Illegal Mining: Organized Crime,

Corruption, and Ecocide in a

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Yuliya Zabyelina
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Illegal Mining
Organized Crime, Corruption, and Ecocide
in a Resource-Scarce World
Edited by Yuliya Zabyelina · Daan van Uhm
Illegal Mining
 Yuliya Zabyelina · Daan van Uhm
Editors

Illegal Mining
Organized Crime, Corruption, and
Ecocide in a Resource-Scarce World
Editors
Yuliya Zabyelina Daan van Uhm
Department of Political Science Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law
John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Criminology
City University of New York (CUNY) Utrecht University
New York, NY, USA Utrecht, The Netherlands

ISBN 978-3-030-46326-7 ISBN 978-3-030-46327-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46327-4

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 Foreword1

As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, organized criminal

groups adapt to new circumstances, take advantage of new markets,
and establish new collaborations to garner illicit profits. They span the
globe, master new technologies, and conquer new markets. The case
of South Africa-based “Mountain Boys” is illustrative of this alarming
complexity. This criminal organization used to smuggle vast amounts of
precious metals, mainly platinum, which had been stolen from South
African mines. To succeed in their operations, the syndicate bribed mine
employees and members of the South African Police Service. A sophis-
ticated network of middlemen guaranteed the unimpeded exportation
of South African precious metals to refineries in Western Europe and
North America. Misrepresentations were made to customs officials by
undervaluing and falsifying the nature of consignments, circumventing
the requirements for prescribed permits and licenses to possess, transport,
and deal in precious metals. The syndicate’s international contacts, often

1The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the United Nations or the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

v
vi Foreword

legal persons (such as corporations), dealt with the imports and proceeds
derived from the sale. What looked like a regular supply chain was in fact
a sophisticated criminal network dealing in precious metals (SHERLOC,
UNODC No.: ZAFx003 “Project Yield”).
The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized
Crime has a unique value in addressing emerging crimes like illegal
mining and trafficking in precious metals and minerals. The negotiators
agreed that as an international, legally binding instrument the Conven-
tion had to provide a long-term response to organized crime and be appli-
cable to present as well as future criminal justice needs. Therefore, it was
decided that the Convention could not be limited in its scope and appli-
cation to a list of criminal activities that could age quickly. In addition,
the Convention does not provide a definition of organized crime per se.
This is in recognition of the fact that organized crime remains oppor-
tunistic and changes forms or activities on the basis of a cost-benefit
analysis of available illicit opportunities as well as global demand, much
like companies and businesses do in licit markets. Instead of providing
a list of criminal activities or crimes that constitute “organized crime,”
negotiators decided to define the actors involved in the commission of
crime.
Under article 2(a) of the Convention, an “organized criminal group”
is defined using four criteria: (1) a structured group of three or more
persons; (2) the group exists for a period of time; (3) it acts in concert
with the aim of committing at least one serious crime; (4) to obtain,
directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit. Structured
group is defined in the negative—as one that does not need a formal
hierarchy or continuity of its membership. This approach makes the defi-
nition broad and applicable to loosely affiliated groups that do not have
any formally defined roles for its members. Importantly, the seriousness
of the crimes committed by these groups is one of the defining elements
of the definition. For the purposes of the Convention, “serious crime”
is defined in article 2(b) as any offense carrying a penalty of four years
deprivation of liberty or a more serious penalty.
 Foreword vii

Altogether, the Organized Crime Convention adopts a flexible

approach to organized crime, which considers the seriousness of the acts
it covers rather than limiting itself to a predetermined and rigid list of
offenses. This embedded flexibility enables international cooperation on
a wide range of offenses and allows for the prevention of and response
to new forms and dimensions of transnational organized crime, which
fall under the scope of the Organized Crime Convention through the
penalty threshold. This flexibility considerably enhances the potential use
of the Organized Crime Convention for the purposes of international
cooperation.
The governing bodies of the United Nations have recognized the
involvement of organized criminal groups in illicit trafficking in precious
metals. In its resolution 2013/38, the United Nations Economic and
Social Council (ECOSOC) expressed its concern with the substantial
increase in the volume, rate of transnational occurrence, and range of
criminal offenses related to illicit trafficking in precious metals. In that
resolution, ECOSOC also reaffirmed the importance of the Organized
Crime Convention and acknowledged the need to expand research into
these crimes.
This edited collection of scholarly research contributes to the global
call for appropriate and effective measures to prevent and combat illegal
mining as well as trafficking in metals and minerals. As illustrated in
the chapters of the book, organized criminal groups forge partnerships,
and so must we. Purely national responses are inadequate—we must
look beyond borders to see the challenges and identify the solutions to
reach the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 on Peace, Justice and
Strong Institutions, particularly 16.4 on combatting all forms of orga-
nized crime. To achieve that, we must act across different sectors. Besides
criminal justice systems, academia, civil society, the private sector, poli-
cymakers, and international organizations must all play their part in this
indisputably important effort.
Academia has a particularly crucial role in increasing our under-
standing of the different forms and manifestations of organized crime,
viii Foreword

their linkages with other serious crime, as well as equipping future gener-
ations with the knowledge and tools to face the challenges that our ever-
changing world presents. It is no easy task, but it is a task that is funda-
mental to empower future decision-makers to do a better job than we
and those before us were able to do.
I am grateful to the editors, Dr. Yuliya Zabyelina and Dr. Daan van
Uhm, and the authors of the chapters of this volume for putting together
a collection of scholarly research that sheds light on these important
new criminal markets, the dynamics of trafficking in precious metals
and stones, violence and extortion as well as corruption in extractive
industries. The book will appeal to researchers in organized and envi-
ronmental crimes, including criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists,
and economists. Beyond this readership, I am sure that the collection will
contribute to the work of policymakers and other relevant stakeholders,
who benefit from such scholarly insight to help solve these extremely
important issues.

March 2020 Dr. Riikka Puttonen

Programme Manager, Organized Crime
and Illicit Trafficking Branch, UNODC
Vienna, Austria
 Acknowledgments

This volume represents a snapshot of scientific knowledge on the fasci-

nating and tantalizing topics of organized crime, corruption, and envi-
ronmental harm in the mining industry. Despite the growing involve-
ment of organized crime groups in illegal mining and trafficking
in mined commodities, the increasingly prevalent role of corruption,
and the serious environmental degradation, there has hardly been any
comprehensive research on the topic. The existing literature has predom-
inantly covered artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), leaving the “ele-
phant in the room”—organized crime groups and other violent non-
state actors (e.g., insurgents and war profiteers)—outside of scholarly
and policy foci. It is, however, no longer a secret that illegal extraction,
plundering, and trafficking in minerals and metals—particularly precious
metals and minerals, such as gold, the 3Ts (Tin, Tantalum, Tung-
sten), and diamonds, among other high-value-added natural resources—
endanger peace, cause human suffering, and bring tremendous environ-
mental destruction.

ix
x Acknowledgments

We invited some authoritative and rising scholars and practitioners

to contribute to this collection. To our colleagues, we extend a heart-
felt thank you for their valuable contributions and the time they gave
to researching and writing. It is their hard work and careful attention
to detail that helped us make this volume a success. We also thank the
contributors for their efforts to create awareness about the victimization
of artisanal miners, the challenges faced when trying to regulate informal
economies, the dangers posed by organized crime and corruption, and
the ecocidal harms that exist for all of us.
We would also like to thank the many informants from whom the
authors of this collection gathered a wealth of information, and whose
stories made it possible to unveil some of the important, yet under-
studied, aspects of illegal mining and trafficking in metals and minerals.
Their first-hand knowledge and experience helped us share a deeper
understanding of issues related to the problems of organized crime,
informality, and environmental harm in the mining sector.
We extend a special thanks to Jack Stanley, a Canadian copyeditor, for
his painstaking work on this book. We also gratefully acknowledge the
support of the Office for the Advancement of Research (OAR) at John
Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), the Utrecht Centre for Regula-
tion and Enforcement in Europe (RENFORCE), and The Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), for providing funding for
copyediting and covering some of the publishing expenses. Without
their support, we would not have been able to meet the high stan-
dards of academic publishing. We also thank Josie Taylor, senior commis-
sioning editor, Liam Inscoe-Jones, editorial assistant, and the rest of the
publishing team at Palgrave Macmillan for their help, guidance, and
support throughout the publishing process. A special expression of grat-
itude goes to our families, for their patience and forbearance in the face
of our continuing commitment to research and editing.
Altogether, this book, we hope, will be of interest to students of social
sciences and legal studies, as well as policymakers and the general audi-
ence. We hope that it will serve as an important reference work for
years to come, despite the quickly changing field. We would also like the
collection to raise awareness about the environmental devastation associ-
ated with illegal mining, and hold out hope that our research will, even
 Acknowledgments xi

in some subtle ways, help to reduce the terrible and often irreversible
environmental harms in a resource-scarce world.
We dedicate this book to the difficult professions of mining, the
Indigenous people, and local communities impacted by mining, partic-
ularly those who have been victimized by organized crime or unethical
corporate practices.

New York, NY, USA Yuliya Zabyelina

Utrecht, The Netherlands Daan van Uhm
January 2020
 Contents

Part I. Introduction

Chapter 1. The New Eldorado: Organized Crime,

Informal Mining, and the Global Scarcity of Metals
and Minerals 3
Yuliya Zabyelina and Daan van Uhm

Chapter 2. Why Organized Crime Seeks New Criminal

Markets 31
Jay S. Albanese

Chapter 3. The Queer Ladder of Social Mobility:

Illegal Enterprise in the Anthracite Mining Region
of Pennsylvania in the Interwar Decades (1917–1945) 43
Robert Schmidt

Part II. Organized Crime in the Mining Sector

xiii
xiv Contents

Chapter 4. Links Between Artisanal and Small-Scale

Gold Mining and Organized Crime in Latin America
and Africa 77
Livia Wagner and Marcena Hunter

Chapter 5. The Diversification of Organized Crime

into Gold Mining: Domination, Crime Convergence,
and Ecocide in Darién, Colombia 105
Daan van Uhm

Chapter 6. Where the Metal Meets the Flesh: Organized

Crime, Violence, and the Illicit Iron Ore Economy
in Mexico’s Michoacán State 147
Fausto Carbajal Glass

Chapter 7. Diamond Mining, Organized Crime,

and Corruption 185
Dina Siegel

Chapter 8. Warlords and Their Black Holes: The Plunder

of Mining Regions in Afghanistan and the Central
African Republic by Organized Crime 205
Kimberley L. Thachuk

Part III. Organized Crime and Informal Mining

Chapter 9. Shadowy Deals with “Sunny Stone”: Organized

Crime, Informal Mining, and the Illicit Trade of Amber
in Ukraine 241
Yuliya Zabyelina and Nicole Kalczynski

Chapter 10. Between Informality and Organized Crime:

Criminalization of Small-Scale Mining in the Peruvian
Rainforest 273
Eva Bernet Kempers
 Contents xv

Chapter 11. When Gold Speaks, Every Tongue Is Silent:

The Thin Line Between Legal, Illegal, and Informal
in Peru’s Gold Supply Chain 299
Naomi van der Valk, Lieselot Bisschop,
and René van Swaaningen

Chapter 12. Migrant Workers, Artisanal Gold Mining,

and “More-Than-Human” Sousveillance in South
Africa’s Closed Gold Mines 329
Matthew Nesvet

Chapter 13. Digging into the Mining Subculture: The

Dynamics of Trafficking in Persons in the Artisanal
and Small-Scale Gold Mining of Peru’s Madre de Dios 359
Dolores Cortés-McPherson

Part IV. Mining, Corruption, and Money Laundering

Chapter 14. Crude Oil’s Ugly Sister: The

Political-Criminal Nexus and Corruption Inside
Nigeria’s Solid Minerals and Mining Sector 389
Sheelagh Brady

Chapter 15. Min(d)ing Corruption in International

Investment Arbitration 413
Vasilka Sancin and Domen Turšič

Chapter 16. All that Glitters: Money Laundering Through

Precious Metals and Minerals 439
Yuliya Zabyelina and Lilla Heins
xvi Contents

Part V. Environmental Harm from Mining Activities

Chapter 17. The Prevention of Green Crimes in Artisanal

and Small-Scale Gold Mining in Peru: Translating
Laws into Practice 469
Johanna Espin

Chapter 18. Mining as Ecocide: The Case of Adani

and the Carmichael Mine in Australia 497
Olivia Hasler

Chapter 19. Eco-Justice and Destructive Mining

in Australia: Lessons from the New South Wales Land
and Environmental Court 529
Rob White

