitable in the struggle for gold?
Perhaps, we need to walk through the yellow sand of the movie and find the truth and answer in the real history.
Movie "Blue Blood Sands"
Reason, Consultation, Peace:
How California gold diggers have smoothly emerged from anarchy
In fact, the film is more like an allegory of people guarding themselves than the real historical face.
In His book, A Study of Property Rights in the California Gold Rush, Amberck collects a large number of letters, contracts, documents, and other materials, reconstructing the true historical picture from the discovery of gold to the outbreak of the gold rush — although the California gold mining area initially had no land titles, and there was no government to enforce laws and maintain order, but the actual violence in the gold mining area was surprisingly small.
A Study of Property Rights in the California Gold Rush
Why is there such a big contrast between history and movies?
After the discovery of gold in 1848, nearly 10,000 people flocked to this borderland to find and dig up mineral deposits, and private property rights could not be confirmed because there was no law or law enforcement to regulate the use of minerals. Although almost every miner carried a firearm, no violence was reported.
Contrary to the Western view, Amberck combines the theory of "violent distribution of property rights" with empirical research to suggest that one of the reasons for the low crime rate during the Gold Rush was precisely because everyone carried a gun — which would reduce the cost of information about the willingness of potential adversaries to use violence, and the more predictable the outcome, the less violence was actually observed.
Based on theoretical models, Amberck spent several weeks digging through California archives, libraries and special collections, finding more than 200 original mining contracts, and found:
Although there are significant differences between contracts and contracts in some respects, others are very similar. Each contract clearly enumerates the rights of each miner in choosing a different land use and the amount of land they can claim as their own property.
That is to say, gold prospectors are more likely to use negotiation rather than violence to distribute rights in competition with each other, and to determine their respective property rights by signing contracts.
In 1850, just two years after the discovery of gold, miners formed various groups and agreed on explicit contracts—that is, within a particular mining area or area, individuals were assigned private rights and transfer rights to the land. By 1866, more than 500 well-defined independent mining areas had been formed, each with its own property rights system.
At the same time, as environmental constraints change, so does the contract – from partnering up to defend against invaders, but the gold is owned by the digger; to mining together and then dividing it; to finally the land (and the gold under the ground) is distributed to individuals and becomes private property.
The gold diggers quickly established a stable system of private property rights at a relatively low cost of execution, thus successfully solving the problems of free use, chaos and excessive profiteering.
It can be seen that gunfights are not the only means to solve the distribution of property rights. Obviously, the cost of reaching an agreement for miners is not high, and it is a more economical approach than competing through gun battles.
"Attach importance to real-world facts or historical facts, grasp simple economic concepts and principles through, and then introduce verifiable hypotheses and frequently verify them." The famous economist Zhang Wuchang believed that economics was not a cold term, number and chart, but a tool to explain the world, and Amberck did it.
Through a series of rigorous theoretical and empirical studies, Property Rights Research in the California Gold Rush corrects the bias of the film and the popular view: establishing rules and order is far more economical and reliable than violence and chaos.
Related books
A Study of Property Rights in the California Gold Rush
By John Humberke
Translated by Ying Junyao and Wei Yi
(Click on the book cover to purchase this book)
The gold rush was an important part of the history of the Westward Expansion Movement in the United States, when California had no government jurisdiction, and it seemed to be a place where violence was frequent under the competition of interests, but there was very little violence in the gold mining area. Why is this? How is the property rights established from scratch?
This book is one of the masterpieces of the "Washington School of Economics", which constructs the theory of "violent distribution of property rights" to speculate and explain the emergence and development of various property rights systems. Based on fieldwork and multiple real contracts, the author explores the evolution of California's grant of mining rights from 1848 to 1866, thereby validating the theory and subverting the traditional perception of the violence of the gold rush.