In the Nodule Provinces: A History of the Ocean that Minerals Promised

Abstract

This dissertation is a history of aspirations to mine the deepest seabeds of the world’s oceans for manganese (polymetallic) nodules. Nodules are mineral concretions that, since the late 19th century but especially since the 1950s, have been framed as a novel resource frontier for valuable metals. While nodules have been recognized as an economic resource for more than a century, they have never been commercially extracted. Conceptions of nodules as an abundant, potentially limitless, resource frontier were propagated among new transnational communities of ocean scientists and ocean politicians in the mid-20th century. This fundamentally altered relationships between ocean territory, resources, and governance. To tell a history of the ocean that nodules promised, the dissertation takes nodules as they entered the hands of different but overlapping groups — late-19th century naturalists, and 20th century physical oceanographers and biogeochemists, economic geologists, resource economists, ocean politicians, and so-called pioneer investors. I show that we inherit an ocean whose governance is overdetermined by mid-century resource desires.