Index 559
 Notes on Contributors

Jay S. Albanese is Professor in the Wilder School of Government &

Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA. He is author
and editor of 20 books on organized crime, transnational crime, ethics,
corruption, and criminal justice. He is a recipient of the Distinguished
Teaching Award from Virginia Commonwealth University, the Gerhard
Mueller Award for research contributions from the Academy of Criminal
Justice Sciences International Section (ACJS IS), and the Distinguished
Scholar Award from the International Association for the Study of Orga-
nized Crime (IASOC). He is a past president and fellow of the ACJS,
and co-founder of Criminologists Without Borders—a non-profit organi-
zation that provides objective information and research to inform policy
and programs dealing with crime and criminal justice.
Eva Bernet Kempers has a background in Cultural Anthropology,
Green Criminology, and International Environmental Law. In her
research, she aims to take an interdisciplinary approach, combining
insights from various disciplines. She did qualitative fieldwork in Peru
and Guatemala for extended periods of time, mainly focusing on the local

xvii
xviii Notes on Contributors

impact of large-scale and small-scale mining. Currently, she is pursuing a

Ph.D. degree in Law at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
Lieselot Bisschop is Associate Professor in the Department of Crim-
inology and the Erasmus Initiative on Dynamics of Inclusive Pros-
perity at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her areas of expertise include
environmental crime, social harm, corporate crime, organized crime,
and environmental governance, and environmental justice. Lieselot was
previously a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Fund Flanders at
Ghent University (Belgium) (2015–2017), Assistant Professor at John Jay
College of Criminal Justice (USA) (2014–2015), and Ph.D. researcher at
the Department of Business and Public Administration at Ghent Univer-
sity (2009–2013). She is the author of Governance of the Illegal Trade in
E-Waste and Tropical Timber: Case Studies on Transnational Environmental
Crime (Routledge, 2015). Her article, entitled “Getting Into Deep
Water: Coastal Land Loss and State-Corporate Crime in the Louisiana
Bayou”, published in The British Journal of Criminology, received the
2019 American Society of Criminology Division of White-Collar and
Corporate Crime Outstanding Article Award.
Sheelagh Brady has almost 20 years of experience in policing and secu-
rity. She began her career at An Garda Siochana, the Irish Police Force,
where she worked for 14 years. She then moved to the international secu-
rity arena, holding positions such as Mission Security Analyst with the
European Union Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM) in Libya, Senior
Security Information Analyst, with the United Nations Department for
Safety and Security (UNDSS) in Abuja, Nigeria, and Analyst with the
European Union Police Mission (EUPM) in Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH).
Since 2014, she has provided security-related research and risk manage-
ment consultancy services to international organizations and corpora-
tions on issues of organized crime, terrorism, and corruption. She is a
regular media commentator and speaker at international events. She is
currently a Ph.D. candidate at Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland.
She already holds a number of academic qualifications, including an
M.Sc. in Crime Science from the Jill Dando Institute at University
College London and an M.A. in Criminal Justice from John Jay College
of Criminal Justice, CUNY, in New York, USA.
 Notes on Contributors xix

Fausto Carbajal Glass is a Ph.D. candidate at University College

London (UCL), UK, and researcher and consultant on political risks and
security at Madison Intelligence, Mexico. He holds a Master’s degree in
War Studies from King’s College London. In the past, he has worked
for the Mexican government, specifically for the Ministries of the Inte-
rior and Foreign Affairs. He is a member of the Society for Latin Amer-
ican Studies (SLAS), World Future Studies Federation (WFSF), Mexican
Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI), and Mexico Research Centre
for Peace (CIPMEX). He has also served as a non-resident fellow of the
Mexican Navy Institute for Strategic Research (ININVESTAM).
Dolores Cortés-McPherson has over 25 years of experience within
the international arena as a researcher and project manager. For over
a decade, she worked as human trafficking and border management
Regional Focal Point for the Andes at the International Organization for
Migration (IOM). Based in Peru, she provided technical assistance to
governments and civil society on the subject in South America. She has
consulted the United Nations and other international agencies on human
mobility, human rights, and global security. She was a founding member
and senior researcher of the Laboratory of Criminology of the Catholic
University of Peru (PUCP), where she also lectured, and is currently
writing her Ph.D. dissertation on small-scale gold mining in the Amazon
at the University of Deusto, Spain.
Johanna Espin holds a Ph.D. degree in Sociology with concentration in
Tropical Conservation and Development from the University of Florida,
USA. She received her master’s degree in Social Sciences majoring
in Local Development and Territory from the Latin American Social
Sciences Institute (FLACSO-Ecuador) and her undergraduate degrees in
International Relations and Business Administration from University San
Francisco de Quito (USFQ), Ecuador. Currently, she works as Associate
Professor at the Center of Security and Defense from the Institute of
Higher National Studies (IAEN), Quito, Ecuador. Her research focuses
on illegal activities and environmental harms, including those in the
Amazon extractive industry, and the broader dynamics of green crimes
in Latin America.
xx Notes on Contributors

Olivia Hasler holds a Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of

Tasmania in Tasmania, Australia. Her thesis, entitled “State-Corporate
Crime and Ecocide: A Critical Study of the Carmichael Coal Mine,”
innovates older criminological concepts, such as Sykes and Matza’s tech-
niques of neutralization, within a green criminological framework. Her
work has conceptualized environmental harms, and the denial of those
harms by state and corporate actors, as crimes. Her main research
interests include green white-collar crime, climate change activism, and
ecocide. She has written about the dynamics between states and environ-
mental activists, and the necessity for an international law against ecocide
for journals, such as Critical Criminology.
Lilla Heins is a graduate student at George Washington University,
USA, pursuing an M.A. degree in Security Policy Studies. She has work
experience in anti-money laundering compliance in Washington, DC,
and is interested in counterterrorism and anti-corruption research. She is
author of several entries in Global Crime: An Encyclopedia of Cyber Theft,
Weapons Sales, and Other Illegal Activities (edited by Phil Reichel; ABC-
CLIO, 2019), including on ISIS, the crime–terror nexus, and hawala.
Lilla holds a CUNY BA for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies in
Counterterrorism Studies, City University of New York (CUNY), USA.
Marcena Hunter holds the position of Senior Analyst at the Global
Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. While her work has
covered a wide scope of material and geographic spread, she specializes
in gold-related crime and development responses to organized crime.
She previously was a Research Fellow in the Centre for Social Respon-
sibility in Mining with the University of Queensland, where her work
focused on examining the interface between large-scale mining and arti-
sanal and small-scale mining. Her past work includes activities related to
security sector and criminal justice reform and projects improving access
to justice, analyzing gender issues, and supporting the Voluntary Trust
Fund for Victims of Human Trafficking at the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC). She has a JD from Washington and Lee
University, USA, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of
Denver, USA.
 Notes on Contributors xxi

Nicole Kalczynski is a graduate student at the School of Diplomacy

and International Relations and a graduate research assistant at the
Center for the United Nations and Global Governance Studies, Seton
Hall University, USA. She is also Associate Editor for the Journal of
Diplomacy at the School of Diplomacy. Her research focuses on the mech-
anisms which propel state failure and the relationship between non-state
actors and the state, and she has been keen on studying security and
criminal justice in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet states.
Matthew Nesvet is an anthropologist and journalist. He is also Lecturer
in Social Anthropology and African-American and African Studies at
the University of California, USA. He leads coverage of corporate
crime, genomic surveillance, and the US juvenile and tribal justice
systems for the United States Congress, writing CRS Reports and
Insights for Congress’ in-house research and reporting service. He has
won numerous teaching awards and fellowships, leads a service-learning
program for “emic” journalists using ethnographic and investigative
reporting methods, and participates in CRITMIL, the University of Cali-
fornia’s Critical Militarization, Policing and Security Studies Research
Group. His research has been financially supported by the Univer-
sity of Chicago, UCLA, UC Davis, UC Humanities Research Insti-
tute, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, SF AIDS
Foundation, Hayman Foundation, and European Association for Social
Anthropology.
Vasilka Sancin is Associate Professor of International Law and Head of
the Department of International Law at the Faculty of Law, University
of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is also a member of the UN Human Rights
Committee (2019–2022), an arbitrator and a member of the Bureau
of the OSCE Court of Conciliation and Arbitration (2019–2025),
and an expert for the OSCE Moscow mechanism on Human Rights.
Among other professional affiliations, she is a President of the Slovene
Branch and a member of the Executive Council of the International
Law Association (ILA), a member of the UNODC Anti-Corruption
Academic (ACAD) Initiative and the European Centre for Responsi-
bility to Protect. As an independent expert, she is also a member of
xxii Notes on Contributors

the National Inter-ministerial Commission for Human Rights, Inter-

governmental working group on International Humanitarian Law, and
the Strategic Council of the Slovene Minister of Foreign Affairs. She
is on Editorial Boards of several legal journals and has authored and
edited numerous books and scholarly articles in different areas of inter-
national law and their intersections, including human rights law, inter-
national environmental law, international investment law, international
humanitarian law, law of the sea, and diplomatic and consular law.
Robert Schmidt holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University
of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton, USA. He works for the Social
Security Administration and is an independent scholar who studies US
labor history, industrial violence, and regional and urban development.
He is a regular contributor to Anthracite Unite, a multi-racial/ethnic
collective of working-class scholars, artists, and organizers from Penn-
sylvania’s Anthracite Coal Region, and is preparing a manuscript titled
Redevelopment and Its Discontents: Economic Development and Political
Corruption in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Dina Siegel is Professor of Criminology at the Willem Pompe Insti-
tute at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. She received her Ph.D.
in Cultural Anthropology at the VU University, Amsterdam. She has
conducted ethnographic research and published on migration, crime
of mobility, human trafficking and smuggling, transnational organized
crime, Russian mafia, crimes in the diamond industry, the role of women
in criminal networks, ecstasy smuggling, underground banking, and
green criminology. She was president of IASOC (International Asso-
ciation of Studies of Organized Crime) and co-founder of CIROC
(Centre for Information and Research on Organised Crime). Her recent
publications include books, Dynamics of Solidarity. Consequences of the
“Refugee Crisis” on Lesbos (2019); The Migration Crisis? (co-authored with
Veronika Nagy; Eleven International Publishing, 2018); Contemporary
Organised Crime (with Hans Nelen; Springer, 2017); Ethical Concerns
in Research on Human Trafficking (co-authored with Roos de Wildt;
Springer, 2016), and numerous journal articles and book chapters.
 Notes on Contributors xxiii

Kimberley L. Thachuk is a senior analyst and educator focusing on

transnational security issues, including corruption, organized crime,
terrorism, human, drug, and arms trafficking, environment, health,
and energy. She served as the National Counterintelligence Officer for
Transnational Issues at the Office of the National Counterintelligence
Executive, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and as
a Senior Analyst and Director of Research in US intelligence commu-
nity locations. Prior to these positions, she was a Senior Research
Professor directing projects on transnational threats at the National
Defense University, Department of Defense, USA. Concurrently, she
developed the graduate-level Transnational Security Issues Concentration
at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington
University, USA. Currently she teaches Transnational Security Issues and
Transnational Organized Crime at the Krieger School, Johns Hopkins
University, USA. She is the author of numerous articles and editor of
two books: Transnational Threats: Smuggling and Trafficking in Arms,
Drugs and Human Life (Praeger, 2007), and Terrorist Criminal Enterprises:
Financing Terrorism through Organized Crime (co-edited with Rollie Lal;
Praeger, 2018).
Domen Turšič is Teaching Assistant in the Department of International
Law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he is also pursuing
a Ph.D. degree. In his doctoral thesis, he focuses on the topic of preclu-
sions of wrongfulness in international investment law. Before moving to
Ljubljana, he graduated with a Master of Law degree from the University
of Cambridge, UK, and served as a Pegasus Scholar at the Honourable
Society of the Inner Temple in London.
Naomi van der Valk is a criminologist specialized in organized crime.
She graduated in 2019 from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. She
completed an internship at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Nether-
lands in Lima, Peru, during which she carried out research on the Peru-
vian gold supply chain with which she was runner-up for the 2019
Master Thesis Award of the Dutch Society of Criminology. Naomi is
currently working as a junior policy advisor at the Centre of Interna-
tional Legal Aid (LIRC) at the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee of The
Netherlands Armed Forces.
xxiv Notes on Contributors

