Then Rome, rising into power, cast covetous eyes on the gold possessed by Carthage, and sought to seize it by force of arms. As a result of her victory in the First Punic (Carthaginian) War, Rome secured the three islands of the Mediterranean, rich in minerals.
The Carthaginians, under the leadership of Hannibal, worked the mines of Spain and Portugal the harder. The rivers Douro and Tagus were found to be rich in gold-bearing sands. Rome's envy grew. In the Second Punic War, she captured Spain. From the gold-mines there, worked by slave labor, came a large share of the riches and luxury of the Roman Empire.
To Owens, sitting in his library in an American colliery town, the long story of civilization seemed to unroll before his eyes and, everywhere, possession of gold brought power and fame. In every case, also, that same possession led to luxury and decline.
When Rome fell, beneath the impact of the barbarian hordes, the Byzantine Empire, holding the gold-mines of Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor, rose to a bought magnificence. It crumbled easily, because it depended on gold to buy its mercenary armies, even as Carthage had crumbled before Rome.
The same story was repeated in the Saracenic power, when the Caliphates of Bagdad and of Damascus rose to that wealth of which the "Arabian Nights" gives a picture. The mines of Arabia, Egypt, and Spain were in their hands, and the luxury of such Moorish towns as Granada was made possible by the final workings of the almost exhausted alluvial deposits of Spain. It was not until the days of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile that the Moors were conquered, and, in those days, Cortés tapped the gold-stores of Mexico, and Pizarro, those of Peru.
As ever, the gold of the Aztecs and the Incas, ruthlessly seized so soon after the voyages of Columbus, made Spain the mistress of the world. While the Conquistadores were fighting, Spain remained strong. When the gold was acquired, Spain began to fall.
England was a frugal country, then. But, like Rome, as soon as her neighbor began to acquire vast stores of gold, she sought a pretext for a war. English pirates and privateers commenced to harry the treasure-ships of Spain, to plunder the Spanish settlements in America, and to sack every town that was thought to contain American gold. Upon this stolen treasure, England rose to wealth and power, as did also Holland and France, the three nations having made a naval alliance for greed of Spanish gold.
Nor was England content with her ill-gotten gains. Through commercial companies which only thinly disguised colonization projects, she sought possession of gold-bearing regions. The gold of India, of Australia, and of South Africa, changed the Kingdom of England into the British Empire, during the reign of a single queen. No one will seriously dispute that the annexation of the Transvaal and even the Boer War of recent years were based on England's desire to control the enormous gold resources of the Rand, as well as the diamond fields.
The gold history of the United States is little less striking. The Louisiana Purchase was based largely on the mineral wealth known to exist in that territory, the annexation of California and her rise to statehood were built on gold. The purchase of Alaska in 1867 was largely due to the discovery of gold in British Columbia in 1857, 1859 and 1860, and to the discoveries on the Stikine River, Alaska, in 1863.
The 146 years of life of the United States may be sharply divided into two equal periods, that before the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and the period following. The amazing strides forward which the United States has made during this last period are not to be ascribed only to her virgin soil, to her geographic isolation, or to her form of government, but more, a thousand times more, to her mining development. Coal, iron, silver, copper, and above all—gold, opened up the continent with passionate swiftness and hurled the United States into the position of one of the great powers of the modern world.