René van Swaaningen is Professor of Criminology at the Erasmus

University Rotterdam (EUR) and Head of the Erasmus School of Law’s
Criminology Department. His current research interests are oriented at
international criminological themes, notably on the relation between
cultural and social developments and policies on crime and insecurity
in European cities, penal systems, and global criminology. In 1985, he
obtained his master’s degree in Criminology from the VU Amsterdam
with a theoretical thesis on power relations and social control and, in
1995, his Ph.D. with a study on the social movements from which Euro-
pean critical criminology emerged (published by Sage as a book Critical
Criminology: Visions from Europe in 1997) from the Erasmus University
Rotterdam. From 2009 to 2014, he was the scientific director of the
Erasmus Graduate School of Law. Between 2011 and 2015, he served as
the President of The Netherlands’ Society of Criminology (NVC). He is
a member of editorial boards of twelve international journals.
Daan van Uhm is Assistant Professor in Criminology at the Willem
Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology, The Netherlands.
In 2016, he obtained his Ph.D. in Criminology from Utrecht Univer-
sity, The Netherlands, and has since then conducted research on various
forms of environmental crime, such as transnational illegal wildlife traf-
ficking, deforestation, and timber trade in Southeast Asia, illegal mining
in Latin America, and the illegal trade in dogs in Europe. In 2018, he
became a laureate of the prestigious Veni grant from the Dutch Organ-
isation for Scientific Research (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Weten-
schappelijk Onderzoek, NWO), which supported his research project
on the diversification of organized crime into the illegal trade in natural
resources.
Livia Wagner is a senior expert and the GI Network Coordinator at
the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. Her work
covers mainly the issue of human trafficking and illegal gold mining and
related organized crime forms with a special focus on Latin America. She
also coordinates the RESPECT Initiative on human trafficking and the
private sector and manages the research team at the Tech Against Traf-
ficking (TAT) initiative. Before joining the Global Initiative she worked
as Private Sector Focal Point for the United Nations Global Initiative
 Notes on Contributors xxv

to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT). She has also worked for the
Austrian Foreign Ministry and for the Non-Governmental Organiza-
tion ECPAT in the field of combating commercial sexual exploitation
of children and child trafficking. Livia holds an M.Sc. in Sociology and
International Relations from the University of Linz, Austria.
Rob White is Distinguished Professor of Criminology in the School of
Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He has published
extensively in the areas of Criminology, Youth Studies and innovative
Criminal Justice, and has a long-standing interest in green criminology,
environmental law enforcement and eco-justice. Among his recent books
are Climate Change Criminology (Bristol University Press, 2018) and a
two-volume edited work on Environmental Crime (Edward Elgar, 2020).
Yuliya Zabyelina is Associate Professor in the Political Science Depart-
ment at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New
York (CUNY), USA. Her research covers various forms of transnational
organized crime and corruption and the existing domestic, regional, and
global mechanisms for their prevention and control. She has been recog-
nized with several professional awards, including the Newton Interna-
tional Fellowship (2013), SAGE Junior Faculty Teaching Award (2015),
and Aleksanteri Institute Visiting Scholar Fellowship (2015). She is the
recipient of the 2018 Faculty Scholarly Excellence Award granted to
faculty who have demonstrated exceptional scholarship and the 2016
John Jay College Donald MacNamara Award for junior faculty. She has
also worked as a consultant for the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime (UNODC) and taught at the George C. Marshall European
Center for Security Studies (Germany).
 Abbreviations and Acronyms

3TG Tin, Tungsten, Tantalum, and Gold

3Ts Tin, Tungsten, Tantalum
ACF Australian Conservation Foundation
AFN Afghan Afghani
AGC Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia [Autodefensas
Gaitanistas de Colombia]
AML Anti-Money Laundering
ANC African National Congress
ANP Protected National Area [Área Natural Protegida]
ASGM Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining
ASM Artisanal and small-scale mining
AUC United Self Defense Forces of Colombia [Autodefensas
Unidas de Colombia]
AUD Australian Dollar
BACRIM Criminal Bands [Bandas Criminals]
BIT Bilateral Investment Treaty
BMPE Black Market Peso Exchange
BSA Bank Secrecy Act
BSR Business for Social Responsibility
CAR Central African Republic

xxvii
xxviii Abbreviations and Acronyms

CBI Confederation of British Industry

CCR Center for Constitutional Rights
CCU Criminal Code of Ukraine
CEO Chief Executive Officer
CETA Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Between
the European Union and Canada
CFR Code of Federal Regulation
CFSP Conflict-Free Smelter Program
CFT Countering the Financing of Terrorism
CGGP Certified Green Gold Programme
CMRT Conflict Minerals Reporting Template
CRS Corporate Social Responsibility
CSD Center for the Study of Democracy
Ct Carat
CTR Currency Transaction Report
DCR Democratic Republic of the Congo
DEA United States Drug Enforcement Administration
Derzhgeonadra State Service for Geology and Subsoil of Ukraine
[Depavna clyba geologi| ta nadp Ukpa|ni]
DHA Department of Home Affairs
DMR Department of Mineral Resources
DMU Unified Mining Development of Mexico [Desarrollo
Minero Unificado de México]
DR-CAFTA Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agree-
ment
DTO Drug trafficking Organization
EBPC Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation
Act
ECOSOC United Nations Economic and Social Council
ECT Energy Charter Treaty
EDO Environmental Defenders Office
EEC Endangered Ecological Community
EFCC Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
EIA Environmental Impact Assessment
EICC Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition
EIS Environmental Impact Statement
EKCP East Kutai Coal Project
ELI Environmental Law Institute
ELN Colombian National Liberation Army [Ejército de
Liberación Nacional]
 Abbreviations and Acronyms xxix

EPL Colombian Popular Liberation Army [Ejército Popular de

Liberación]
EU European Union
EUROPOL European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation
FARC Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia]
FATF Financial Action Task Force
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FCPA Foreign Corruption Practices Act
FEMA Specialized Prosecutor’s Office in Environmental Matters
[Fiscalía Especializada en Materia Ambiental]
FinCEN Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
FIU Financial Intelligence Unit
FMMSD Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development
FPRC The Popular Front for the Renaissance in the Central
African Republic [Front Populaire pour la Renaissance de
Centrafrique]
GAO United States Government Accountability Office
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GHG Greenhouse Gas
GIA Gemological Association of America
GI-TOC Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
GNI Gross National Income
GORE Regional Government [Gobierno Regional]
GOREMAD Regional Government of Madre de Dios [Gobierno
Regional de Madre de Dios]
GPN Global Production Network
HDI Human Development Index
ICC International Criminal Court
ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement
ICJ International Court of Justice
ICSID International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes
IDSO International Diamond Security Organization
IFF Illicit Financial Flows
IGAC Corrective Environmental Management Instrument [Instru-
mento de Gestión Ambiental Correctivo]
IGAFOM Instrument of Environmental Management and Inspection
for Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Activities [Instru-
mento de Gestión Ambiental para la Formalización de
Actividades de Pequeña Minería y Minería Artesanal]
xxx Abbreviations and Acronyms

IIA International Investment Agreement

IIL International Investment Law
ILC International Law Commission
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
INEGI National Institute of Statistics and Geography [Instituto
Nacional de Estadística y Geografía]
INGEMMET Geological Mining and Metallurgical Institute [Instituto
Geológico Minero y Metalúrgico]
INTERPOL International Criminal Police Organization
IOM International Organization for Migration
IRSCI Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue
Service
ISDS Investor-State Dispute Settlement Mechanism
IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature
KP Kimberley Process
KPCS Kimberley Process Certification Scheme
KYC Know Your Customer
LBMA London Bullion Market Association
LLP Limited Liability Partnership
LTD Limited Company
MAAP Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project
MEM Ministry of Energy and Mines [Ministerio de Energía y
Minas]
MIASA Mining Industry Association of South Africa
MINAM Ministry of Environment [Ministerio del Ambiente]
MINEM Ministry of Energy and Mines
MME Ministry of Mines and Energy [Ministerio de Minas y
Energía]
MOSOP Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People
MP Member of Parliament
NABU National Anti-Corruption Bureau
NAFTA North-American Free Trade Agreement
NEITI Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
NGER National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting
NGN Nigerian Naira
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
NLNG Nigeria LNG Limited
NMCO Nigerian Mining Cadastre Office
 Abbreviations and Acronyms xxxi

NNPC Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation

NPA Non-Prosecution Agreement
NS-ASM National Strategy for Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining
NS-IIM National Strategy for the Interdiction of Illegal Mining
NSWLEC New South Wales Land and Environment Court
NYPD New York City Police Department
NYSE New York Stock Exchange
OCG Organized Crime Group
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Develop-
ment
OSCE Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe
OSINT Open Source Intelligence
PAC Partnerships Africa Canada
PCM Presidency of the Council of Ministers [Presidencia del
Consejo de Ministros]
PCN Political-Criminal Nexus
PEN Peruvian Sol
PEP Politically Exposed Person
PNG Papua New Guinea
PNTP National Plan to Fight Human Trafficking [Plan Nacional
contra la Trata de Personas]
PPA Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade
PwC PricewaterhouseCoopers
RECPO Special Register of Gold Traders and Processors
RGG Responsible Gold Guidance
RICO Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
RJ Restorative Justice
RJC Responsible Jewelry Council
RUC Unique Taxpayer Identification Number [Número de
registro unico de contribuyentes]
RUF Revolutionary United Front
SAPO Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office
SAR Suspicious Activity Report
SBU Security Service of Ukraine [Sluzhba Bezpeky Ukrayiny]
SDGs Sustainable Development Goals
SDPWOA State Development and Public Works Organization Act
SESNSP Executive Secretary of the National System of Public
Security [Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de
Seguridad Pública]
xxxii Abbreviations and Acronyms

SPDA Peruvian Society for Environmental Law

SPDC Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria
StAR Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative
Stategeocadastre State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography
and Cadastre [Depavna clyba Ukpa|ni z pitan
geodezi|, kaptogpafi| ta kadactpy]
TFLS Trafficking, Forced Labor, and Slavery
TI Transparency International
TIN Taxpayer Identification Number
TIP Trafficking in Persons
UAE United Arab Emirates
UAH Ukrainian Hryvnia
UBO Ultimate Beneficial Ownership
UMWA United Mineworkers of America
UN United Nations
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNEP United Nations Environmental Programme
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Orga-
nization
UNGA United Nations General Assembly
UNGAOR United Nations General Assembly Official Records
UNICRI United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research
Institute
UNIDO United Nations Industrial Development Organization
UNITA National Union for the Total Independence of Angola
[União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola]
UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
UNSC United Nations Security Council
UNSCOR United Nations Security Council Official Records
UNTOC United Nations Convention against Transnational Orga-
nized Crime
UNTS United Nations Treaty Series
UPC Union for Peace in the Central African Republic [Unité
pour la Paix en Centrafrique]
US United States
USAID United States Agency for International Development
USC United States Code
USD United States Dollar
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
 Abbreviations and Acronyms xxxiii

WGC World Gold Council

WPA Works Project Administration
YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association
ZAR South African Rand
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 The enterprise approach to illicitly extracted metals

and minerals 39
Fig. 5.1 The organized environmental crime continuum 115
Fig. 11.1 Peru’s gold supply chain 307
Fig. 11.2 The interfaces between the legal (white), illegal
(black), and informal (grey) actors and activities in
Peru’s gold supply chain 320
Fig. 17.1 Matrix chart with objectives and actions included in
the NS-IIM 480
Fig. 17.2 Matrix chart with objectives and actions included in
the NS-ASM 481
Fig. 17.3 Matrix chart comparing expected goals of NS-ASM
to outcomes in Madre de Dios 482
Map 4.1 Major drug trafficking routes and gold mining areas
in Latin America and the Caribbean 85
Map 5.1 Territory affected by mining (2016) and coca crops
(2018) 119
Picture 5.1 The Darién jungle 110
Picture 5.2 Gold traders present their illegal gold 125
Picture 5.3 Alluvial mining by an Emberá woman at Rio Tuira 134

xxxv
xxxvi List of Figures

Picture 9.1 Brigade of amber diggers at the end of the working

day in Zerichne, Rivne Region, Ukraine 252
Picture 10.1 Main square of La Pampa 274
Picture 11.1 The commerce of machinery and equipment for
illegal gold mining in La Pampa, Madre de Dios 311
Picture 11.2 Illegal gold miners extracting gold from the river
basin nearby Labyrintho, Madre de Dios 313
Picture 11.3 Gold buying shop in Labyrintho, Madre de Dios 315
Picture 12.1 Migrant mineworkers from Lesotho refine gold
ore they extracted from an underground shaft in
Gauteng Province, South Africa 348
Picture 13.1 A Buzo diving in a search of gold 370
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 The criminal markets exploited by organized crime 34

Table 2.2 The common underlying nature of older and newer
forms of organized crime 34
Table 18.1 The ecocidal harms of the Carmichael project 508
Table 19.1 Indicators of ecocentrism 536
Table 19.2 Impact and benefit assessments of the NSWLEC 542
Table 19.3 Trends in climate change litigation 549

xxxvii
Part I
Introduction
 1
The New Eldorado: Organized Crime,
Informal Mining, and the Global Scarcity
of Metals and Minerals
Yuliya Zabyelina and Daan van Uhm

Introduction
Precious metals and minerals have fascinated humankind since the begin-
ning of time. The Romans used to believe that diamonds were splinters
of gods and thus wore them as a charm (Diamond Rocks, 2016). The
Roman poet Ovid described amber as the crystallized tears of Clymene
and her daughters, who had become poplar trees after the catastrophic
fall of Phaethon, the son of Helios who begged his father to let him
drive the chariot of the sun (Cartwright, 2017). Gold has always been

Y. Zabyelina (B)
Department of Political Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA
e-mail: yzabyelina@jjay.cuny.edu
D. van Uhm
Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology,
Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
e-mail: d.p.vanuhm@uu.nl

© The Author(s) 2020 3

Y. Zabyelina and D. van Uhm (eds.), Illegal Mining,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46327-4_1
4 Y. Zabyelina and D. van Uhm

one of humankind’s most passionate obsessions. Through the ages of

civilization, gold has become a symbol of royalty and power. In ancient
Egypt, gold was commonly worn as jewelry and ornaments because
Egyptians believed that the metal was the flesh of their god Ra. In pre-
Columbian America, gold represented immortality and power. It was
associated with the Sun and was made into fine dust to cover the body of
the legendary kings of the Muisca people. During coronation, a sparkling
man of gold—literally El Dorado or “Gilded Man”—plunged into the
lake and became the king when he emerged, after being cleansed of gold
(Cartwright, 2014). During the time of the Spanish Conquistadors, the
incredible tale of El Dorado gained a different meaning and became asso-
ciated with a hidden city full of gold. The dream of finding El Dorado
lured many to travel to South America. Their hope of finding the lost
city of gold was nothing but wishful thinking.
History illustrates many other examples of the frantic rush for gold.
One of the most famous is certainly the gold rush in the United States,
when spontaneous mass production of gold in unexplored regions of
California attracted opportunistic gold diggers from all over the world.
Gold diggers sought to make a quick fortune at the end of the nine-
teenth century after the precious metal was found by James W. Marshall
on January 24, 1848, at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma in California. Back
then, California was not part of the United States and did not offi-
cially become so legally until September 9, 1850, following the signing
of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico on February 2, 1848.
During this turbulent period, there were no governing authorities and
no police in mining camps. Entire towns were surrounded by lawlessness
and violence. Paul and Sarah Robinson describe this period as follows:

… [w]ithout a functional government, there were no licensing proce-

dures, fees, or taxes to regulate gold prospecting. No miner worked land
that he owned. Any prospector could join any mining camp at any time
(…). A miner who found gold needed to protect his find until he could
convert it into cash or goods. (Robinson & Robinson, 2015, p. 77)
 1 The New Eldorado: Organized Crime … 5

From the fabulous search for El Dorado in Latin America in the

sixteenth century, to the gold rush in the United States in the nine-
teenth century, the symbolic value of gold has influenced the world across
cultures and civilizations. It has been traded, collected, and looted for
generations, and it continues to serve as universal currency and store of
value.
The true worth of precious metals and minerals, however, lies not
only in the histories behind them, their timeless beauty and high value,
but also in the destructive forces they inspire. The rapid accumulation
of wealth made possible by unsustainable mining (and in many cases
illegal mining) has lured organized crime groups (OCGs) and unscrupu-
lous corporations whose activities usher in corruption, social harm, and
environmental devastation.

Global Concern with Illicit Trafficking

in Precious Metals and Minerals as Organized
Crime Activity
One of the most disturbing trends since the 1990s has been the
increasing involvement of organized crime in mining activities in
different parts of the world. From Latin American drug cartels to African
criminal gangs, the rising global scarcity of natural resources and steadily
high prices for mined commodities, particularly precious metals and
minerals, have made illegal mining and trafficking in mined commodi-
ties a lucrative criminal enterprise. The United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) and the International Criminal Police Organization
(INTERPOL) estimate that the illegal mining industry generates USD
12–48 billion in profits every year (Nellemann et al., 2016, p. 20). It
should be noted that between 28–90% of the gold extracted in South
America is illegal, accounting for billions of dollars annually.1 In the
past, concerns about illegal mining have often focused on the economic

1 It
is estimated that illegal gold mining is responsible for a significant percentage of the total
amounts of gold produced in the following countries: 28% in Peru, 30% in Bolivia, 77% in
Ecuador, 80% in Colombia, and 80–90% in Venezuela (Nellemann et al., 2016, p. 69).
6 Y. Zabyelina and D. van Uhm

damage done to a nation when their natural resources pillaged. But the
crimes associated with illegal mining are numerous. They include orga-
nized crime, money laundering, government corruption, trafficking in
persons (TIP), and environmental crime.
In its Resolution 2013/38, the United Nations Economic and Social
Council (ECOSOC) addressed its concern over “the substantial increase
in the volume, rate of transnational occurrence and range of criminal
offenses related to illicit trafficking in precious metals.” It asserted that
illicit trafficking in precious metals has the potential to “expand criminal
enterprises, facilitate corruption and undermine the rule of law through
the corruption of law enforcement and judicial officials” (ECOSOC
Resolution 2013/38).
In 2019, six years after this resolution, ECOSOC reiterated its uneasi-
ness about illegal mining and trafficking in natural resources, including
precious metals and colored gemstones, reiterating the importance of
the development of comprehensive, multifaceted, and coherent strategies
and measures to counter these crimes. ECOSOC Resolution 2019/23
reaffirmed that “illegal mining and illicit trafficking in precious metals
by organized criminal groups may constitute serious crimes”—the conse-
quences of which include not only contamination and degradation of the
environment but also serious risks to vulnerable groups. As a “serious
crime,” illegal mining and illicit trafficking in precious metals and
minerals could fall under the scope of the United Nations Convention
against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) and the Protocols
thereto, among other relevant international instruments. Resolution
2019/23 also emphasized the vulnerability of artisanal miners to OCGs
involved in the mining sector.
Due to the extensive social and environmental consequences, illegal
mining along with trafficking in metals and minerals has been increas-
ingly recognized as a threat to sustainable development and peaceful
societies as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
which were recognized by all United Nations (UN) member states in
2015. These high-level discussions serve as a testament to the global
call for appropriate and effective measures to prevent and combat illegal
mining and trafficking in precious metals and minerals by OCGs, and
that these crimes have made their way onto the international agenda.
 1 The New Eldorado: Organized Crime … 7

Diversification of Organized Crime into Illegal

Mining and Trafficking in Metals and Minerals
Organized crime is a changing and adaptable social phenomenon. The
various ways in which OCGs are raking in profits have become strategic
and multifaceted. “New threats to global security are emerging, meaning
that people can fall victim to organized crime in an increasing number of
ways, in an increasing number of places” (UNODC, n.d.). OCGs enjoy
many of the benefits of globalization, such as easier and faster ways to
communicate, transfer money, and travel (Galeotti, 2005; Varese, 2011).
They form increasingly complex networks spanning the globe and can
easily adapt to new market circumstances and law enforcement coun-
termeasures. As natural resources grow scanter and their value rises, the
mining industry presents itself as a lucrative opportunity for OCGs.
In a resource-scarce world, the appetite for and price of environmental
commodities has grown, providing strong incentives for OCGs to diver-
sify into environmental crime (Van Uhm & Nijman, 2020). The illicit
trade in metals and minerals has become an important source of revenue
for modern-day criminal organizations (Nellemann et al., 2018).
When gold prices increased fourfold between 2002 and 2012 (Secca-
tore, Veiga, Origliasso, Marin, & De Tomi, 2014; Tubb, 2015, p. 724),
OCGs began to play a bigger role in illegal gold mining, seeing it as a
new lucrative business to run (Wagner & Hunter, this collection). They
started to control access to mining sites, determining who could work,
where, and when. In their territorial strongholds, they went even further,
investing in machinery that they rented out to artisanal and small-scale
miners and sending their own people to work in gold mines. According
to a recent publication by the UNEP and INTERPOL (Nellemann et al.,
2016), “[w]ith the rising involvement of transnational organized crime,
criminals coordinate, evade or even shift their focus from drugs, human
trafficking, counterfeit products and arms to (…) minerals and illegally
extracted gold” (p. 8). OCGs are known to have even moved beyond
precious metals and stones, showing interest and ability to control
large-scale mining for industrial minerals, such as iron ore (Yap, 2014;
Carbajal Glass, this collection), coal (Zabyelina & Markovska, 2019),
and sand (Mahadevan, 2019; Rege, 2016; Rege & Lavorgna, 2017).
8 Y. Zabyelina and D. van Uhm

As OCGs seek new opportunities for business, they go beyond their

bread-and-butter criminal portfolios (Carbajal Glass, this collection; Van
Uhm, this collection). It may be a natural choice they make in order to
adapt to changing socioeconomic and ecological circumstances (Cressey,
1969; Shelley & Kinnard, 2018). It may also be the outcome of crime
control measures aimed at disrupting them (Zabyelina, 2018). When law
enforcement activities focusing on countering organized crime become
too constraining, OCGs usually shift to equally lucrative but less risky
criminal markets (ibid.). For example, in his research on drug traf-
ficking organizations (DTOs), Marcelo Bergman argues that the most
formidable challenge related to policing drug trafficking is that drug
kingpins “branch out” into other criminal activities such as abduc-
tions, kidnapping for ransom, extortion, car theft, and other profitable
businesses (Bergman, 2018).
In Colombia, informal gold mining generates profits of approximately
USD 2.5 billion a year and has allegedly surpassed drug trafficking as the
main source of dirty money and violence in the country (Group, 2017).
In Peru, the transition from coca cultivation to illegal gold mining has
been reported (UNODC, 2015). In 2015, official overflight and satellite
images of the District of San Gabán, in the Peruvian Region of Puno,
for instance, provided convincing evidence that part of the illicit coca
cultivation had been replaced by illegal gold mining (ibid.). Several years
after this reported transformation, a militarized crackdown against illegal
mining by the Peruvian authorities was reported to have forced former
informal miners to return to coca cultivation (Neves, 2019). These exam-
ples illustrate the important role that environmental crime has played
in the diversification of OCG activities, and they highlight the need
for a systematic and comprehensive examination of organized crime’s
infiltration of the mining industry.

Illegal Extractivism by Non-state

Armed Groups
The process of extracting natural resources from the Earth to sell them
on the global market is called extractivism. Extractivism is common in
 1 The New Eldorado: Organized Crime … 9

developing economies that rely on the extraction of natural resources,

such as oil, gold, diamonds, coltan, among other highly priced and glob-
ally demanded products.2 Without proper and timely state regulation
and monitoring, a large portion of such resources may become clandes-
tinely removed from ground, hidden, or otherwise illegally transported
and exported. Unfortunately, extractivism has become a sophisticated
and lucrative business for various criminal actors.
Just as many developing countries are rich in natural resources, they
also comprise ample non-state armed groups, including criminal gangs,
insurgents, strongmen and their militias (OECD, 2017a). In its Resolu-
tion 2482 (2019) focusing on threats to international peace and security,
the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) expressed its concern that
illegal mining may become an attractive source of income for insurgents,
rebel forces, and even terrorist organizations, all of which could set their
political mission aside to profit off of the illegal extraction and trade in
metals and minerals.
The nexus between the illegal mining of diamonds and armed conflict
has been a concern for the international community for several decades.
The extraction and sale of so-called “blood diamonds” and, more
recently, “blood gold” is known to have sponsored non-state armed
groups in different parts of the world, most devastatingly in African
nations (Geenen, 2015). The term “conflict mineral” (also known as
“conflict resource”) was used to describe the financing of violent rebel
forces in Angola and Sierra Leone in the late 1990s. The concept was
officially endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)
in the context of conflict diamonds and has been referred to as such
in several UNSC resolutions (e.g., Resolution 1173 [1998] and Reso-
lution 1176 [1998]). In 2003, following recommendations outlined in

2 Extractivismis a model of economic development, a way of managing the economy in resource

exporting countries, especially in Latin America. It is based on the extraction of natural
resources, primarily fossil fuels and minerals, which are destined for export. Extractivism is
also present in farming, fishing, and forestry. Traditionally extractivism has impacted countries
of the Global South, particularly indigenous communities, to the benefit of developed coun-
tries and transnational corporations. See: Acosta (2013), Raftopoulos (2017), and Broad and
Fischer-Mackey (2017).
10 Y. Zabyelina and D. van Uhm

the Fowler Report (UNSC, 2000),3 UNGA Resolution 55/56 (2000)

established the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) with the
goal to prevent “conflict diamonds” from entering the mainstream rough
diamond market (Siegel, this collection).
Although the KPCS has had an impact on reducing the oppor-
tunity for the illegal trade in conflict diamonds, as acknowledged in
UNSC Resolution 1458 (2003) and UNGA Resolution 61/28 (2006),
the problem of conflict minerals is still prevalent (Siegel, this collec-
tion). The most prominent conflict minerals being mined today are gold
ore and the 3Ts—cassiterite (for tin), wolframite (for tungsten), and
coltan (for tantalum). UNSC Resolutions 1962 (2010) and 2021 (2011)
concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), for instance,
recommend that all states, particularly those in the region, publish statis-
tics for the import and export of natural resources and work toward
enhancing joint actions to investigate and counter criminal networks and
armed groups involved in the illegal exploitation of natural resources.
The UNSC has also acknowledged the wide-ranging extortion rack-
eteering of illicitly traded charcoal by Al-Shabaab, a non-state armed
group based in East Africa (UNSC Resolution 2036 [2012]). Whereas
some of the UNSC sanctions were successful in restricting the flow of
revenues generated from illicit charcoal exports to Al-Shabaab, it was
recently discovered that the militants have managed to circumvent the
sanctions by using Iran as a transit point for illicit Somali charcoal
exports (UNSC Resolution 2444 [2018]). The UNSC stressed that by
using fake country of origin certificates perpetrators were able to mix the
banned charcoal from Somalia with legal Iranian charcoal and thus trade
it globally (ibid.).
The Taliban, Afghanistan’s largest insurgent group, is also known to
have engaged in illegal extractivism “by controlling illegal mining sites,
specifically in the south and east of the country, by extorting sums from
licensed Afghan mining operations and by acting as a transport facili-
tator for other illegally extracted natural resources” (UNSC, 2016, p. 9;
Thachuk, this collection). In search of funding for its operations, the

3The Fowler Report presented the findings relating to the significance of the illicit diamonds
trade as a source of funding for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola
(UNITA).
 1 The New Eldorado: Organized Crime … 11

insurgency has taken control of mining sites and extorted money from
ongoing legal and illegal mining activities. Within its organizational
structure, there is even a fully functioning mining department known
as the Dabaro Comisyoon (Stones Commission), which manages the taxa-
tion of extracted mined commodities and issues “official” mining licenses
(DuPée, 2017). Reportedly, it was founded in the late 2000s when the
Taliban leadership began to diversify their sources of revenue. According
to some sources, the Taliban has been a central player in the illegal
mining of semi-precious lapis lazuli (Global Witness, 2016; Thachuk,
this collection) and less glamorous but equally profitable talc (Global
Witness, 2018).

Illegal vs. Informal Mining

The pluralist stance toward the law, such as the one embodied in the
literature on legal pluralism, distinguishes between formal, state-centered
laws and state-independent, nonlegal normative orders (Davies, 2010;
Griffiths, 1986; Polese, Russo, & Strazzari, 2019). Legal pluralism also
accounts for the possibility of the “heterarchical interaction of the various
layers of law” and the existence of “potentially competing rules of the
various sub-orders, each with its own ultimate point of reference and
supremacy claim” (Melissaris & Croce, 2017, n.p.). Approaching the
study of organized crime through the prism of legal pluralism is useful
in understanding the social normativity of crime and the essential differ-
ences between legal , illegal , and informal operations in the mining
industry.
When one juxtaposes illegal mining with its antipode—legal
mining—it is common to ignore the vast variation that exists between
the two. Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) illustrates the complex
relationship between legal, illegal, and informal (van der Valk, Biss-
chop, & van Swaaningen, this collection). Despite the fact that there
is no commonly accepted definition of ASM, in large part because its
defining characteristics and legal status vary from country to country,
ASM conventionally denotes a broad range of mining-related activities
performed by individuals, groups, and cooperatives operating without
12 Y. Zabyelina and D. van Uhm

formal oversight but not necessarily in contravention of existing legisla-

tion (Hilson, 2002; Lahiri-Dutt, 2018; UNICRI, 2016). What distin-
guishes ASM from large-scale mining is that ASM usually involves
the extraction of metals and minerals with the simplest of tools, and
it is usually performed by unprofessional miners laboring for subsis-
tence (Chowdhury & Lahiri-Dutt, 2018). ASM mineral extraction and
processing is labor-intensive and often incorporates technology that is
nonmechanized. It is commonly found across the developing world, and
in some developed countries, and is considered a legal practice.4
The majority of ASM practices, however, take place in the margins of
legality, where miners might follow some rules while breaking others.
This kind of ASM is synonymous with informal mining: it is illegal
from the standpoint of formal law but legitimate in the eyes of informal
miners. Informal ASM is sometimes seen as a transitional phase between
illegal and legal mining (Bernet Kempers, this collection) because it often
employs miners who have begun the process of formalization but have
not finished it (GI-TOC, 2016). Should the conditions for formaliza-
tion be favorable, such as simplified licensing procedures, small business
incentive programs and low loan rates, availability of training and equip-
ment, among other measures, ASM could be legalized, registered, taxed,
and used to the benefit of local communities (IISD, 2018; Marshall &
Veiga, 2017).
The relationship between state officials and informal miners is often
plagued by mutual mistrust and open hostility. It is common that state
officials treat informal miners as trespassers or even outright criminals,
whereas informal miners see the State’s monopoly over natural resources
or its granting of exclusive mining rights to large private businesses as
depriving them of access to their land and thus their livelihood.
State officials that fail to engage in constructive dialogue with informal
miners often end up with the miners seeking justice from alternative
forms of governance, such as organized crime. Despite the fact that ASM
is not always linked to organized crime, there are several factors that

4 For instance, Papua New Guinea (PNG) recognizes ASM as a legal contributor to the national
economy. It is administered by the Mineral Resources Authority (MRA), and governed by the
Mining Act of 1992 and the Mining (Safety) Act and Regulations of 2007, which apply to
alluvial and hard-rock mining (Lynas, 2018).
Another random document with
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which they granted us leave to send from it, proved them more
ignorant than kittens of America’s liveliest idiosyncrasies.
In the United States an impression prevails that the annals of Asia
and of Europe are too long and too complicated for our
consideration. Every now and then some educator, or some politician
who controls educators, makes the “practical” suggestion that no
history prior to the American Revolution shall be taught in the public
schools. Every now and then some able financier affirms that he
would not give a fig for any history, and marshals the figures of his
income to prove its uselessness.
Yet our vast heterogeneous population is forever providing
problems which call for an historical solution; and our foreign
relations would be clarified by a greater accuracy of knowledge. To
the ignorance of the average Congressman and of the average
Senator must be traced their most conspicuous blunders. Back of
every man lies the story of his race. The Negro is more than a voter.
He has a history which may be ascertained without undue effort.
Haiti, San Domingo, Liberia, all have their tales to tell. The Irishman
is more than a voter. He has a long, interesting and instructive
history. It pays us to be well informed about these things. “The
passionate cry of ignorance for power” rises in our ears like the
death-knell of civilization. Down through the ages it has sounded,
now covetous and threatening, now irrepressible and triumphant. We
know what every one of its conquests has cost the human race; yet
we are content to rest our security upon oratorical platitudes and
generalities, upon the dim chance of a man being reborn in the
sacrament of citizenship.
In addition to the things that it is useful to know, there are things
that it is pleasant to know, and pleasure is a very important by-
product of education. It has been too long the fashion to deny, or at
least to decry, this species of enjoyment. “He that increaseth
knowledge increaseth sorrow,” says Ecclesiastes; and Sir Thomas
Browne musically bewails the dark realities with which “the
unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us.” But it was
probably the things he did, rather than the things he knew, which
soured the taste of life in the Hebrew’s mouth; and as for Sir Thomas
Browne, no man ever derived a more lasting satisfaction from
scholarship. His erudition, like his religion, was pure profit. His
temperament saved him from the loudness of controversy. His life
was rich within.
This mental ease is not so much an essential of education as the
reward of education. It makes smooth the reader’s path; it involves
the capacity to think, and to take delight in thinking; it is the keynote
of subtle and animated talk. It presupposes a somewhat varied list of
acquirements; but it has no official catalogue, and no market value. It
emphatically does not consist in knowing inventories of things, useful
or otherwise; still less in imparting this knowledge to the world.
Macaulay, Croker, and Lord Brougham were men who knew things
on a somewhat grand scale, and imparted them with impressive
accuracy; yet they were the blight rather than the spur of
conversation. Even the “more cultivated portion of the ignorant,” to
borrow a phrase of Stevenson’s, is hostile to lectures, unless the
lecturer has the guarantee of a platform, and his audience sits before
him in serried and somnolent rows.
The decline and fall of the classics has not been unattended by
controversy. No other educational system was ever so valiantly and
nobly defended. For no other have so many masterly arguments
been marshalled in vain. There was a pride and a splendour in the
long years’ study of Greek. It indicated in England that the nation
had reached a height which permitted her this costly inutility, this
supreme intellectual indulgence. Greek was an adornment to the
minds of her men, as jewels were an adornment to the bodies of her
women. No practical purpose was involved. Sir Walter Scott put the
case with his usual simplicity and directness in a letter to his second
son, Charles, who had little aptitude for study: “A knowledge of the
classical languages has been fixed upon, not without good reason,
as the mark of a well-educated young man; and though people may
scramble into distinction without it, it is always with difficulty, just like
climbing over a wall instead of giving your ticket at the door.”
In the United States we have never been kindly disposed towards
extravagance of this order. During the years of our comparative
poverty, when few citizens aspired to more than a competence, there
was still money enough for Latin, and now and then for Greek. There
was still a race of men with slender incomes and wide acquirements,
to whom scholarship was a dearly bought but indestructible delight.
Now that we have all the money there is, it is universally understood
that Americans cannot afford to spend any of it on the study of “the
best that has been known and thought in the world.”
Against this practical decision no argument avails. Burke’s plea for
the severity of the foundation upon which rest the principles of taste
carries little weight, because our standard of taste is genial rather
than severe. The influence of Latinity upon English literature
concerns us even less, because prose and verse are emancipated
from the splendid shackles they wore with such composure. But the
mere reader, who is not an educational economist, asks himself now
and then in what fashion Milton and Dryden would have written, if
vocational training had supplanted the classics in their day. And to
come nearer to our time, and closer to our modern and moderate
appreciations, how would the “Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard,” and the lines “On the Death of a Favourite Cat” have
been composed, had Gray not spent all his life in the serene
company of the Latins?
It was easy to define the requirements of an educated man in the
year 1738, when Gray, a bad mathematician and an admirable
classicist, left Cambridge. It is uncommonly difficult to define them
to-day. Dr. Goodnow, speaking a few years ago to the graduating
class of Johns Hopkins University, summed up collegiate as well as
professional education as the acquisition of the capacity to do work
of a specific character. “Knowledge can come only as the result of
experience. What is learned in any other way seldom has such
reality as to make it an actual part of our lives.”
A doctor cannot afford to depend too freely on experience,
valuable though it may be, because the high prices it asks are paid
by his patients. But so far as professional training goes, Dr.
Goodnow stood on firm ground. All it undertakes to do is to enable
students to work along chosen lines—to turn them into doctors,
lawyers, priests, mining engineers, analytical chemists, expert
accountants. They may or may not be educated men in the liberal
sense of the word. They may or may not understand allusions which
are current in the conversation of educated people. Such
conversation is far from encyclopædic; but it is interwoven with
knowledge, and rich in agreeable disclosures. An adroit participant
can avoid obvious pitfalls; but it is not in dodging issues and
concealing deficits that the pleasures of companionship lie. I once
heard a sparkling and animated lady ask Mr. Henry James (who
abhorred being questioned) if he did not think American women
talked better than English women. “Yes,” said the great novelist
gently, “they are more ready and much more brilliant. They rise to
every suggestion. But”—as if moved by some strain of recollection
—“English women so often know what they are talking about.”
Vocational training and vocational guidance are a little like
intensive farming. They are obvious measures for obvious results;
they economize effort; they keep their goal in view. If they “pander to
cabbages,” they produce as many and as fine cabbages as the soil
they till can yield. Their exponents are most convincing when they
are least imaginative. The Dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of
Business Administration says bluntly that it is hard for a young man
to see any good in a college education, when he finds he has
nothing to offer which business men want.
This is an intelligible point of view. It shows, as I have said, that
the country does not feel itself rich enough for intellectual luxuries.
But when I see it asserted that vocational training is necessary for
the safety of Democracy (the lusty nursling which we persist in
feeding from the bottle), I feel that I am asked to credit an absurdity.
When the reason given for this dependence is the altruism of labour,
—“In a democracy the activity of the people is directed towards the
good of the whole number,”—I know that common sense has been
violated by an assertion which no one is expected to take seriously.
A life-career course may be established in every college in the land,
and students carefully guarded from the inroads of distracting and
unremunerative knowledge; but this praiseworthy thrift will not be
practised in the interests of the public. The mechanical education,
against which Mr. Lowell has protested sharply, is preëminently
selfish. Its impelling motive is not “going over,” but getting on.
 “It takes a much better quality of mind for self-education than for
education in the ordinary sense,” says Mrs. Gerould; and no one will
dispute this truth. Franklin had two years of schooling, and they were
over and done with before he was twelve. His “cultural opportunities”
were richer than those enjoyed by Mr. Gompers, and he had a
consuming passion for knowledge. Vocational training was a simple
thing in his day; but he glimpsed its possibilities, and fitted it into
place. He would have made an admirable “vocational counsellor” in
the college he founded, had his counsels not been needed on
weightier matters, and in wider spheres. As for industrial education,
those vast efficiency courses given by leading manufacturers to their
employees, which embrace an astonishing variety of marketable
attainments, they would have seemed to him like the realization of a
dream—a dream of diffused light and general intelligence.
We stand to-day on an educational no man’s land, exposed to
double fires, and uncertain which way to turn for safety. The
elimination of Greek from the college curriculum blurred the high
light, the supreme distinction, of scholarship. The elimination of Latin
as an essential study leaves us without any educational standard
save a correct knowledge of English, a partial knowledge of modern
languages, and some acquaintance, never clearly defined, with
precise academic studies. The scientist discards many of these
studies as not being germane to his subject. The professional
student deals with them as charily as possible. The future financier
fears to embarrass his mind with things he does not need to know.
Yet back of every field of labour lies the story of the labourer, and
back of every chapter in the history of civilization lie the chapters that
elucidate it. “Wisdom,” says Santayana, “is the funded experience
which mankind has gathered by living.” Education gives to a student
that fraction of knowledge which sometimes leads to understanding
and a clean-cut basis of opinions. The process is engrossing, and, to
certain minds, agreeable and consolatory. Man contemplates his
fellow man with varied emotions, but never with unconcern. “The
world,” observed Bagehot tersely, “has a vested interest in itself.”
 The American Laughs
It was the opinion of Thomas Love Peacock—who knew whereof
he spoke—that “no man should ask another why he laughs, or at
what, seeing that he does not always know, and that, if he does, he
is not a responsible agent.... Reason is in no way essential to mirth.”
This being so, why should human beings, individually and
collectively, be so contemptuous of one another’s humour? To be
puzzled by it is natural enough. There is nothing in the world so
incomprehensible as the joke we do not see. But to be scornful or
angry, to say with Steele that we can judge a man’s temper by the
things he laughs at, is, in a measure, unreasonable. A man laughs
as he loves, moved by secret springs that do not affect his
neighbour. Yet no sooner did America begin to breed humorists of
her own than the first thing these gentlemen did was to cast doubts
upon British humour. Even a cultivated laugher like Mr. Charles
Dudley Warner suffered himself to become acrimonious on this
subject; whereupon an English critic retaliated by saying that if Mr.
Warner considered Knickerbocker’s “New York” to be the equal of
“Gulliver’s Travels,” and that if Mr. Lowell really thought Mr. N. P.
Willis “witty,” then there was no international standard of satire or of
wit. The chances are that Mr. Lowell did not think Mr. Willis witty at
all. He used the word in a friendly and unreflecting moment, not
expecting a derisive echo from the other side of the sea.
And now Mr. Chesterton has protested in the “Illustrated London
News” against the vogue of the American joke in England. He says it
does not convey its point because the conditions which give it birth
are not understood, and the side-light it throws fails to illuminate a
continent. One must be familiar with the intimacies of American life
to enjoy their humorous aspect.
Precisely the same criticism was offered when Artemus Ward
lectured in London more than a half-century ago. The humour of this
once famous joker has become a disputable point. It is safe to say
that anything less amusing than the passage read by Lincoln to his
Cabinet in Mr. Drinkwater’s play could not be found in the literature
of any land. It cast a needless gloom over the scene, and aroused
our sympathy for the officials who had to listen to it. But the
American jest, like the Greek epic, should be spoken, not read; and it
is claimed that when Artemus Ward drawled out his absurdities,
which, like the Greek epic, were always subject to change, these
absurdities were funny. Mr. Leacock has politely assured us that
London was “puzzled and enraptured with the very mystery of the
humour”; but Mr. Leacock, being at that time three years old, was not
there to discern this for himself. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell was there on the
opening night, November 13, 1866, and found the puzzle and the
mystery to be far in advance of the rapture. The description he was
wont to give of this unique entertainment (a “Panorama,” and a
lecture on the Mormons), of the depressing, unventilated Egyptian
Hall in which it was given, of the wild extravagances of the speaker,
which grew wilder and wilder as the audience grew more and more
bewildered, was funny enough, Heaven knows, but the essence of
the fun lay in failure.
Americans, sixty years ago, were brought up on polygamous jests.
The Mormons were our neighbours, and could be always relied upon
to furnish a scandal, a thrill, or a joke. When they mended their
ways, and ceased to be reprehensible or amusing, the comic papers
were compelled to fall back on Solomon, with whose marital
experiences they have regaled us ever since. But to British eyes,
Brigham Young was an unfamiliar figure; and to British minds,
Solomon has always been distinguished for other things than wives.
Therefore Artemus Ward’s casual drolleries presupposed a
humorous background which did not exist. A chance allusion to a
young friend in Salt Lake City who had run away with a boarding
school was received in stupefied silence. Then suddenly a woman’s
smothered giggle showed that light had dawned on one receptive
brain. Then a few belated laughs broke out in various parts of the
hall, as the idea travelled slowly along the thought currents of the
audience, and the speaker went languidly on to the next
unrecognizable pleasantry.
 The criticism passed upon Americans to-day is that they laugh
often and without discrimination. This is what the English say of us,
and this is what some Americans have said of the English. Henry
James complained bitterly that London play-goers laughed
unseasonably at serious plays. I wonder if they received Ervine’s
“John Ferguson” in this fashion, as did American play-goers. That a
tragedy harsh and unrelenting, that human pain, unbearable
because unmerited, should furnish food for mirth may be
comprehensible to the psychologist who claims to have a clue to
every emotion; but to the ordinary mortal it is simply dumbfounding.
People laughed at Molnar’s “Liliom” out of sheer nervousness,
because they could not understand it. And “Liliom” had its comedy
side. But nobody could have helped understanding “John Ferguson,”
and there was no relief from its horror, its pitifulness, its sombre
surrender to the irony of fate. Yet ripples of laughter ran through the
house; and the actress who played Hannah Ferguson confessed that
this laughter had in the beginning completely unnerved her, but that
she had steeled herself to meet and to ignore it.
It was said that British audiences were guilty of laughing at “Hedda
Gabler,” perhaps in sheer desperate impatience at the
unreasonableness of human nature as unfolded in that despairing
drama. They should have been forgiven and congratulated, and so
should the American audiences who were reproached for laughing at
“Mary Rose.” The charm, the delicacy, the tragic sense of an
unknown and arbitrary power with which Barrie invested his play
were lost in the hands of incapable players, while its native dullness
gained force and substance from their presentation. A lengthy
dialogue on a pitch-black stage between an invisible soldier and an
inarticulate ghost was neither enlivening nor terrifying. It would have
been as hard to laugh as to shudder in the face of such tedious
loquacity.
We see it often asserted that Continental play-goers are incapable
of the gross stupidities ascribed to English and Americans, that they
dilate with correct emotions at correct moments, that they laugh,
weep, tremble, and even faint in perfect accord with the situations of
the drama they are witnessing. When Maeterlinck’s “Intruder” was
played in Paris, women fainted; when it was played in Philadelphia,
they tittered. Perhaps the quality of the acting may account for these
varying receptions. A tense situation, imperfectly presented,
degenerates swiftly into farce—into very bad farce, too, as Swift said
of the vulgar malignities of fate.
The Dublin players brought to this country a brand of humour and
pathos with which we were unfamiliar. Irish comedy, as we knew it,
was of the Dion Boucicault type, a pure product of stageland, and
unrelated to any practical experiences of life. Here, on the contrary,
was something indigenous to Ireland, and therefore strange to us.
My first experience was at the opening night of Ervine’s “Mixed
Marriage,” in New York. An audience, exclusively Semitic (so far as I
could judge by looking at it), listened in patient bewilderment to the
theological bickerings of Catholics and Protestants in Belfast. I sat in
a box with Lady Gregory who was visibly disturbed by the slowness
of the house at the uptake, and unaware that what was so familiar
and vital to her was a matter of the purest unconcern to that
particular group of Americans. The only thing that roused them from
their apathy was the sudden rage with which, in the third act, Tom
Rainey shouted at his father: “Ye’re an ould fool, that’s what ye are; a
damned ould fool!” At these reprehensible words a gust of laughter
swept the theatre, destroying the situation on the stage, but shaking
the audience back to life and animation. It was seemingly—though I
should be sorry to think it—the touch of nature which makes the
whole world kin.
When that mad medley of fun and fancy, of grossness and
delicacy, “The Playboy of the Western World,” was put on the
American stage, men laughed—generally at the wrong time—out of
the hopeless confusion of their minds. The “Playboy” was admittedly
an enigma. The night I saw it, the audience, under the impression
that it was anti-Irish, or anti-Catholic, or anti-moral, or anti-
something, they were not sure what, hurled denunciations and one
missile—which looked strangely like a piece of pie—at the actors. It
was a disgraceful scene, but not without its humorous side; for when
the riotous interruptions had subsided, an elderly man arose, and,
with the manner of an invited speaker at a public dinner, began,
“From time immemorial”—But the house had grown tired of
disturbances, and howled him down. He waited for silence, and then
in the same composed and leisurely manner began again, “From
time immemorial”—At this point one of the policemen who had been
restoring order led him gently but forcibly out of the theatre; the play
was resumed; and what it was that had happened from time
immemorial we were destined never to know.
A source of superlative merriment in the United States is the two-
reel comic of our motion-picture halls. Countless thousands of
Americans look at it, and presumably laugh at it, every twenty-four
hours. It is not unlike an amplified and diversified Punch and Judy
show, depending on incessant action and plenty of hard knocks.
Hazlitt says that bangs and blows which we know do not hurt
provoke legitimate laughter; and, until we see a funny film, we have
no conception of the amount of business which can be constructed
out of anything so simple as men hitting one another. Producers of
these comics have taken the public into their confidence, and have
assured us that their work is the hardest in the motion-picture
industry; that the slugging policeman is trained for weary weeks to
slug divertingly, and that every tumble has to be practised with
sickening monotony before it acquires its purely accidental character.
As for accessories—well, it takes more time and trouble to make a
mouse run up a woman’s skirt at the right moment, or a greyhound
carry off a dozen crullers on its tail, than it does to turn out a whole
sentimental scenario, grey-haired mother, high-minded, pure-hearted
convict son, lumber-camp virtue, town vice, and innocent childhood
complete. Whether or not the time and trouble are well spent
depends on the amount of money which that mouse and those
crullers eventually wring from an appreciative and laughter-loving
public.
The dearth of humorous situations—at no time inexhaustible—has
compelled the two-reel comic to depend on such substitutes as
speed, violence, and a succession of well-nigh inconceivable
mishaps. A man acting in one cannot open a door, cross a street, or
sit down to dinner without coming to grief. Even the animals—dogs,
donkeys and pigs—are subject to catastrophes that must wreck their
confidence in life. Fatness, besides being funny, is, under these
circumstances, a great protection. The human body, swathed in rolls
of cotton-wadding, is safe from contusions and broken bones. When
an immensely stout lady sinks into an armchair, only to be
precipitated through a trap-door, and shot down a slide into a pond,
we feel she has earned her pay. But after she has been dropped
from a speeding motor, caught and lifted high in air by a balloon
anchor, let down to earth with a parachute, picked up by an elephant,
and carried through the streets at the head of a circus parade, we
begin to understand the arduousness of art. Only the producers of
comic “movies” know what “One crowded hour of glorious life” can
be made to hold.
Laughter has been over-praised and over-analyzed, as well as
unreasonably denounced. We do not think much about its
determining causes—why should we?—until the contradictory
definitions of philosophers, psychologists and men of letters compel
us to recognize its inscrutable quality. Plato laid down the principle
that our pleasure in the ludicrous originates in the sight of another’s
misfortune. Its motive power is malice. Hobbes stoutly affirmed that
laughter is not primarily malicious, but vainglorious. It is the rough,
spontaneous assertion of our own eminence. “We laugh from
strength, and we laugh at weakness.” Hazlitt saw a lurking cruelty in
the amusement of civilized men who have gaged the folly and
frivolity of their kind. Bergson, who evidently does not frequent
motion-picture halls, says that the comic makes its appeal to “the
intelligence pure and simple.” He raises laughter to the dignity of a
“social gesture” and a corrective. We put our affections out of court,
and impose silence upon our pity before we laugh; but this is only
because the corrective would fail to correct if it bore the stamp of
sympathy and kindness. Leacock, who deals in comics, is sure of but
one thing, that all humour is anti-social; and Stevenson ascribes our
indestructible spirit of mirth to “the unplumbed childishness of man’s
imagination.”
The illustrations given us by these eminent specialists are as
unconvincing as the definitions they vouchsafe, and the rules they
lay down for our guidance. Whenever we are told that a situation or a
jest offers legitimate food for laughter, we cease to have any
disposition to laugh. Just as we are often moved to merriment for no
other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are
correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused. An
entertainment which promises to be funny is handicapped from the
start. It has to plough deep into men’s risibilities before it can raise its
crop of laughter. I have been told that when Forepaugh first fired a
man out of a cannon, the audience laughed convulsively; not
because it found anything ludicrous in the performance, but because
it had been startled out of its composure, and relieved from a
gasping sense of fear.
Sidney Smith insisted that the overturning of a dinner-table which
had been set for dinner was a laughable incident. Yet he was a
married man, and must have known that such a catastrophe (which
seems to us to belong strictly to the motion-picture field) could not
have been regarded by Mrs. Smith, or by any other hostess, as
amusing. Boswell tells us that Dr. Johnson was so infinitely diverted
by hearing that an English gentleman had left his estate to his three
sisters that he laughed until he was exhausted, and had to hold on to
a post (he was walking home through the London streets) to keep
himself from falling to the ground. Yet no reader of Boswell ever saw
anything ludicrous in such a last will and testament. Sophocles
makes Electra describe Clytemnestra as “laughing triumphantly”
over the murder of Agamemnon; but Electra was a prejudiced
witness. Killing an undesired husband is no laughing matter, though
triumph over its accomplishment—when failure means death—is a
legitimate emotion. Clytemnestra was a singularly august and
composed sinner. Not from her did Orestes and Electra inherit their
nervous systems; and not on their testimony should we credit her
with an excess of humour alike ill-timed and unbecoming.
In our efforts to discover what can never be discovered—the
secret sources of laughter—we have experimented with American
children; testing their appreciation of the ludicrous by giving them
blocks which, when fitted into place, display absurd and incongruous
pictures. Their reactions to this artificial stimulus are of value, only
when they are old enough for perception, and young enough for
candour. The merriment of children, of little girls especially, is often
unreal and affected. They will toss their heads and stimulate one
another to peals of laughter which are a pure make-believe. When
they are really absorbed in their play, and astir with delicious
excitation, they do not laugh; they give vent to piercing shrieks which
sound as if they were being cut into little pieces. These shrieks are
the spontaneous expression of delight; but their sense of absurdity,
which implies a sense of humour, is hard to capture before it has
become tainted with pretence.
There are American newspapers which print every day a sheet or
a half-sheet of comic pictures, and there are American newspapers
which print every Sunday a coloured comic supplement. These
sincere attempts to divert the public are well received. Their vulgarity
does not offend. “What,” asks the wise Santayana, “can we relish if
we recoil at vulgarity?” Their dullness is condoned. Life, for all its
antics, is confessedly dull. Our absurdities may amuse the angels
(Walpole had a cheerful vision of their laughter); but they cannot be
relied on to amuse our fellow men. Nevertheless the coloured
supplement passes from hand to hand—from parents to children,
from children to servants. Even the smudgy black and whites of the
daily press are soberly and conscientiously scrutinized. A man,
reading his paper in the train, seldom skips that page. He examines
every little smudge with attention, not seemingly entertained, or
seeking entertainment, but without visible depression at its
incompetence.
I once had the pleasure of hearing a distinguished etcher lecture
on the art of illustrating. He said some harsh words about these
American comics, and threw on the screen a reproduction of one of
their most familiar series. The audience looked at it sadly. “I am
glad,” commented the lecturer, “that you did not laugh. Those
pictures are, as you perceive, as stupid as they are vulgar. Now I will
show you some clever English work”: and there appeared before us
the once famous Ally Sloper recreating himself and his family at the
seashore. The audience looked at him sadly. A solemn stillness held
the hall. “Why don’t you laugh?” asked the lecturer irritably. “I assure
you that picture is funny.” Whereupon everybody laughed; not
because we saw the fun—which was not there to see—but because
we were jolted into risibility by the unwarranted despotism of the
demand.
The prohibition jest which stands preeminent in the United States,
and has afforded French and English humorists a field which they
have promptly and ably filled, draws its vitality from the inexhaustible
springs of human nature. Readers and play-goers profess
themselves tired of it; moralists deprecate its undermining qualities;
but the conflict between a normal desire and an interdict is too
unadjustable, too rich in circumstance, and too far-reaching in
results, to be accepted in sober silence. The complications incidental
to prohibition, the battle of wits, the turns of the game, the
adventures—often sorry enough—of the players, all present the
essential elements of comedy. Mrs. Gerould has likened the situation
to an obstacle race. It is that, and it is something more. In earlier,
easier days, robbery was made justifiably droll. The master thief was
equally at home in northern Europe and in the far East. England
smiled at Robin Hood. France evolved that amazing epithet,
“chevalier d’industrie.” But arrayed against robbery were a moral law
and a commandment. Arrayed against wine are a legal ordinance
and the modern cult of efficiency. It will be long before these become
so sacrosanct as to disallow a laugh.
The worst that has been said of legitimate American humour is
that it responds to every beck and call. Even Mr. Ewan S. Agnew,
whose business it is to divert the British public, considers that the
American public is too easily diverted. We laugh, either from light-
hearted insensitiveness, or from the superabundant vitality, the half-
conscious sense of power, which bubbles up forever in the callous
gaiety of the world. Certainly Emerson is the only known American
who despised jocularity, and who said early and often that he did not
wish to be amused. The most striking passage in the letters of Mr.
Walter Page is the one which describes his distaste for the “jocular”
Washington luncheons at which he was a guest in the summer of
1916. He had come fresh from the rending anxiety, the heroic stress
and strain of London; and the cloudless atmosphere of our capital
wounded his spirit. England jested too. “Punch” had never been so
brilliant as in the torturing years of war. But England had earned the
right to jest. There was a tonic quality in her laughter. Page feared
from the bottom of his soul lest the great peaceful nation, safe, rich
and debonair, had suffered her “mental neutrality” to blot out from
her vision the agony of Europe, and the outstanding facts which
were responsible for the disaster.
This unconcern, which is the balance wheel of comedy, has
tempered the American mind to an easy acceptance of chance. Its
enthusiasms are modified, its censures are softened by a restraining
humour which is rooted deeply in indifference. We recognize the
sanity of our mental attitude, but not its incompleteness.
Understanding and sympathy are products of civilized life, as
clarifying in their way as tolerance and a quick perception of the
ludicrous. An American newspaper printed recently a photograph
entitled “Smilin’ Through,” which showed two American girls peering
through two holes in a shell-torn wall of Verdun, and laughing
broadly at their sport. The names and addresses of these frolicsome
young women were given, and their enjoyment of their own drollery
was emphasized for the diversion of other young women at home.
Now granted that every nation, like every man, bears the burden
of its own grief. Granted also that every woman, like every man, has
her own conception of the humorous, and that we cannot reasonably
take umbrage because we fail to see the fun. Nevertheless the
memories of Verdun do not make for laughter. There is that in its
story which sobers the world it has ennobled. Four hundred
thousand French soldiers gave their lives for that battered fortress
which saved Paris and France. Mr. Brownell reminds us that there is
such a thing as rectitude outside the sphere of morals, and that it is
precisely this austere element in taste which assures our self-
respect. We cannot analyze, and therefore cannot criticize, that
frothy fun which Bergson has likened to the foam which the receding
waves leave on the ocean sands; but we know, as he knows, that
the substance is scanty, and the after-taste is bitter in our mouths.
We are tethered to our kind, and it is the sureness of our reaction to
the great and appealing facts of history which makes us inheritors of
a hard-won civilization, and qualified citizens of the world.
 The Idolatrous Dog
We shall never know why a feeling of shame attends certain
harmless sensations, certain profoundly innocent tastes and
distastes. Why, for example, are we abashed when we are cold, and
boastful when we are not? There is no merit or distinction in being
insensitive to cold, or in wearing thinner clothing than one’s
neighbour. And what strange impulse is it which induces otherwise
truthful people to say they like music when they do not, and thus
expose themselves to hours of boredom? We are not necessarily
morons or moral lepers because we have no ear for harmony. It is a
significant circumstance that Shakespeare puts his intolerant lines,

“The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

Let no such man be trusted”—

in the mouth of Lorenzo who disdained neither stratagems nor

spoils, and who carried off the Jew’s ducats as well as the Jew’s
daughter. And Jessica, who sits by his side in the moonlight, and
responds with delicate grace

“I am never merry when I hear sweet music,”

is the girl who “gilded” herself with stolen gold, and gave her dead
mother’s ring for a monkey.
It is a convenience not to feel cold when the thermometer falls,
and it is a pleasure to listen appreciatively to a symphony concert. It
is also a convenience to relish the proximity of dogs, inasmuch as
we live surrounded by these animals, and it is a pleasure to respond
to their charm. But there is no virtue in liking them, any more than
there is virtue in liking wintry weather or stringed instruments. An
affection for dogs is not, as we have been given to understand, a test
of an open and generous disposition. Still less is their affection for us
to be accepted as a guarantee of our integrity. The assumption that a
dog knows a good from a bad human being when he sees one is
unwarranted. It is part of that engulfing wave of sentiment which
swept the world in the wake of popular fiction. Dickens is its most
unflinching exponent. Henry Gowan’s dog, Lion, springs at the throat
of Blandois, alias Lagnier, alias Rigaud, for no other reason than that
he recognizes him as a villain, without whom the world would be a
safer and better place to live in. Florence Dombey’s dog, Diogenes,
looks out of an upper window, observes Mr. Carker peacefully
walking the London streets, and tries to jump down and bite him then
and there. He sees at once what Mr. Dombey has not found out in
years—that Carker is a base wretch, unworthy of the confidence
reposed in him.
A few animals of this kind might, in real life, close the courts of
justice. The Dickens dog is detective, prosecuting attorney, judge,
jury and executioner, all in one. He stands responsible for a whole
school of fictitious canines who combine the qualities of Vidocq,
Sherlock Holmes, and the Count of Monte Cristo. I read recently a
story in which the villain was introduced as “that anomalous being,
the man who doesn’t like dogs.” After that, no intelligent reader could
have been unprepared to find him murdering his friend and partner.
So much was inevitable. And no experienced reader could have
been unprepared for the behaviour of the friend and partner’s dog,
which recognizes the anomaly as a person likely to commit murder,
and, without wasting time on circumstantial evidence, tracks him
down, and, unaided, brings him to his death. A simple, clean-cut
retribution, contrasting favourably with the cumbersome processes of
law.
A year ago the Governor of Maine had the misfortune to lose his
dog. He signified his sense of loss, and his appreciation of the
animal’s good qualities, by lowering the American flag on the
Augusta State House to half-mast. He was able to do this because
he was Governor, and there was no one to say him nay.
Nevertheless, certain sticklers for formality protested against an
innovation which opened up strange possibilities for the future; and
one logical lady observed that a dog was no more a citizen than was
a strawberry patch, a statement not open to contradiction. The
country at large, however, supported the Governor’s action.
Newspaper men wrote editorials lauding the “homespun” virtues of
an official who set a true value on an honest dog’s affection. Poets
wrote verses about “Old Glory” and “Garry” (the dog’s name); and
described Saint Peter as promptly investing this worthy quadruped
with the citizenship of Heaven. The propriety or impropriety of
lowering the national flag for an animal—which was the question
under dispute—was buried beneath the avalanche of sentiment
which is always ready to fall at the sound of a dog’s name.
A somewhat similar gust of criticism swept Pennsylvania when a
resident of that State spent five hundred dollars on the obsequies of
his dog. The Great War, though drawing to a close, was not yet over,
and perhaps the thought of men unburied on the battle-field, and
refugees starving for bread, intensified public feeling. There was the
usual outcry, as old as Christianity—“this might have been given to
the poor.” There was the usual irrelevant laudation of the
Pennsylvania dog, and of dogs in general. People whose own affairs
failed to occupy their attention (there are many such) wrote
vehement letters to the daily press. At last a caustic reader chilled
the agitation by announcing that he was prepared to give five
hundred dollars any day for the privilege of burying his next-door
neighbour’s dog. Whether or not this offer was accepted, the public
never knew; but what troubled days and sleepless nights must have
prompted its prodigality!
 The honour accorded to the dog is no new thing. It has for
centuries rewarded his valour and fidelity. Responsibilities, duties,
compensations—these have always been his portion. Sirius shines
in the heavens, and Cerberus guards in hell. The dog, Katmir, who
watched over the Seven Sleepers for three hundred and nine years,
gained Paradise for his pains, as well he might. Even the ill-fated
hounds of Actæon, condemned to kill their more ill-fated master, are
in some sort immortal, inasmuch as we may know, if we choose, the
names of every one of them. Through the long pages of legend and
romance the figure of the dog is clearly outlined; and when history
begins with man’s struggle for existence, the dog may be found his
ally and confederate. It was a strange fatality which impelled this
animal to abandon communal life and the companionship of his kind
for the restraints, the safety, the infinite weariness of domesticity. It
was an amazing tractableness which caused him to accept a set of
principles foreign to his nature—the integrity of work, the
honourableness of servitude, the artificial values of civilization.
As a consequence of this extraordinary change of base, we have
grown accustomed to judge the dog by human standards. In fact,
there are no other standards which apply to him. The good dog, like
the good man, is the dog which has duties to perform, and which
performs them faithfully. The bad dog, like the bad man, is the dog
which is idle, ill-tempered and over-indulged by women. Women are
responsible for most of the dog-failures, as well as for many of the
man-failures of the world. So long as they content themselves with
toy beasts, this does not much matter; but a real dog, beloved and
therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He
suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.
What if the shepherd dog fares hardly, and if exposure stiffens his
limbs! He has at least lived, and played his part in life. Nothing more
beautiful or more poignant has ever been written about any animal
than James Hogg’s description of his old collie which could no longer
gather in the sheep, and with which he was compelled to part,
because—poor Ettrick shepherd—he could not afford to pay the tax
on two dogs. The decrepit beast refused to be separated from the
flocks which had been his care and pride. Day after day he hobbled
along, watching the new collie bustling about his work, and—too
wise to interfere—looking with reproachful eyes at the master who
had so reluctantly discarded him.
The literature of the dog is limitless. A single shelf would hold all
that has been written about the cat. A library would hardly suffice for
the prose and verse dedicated to the dog. From “Gêlert” to “Rab”
and “Bob, Son of Battle,” he has dominated ballad and fiction. Few
are the poets and few the men of letters who have not paid some
measure of tribute to him. Goethe, indeed, and Alfred de Musset
detested all dogs, and said so composedly. Their detestation was
temperamental, and not the result of an unfortunate encounter, such
as hardened the heart of Dr. Isaac Barrow, mathematician, and
Master of Trinity College. Sidney Smith tells us with something akin
to glee that this eminent scholar, when taking an early stroll in the
grounds of a friend and host, was attacked by a huge and
unwarrantably suspicious mastiff. Barrow, a fighter all his life (a man
who would fight Algerine pirates was not to be easily daunted),
hurled the dog to the ground, and fell on top of him. The mastiff
could not get up, but neither could Barrow, who called loudly for
assistance. It came, and the combatants were separated; but a
distaste for morning strolls and an aversion for dogs lingered in the
Master’s mind. There was one less enthusiast in the world.
We are apt to think that the exuberance of sentiment entertained
by Americans for dogs is a distinctively British trait, that we have
inherited it along with our language, our literature, our manliness, our
love of sport, our admirable outdoor qualities. But it may be found
blooming luxuriously in other and less favoured lands. That
interesting study of Danish childhood by Carl Ewald, called “My Little
Boy,” contains a chapter devoted to the lamentable death of a dog
named Jean, “the biggest dog in Denmark.” This animal, though at
times condescending to kindness, knew how to maintain his just
authority. “He once bit a boy so hard that the boy still walks lame. He
once bit his own master.” The simple pride with which these
incidents are narrated would charm a dog-lover’s soul. And the lame
boy’s point of view is not permitted to intrude.
 Of all writers who have sung the praises of the dog, and who have
justified our love for him, Maeterlinck has given the fullest expression
to the profound and absorbing egotism which underlies this love.
Never for a moment does he consider his dog save as a worshipper.
Never does he think of himself save as a being worshipped. Never
does he feel that this relationship can be otherwise than just,
reasonable, and satisfying to both parties. “The dog,” he says,
“reveres us as though we had drawn him out of nothing. He has a
morality which surpasses all that he is able to discover in himself,
and which he can practise without scruple and without fear. He
possesses truth in its fullness. He has a certain and infinite ideal.”
And what is this ideal? “He” (the dog) “is the only living being that
has found, and recognizes, an indubitable, unexceptionable and
definite god.”
And who is this god? M. Maeterlinck, you, I, anybody who has
bought and reared a puppy. Yet we are told that the dog is intelligent.
What is there about men which can warrant the worship of a wise
beast? What sort of “truth in its fullness” is compatible with such a
blunder? Yet it is for the sake of being idolized that we prize and
cherish the idolater. Our fellow mortals will not love us unless we are
lovable. They will not admire us unless we are admirable. Our cats
will probably neither love nor admire us, being self-engrossed
animals, free from encumbering sensibilities. But our dogs will love
and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their
uncritical homage. M. Maeterlinck recognizes our dependence on
the dog for the deification we crave, and is unreasonably angry with
the cat for her aloofness. In her eyes, he complains, we are
parasites in our own homes. “She curses us from the depths of her
mysterious heart.”
She does not. She tolerates us with a wise tolerance, recognizing
our usefulness, and indulgent of our foibles. Domesticity has not cost
her the heavy price it has cost the dog. She has merely exchanged
the asylum of cave or tree for the superior accommodation of the
house. Her habits remain unaltered, her freedom unviolated. Cream-
fed and pampered, she still loves the pleasures of the chase; nor will
she pick and choose her prey at the recommendation of prejudiced
humanity. M. Maeterlinck, who has striven to enter into the
consciousness of the dog, describes it as congested with duties and
inhibitions. There are chairs he must not sit on, rooms he must not
enter, food he must not steal, babies he must not upset, cats he
must not chase, visitors he must not bark at, beggars and tramps he
must not permit to enter the gates. He lives under as many, and as
strict, compulsions as though he were a citizen of the United States.
By comparison with this perverted intelligence, this artificial morality,
the mind of the cat appears like a cool and spacious chamber, with
only her own spirit to fill it, and only her own tastes and distastes to
be consulted and obeyed.
Perhaps it is because the dog is so hedged in by rules and
regulations that he has lost his initiative. Descended from animals
that lived in packs, and that enjoyed the advantages of communal
intelligence, he could never have possessed this quality as it was
possessed by an animal that lived alone, and had only his own
acuteness and experience to rely on. But having surrendered his will
to the will of man, and his conscience to the keeping of man, the dog
has by now grown dependent for his simplest pleasures upon man’s
caprice. He loves to roam; but whereas the cat does roam at will,
rightly rejecting all interference with her liberty, the dog craves
permission to accompany his master on a stroll, and, being refused,
slinks sadly back to confinement and inaction. I have great respect
for those exceptional dogs that take their exercise when they need or
desire it in self-sufficing solitude. I once knew an Irish terrier that had
this independent turn of mind. He invited himself to daily
constitutionals, and might have been seen any morning trotting along
the road, miles away from home, with the air of an animal walking to
keep his flesh down. In the end he was run over by a speeding
motor, but what of that? Die we must, and, while he lived, he was
free.
A lordliness of sentiment mars much of the admirable poetry
written about dogs. The poet thrones himself before addressing his
devoted and credulous ally. Even Matthew Arnold’s lines to “Kaiser
Dead”—among the best of their kind—are heavy with patronage:
 “But all those virtues which commend
The humbler sort who serve and tend,
Were thine in store, thou faithful friend.”

To be sure, Kaiser was a mongrel; but why emphasize his low

estate? As a matter of fact, mongrels, like self-made men, are apt to
have a peculiar complacency of demeanour. They do not rank
themselves among “the humbler sort”; but “serve and tend” on the
same conditions as their betters.
Two years ago Mr. Galsworthy, who stands in the foremost rank of
dog-lovers, and who has drawn for us some of the most lifelike and
attractive dogs in fiction, pleaded strongly and emotionally for the
exemption of this animal from any form of experimental research. He
had the popular sentiment of England back of him, because popular
sentiment always is emotional. The question of vivisection is one of
abstract morality. None but the supremely ignorant can deny its
usefulness. There remain certain questions which call for clean-cut
answers. Does our absolute power over beasts carry with it an
absolute right? May we justifiably sacrifice them for the good of
humanity? What degree of pain are we morally justified in inflicting
on them to save men from disease and death? If we faced the issue
squarely, we should feel no more concern for the kind of animal
which is used for experimentation than for the kind of human being
who may possibly benefit by the experiment. Right and wrong admit
of no sentimental distinctions. Yet the vivisectionist pleads, “Is not
the life of a young mother worth more than the life of a beast?” The
anti-vivisectionist asks: “How can man deliberately torture the
creature that loves and trusts him?” And Mr. Galsworthy admitted
that he had nothing to say about vivisection in general. Cats and
rabbits might take their chances. He asked only that the dog should
be spared.
It has been hinted more than once that if we develop the dog’s
intelligence too far, we may end by robbing him of his illusions. He
has absorbed so many human characteristics—vanity, sociability,
snobbishness, a sense of humour and a conscience—that there is
danger of his also acquiring the critical faculty. He will not then
content himself with flying at the throats of villains—the out-and-out
villain is rare in the common walks of life—he will doubt the godlike
qualities of his master. The warmth of his affection will chill, its
steadfastness will be subject to decay.
Of this regrettable possibility there is as yet no sign. The hound,
Argus, beating the ground with his feeble tail in an expiring effort to
welcome the disguised Odysseus, is a prototype of his successor to-
day. Scattered here and there in the pages of history are instances
of unfaithfulness; but their rarity gives point to their picturesqueness.
Froissart tells us that the greyhound, Math, deserted his master, King
Richard the Second, to fawn on the Duke of Lancaster who was to
depose and succeed him; and that a greyhound belonging to
Charles of Blois fled on the eve of battle to the camp of John de
Montfort, seeking protection from the stronger man. These
anecdotes indicate a grasp of political situations which is no part of
the dog’s ordinary make-up. Who can imagine the fortunate, faithful
little spaniel that attended Mary Stuart in her last sad months, and in
her last heroic hours, fawning upon Queen Elizabeth? Who can
imagine Sir Walter Scott’s dogs slinking away from him when the
rabble of Jedburgh heaped insults on his bowed grey head?
The most beautiful words ever written about a dog have no
reference to his affectionate qualities. Simonides, celebrating the
memory of a Thessalian hound, knows only that he was fleet and
brave. “Surely, even as thou liest in this tomb, I deem the wild beasts
yet fear thy white bones, Lycas; and thy valour great Pelion knows,
and the lonely peaks of Cithæron.” This is heroic praise, and so, in a
fashion, is Byron’s epitaph on Boatswain. But Byron, being of the
moderns, can find no better way of honouring dogs than by defaming
men; a stupidity, pardonable in the poet only because he was the
most sincere lover of animals the world has ever known. His tastes
were catholic, his outlook was whimsical. He was not in the least
discomposed when his forgetful wolf-hound bit him, or when his
bulldog bit him without the excuse of forgetfulness. Moore tells us
that the first thing he saw on entering Byron’s palace in Venice was a
notice, “Keep clear of the dog!” and the first thing he heard was the
voice of his host calling out anxiously, “Take care, or that monkey will
fly at you.”
It is a pleasant relief, after floundering through seas of sentiment,
to read about dogs that were every whit as imperfect as their
masters; about Cowper’s “Beau” who has been immortalized for his
disobedience; or Sir Isaac Newton’s “Diamond” who has been
immortalized for the mischief he wrought; or Prince Rupert’s “Boy”
who was shot while loyally pulling down a rebel on Marston Moor; or
the Church of England spaniel, mentioned by Addison, who proved
his allegiance to the Establishment by worrying a dissenter. It is also
a pleasure of a different sort to read about the wise little dog who ran
away from Mrs. Welsh (Carlyle’s mother-in-law) on the streets of
Edinburgh, to follow Sir Walter Scott; and about the London dog of
sound literary tastes who tried for many nights to hear Dickens read.
It is always possible that if men would exact a less unalterable
devotion from their dogs, they might find these animals to be
possessed of individual and companionable traits.
But not of human sagacity. It is their privilege to remain beasts,
bound by admirable limitations, thrice happy in the things they do not
have to know, and feel, and be. “The Spectator” in a hospitable
mood once invited its readers to send it anecdotes of their dogs. The
invitation was, as might be imagined, cordially and widely accepted.
Mr. Strachey subsequently published a collection of these stories in
a volume which had all the vraisemblance of Hans Andersen and
“The Arabian Nights.” Reading it, one could but wonder and regret
that the tribe of man had risen to unmerited supremacy. The
“Spectator” dogs could have run the world, the war and the
Versailles Conference without our lumbering interference.

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